Executive Insights
You Can’t Spin Your Way Out of a Bad Decision-Making Process
FIFA’s most recent crisis offers a lesson for CEOs, boards and communications leaders: Executive communication needs to begin before the decision is made.
Some of the most consequential executive communications happen before anyone drafts the announcement.
FIFA’s recent governance crisis demonstrates what can happen when communications is treated as the final stage of a major decision rather than part of the decision-making process itself. For CEOs and boards, the lesson extends far beyond sports: stakeholder intelligence, internal deliberation, and communication need to begin while leaders can still influence the decision—not after the organization has committed itself publicly.
From the Board
What Should Your CEO Be Known For?
CEO Brand & Executive Persona Lab12-1:30 PM EST
December 2, December 9, December 16
The strongest CEO brands aren't built simply by increasing visibility. They are built by identifying and consistently reinforcing the leadership qualities an executive needs to own.
Over three live sessions, the CEO Brand & Executive Persona Lab will help communications leaders define and strengthen that executive persona, turning it into a practical framework for CEO positioning and communications.
Five Executive Takeaways
1. Executive communications should begin before the executive decision is final: More than the message used to announce it, stakeholder mapping, listening, testing objections and internal deliberation can improve the decision itself.
2. Stakeholders evaluate leadership behavior, not just leadership language: A compelling statement cannot compensate indefinitely for actions or organizational practices that contradict what an executive says. Research on CEO activism similarly finds that perceived authenticity strengthens when executives' public positions align with their companies' underlying actions.
3. Your CEO's persona is being constructed in every interaction: Employees and other stakeholders interpret repeated leadership behaviors as signals about who an executive really is. Recent research on servant leadership suggests those signals become more powerful when leadership behaviors are frequent and consistent.
4. AI adoption is a leadership communication challenge, not simply a technology challenge: Organizations need to define what sophisticated AI use actually looks like for their business, make those behaviors visible and establish expectations employees can understand and apply.
5. Credibility depends on alignment: Across executive decision-making, CEO activism, leadership behavior and organizational transformation, the pattern is remarkably consistent. Research shows that what leaders say, what they do, and what the organization actually practices need to reinforce one another.
Why It Matters
Executive communications often begin too late.
A consequential decision gets made, and only then is the communications team asked to develop the narrative, anticipate objections, and build stakeholder support.
But some of the highest-value executive communications happen before the decision is final. Stakeholder intelligence, listening, testing assumptions, and internal deliberation can help leaders understand how a decision will be received while there is still time to shape it.
Executive communications isn't simply about communicating decisions. We see more and more cases where it is one major component of the process for making better ones.
–The Communications Board Team
Industry Research
CEO Activism Is More Credible When Corporate Actions Back It Up
Research published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review examined when CEO activism can strengthen rather than damage corporate reputation. The researchers found that CEO statements were perceived as more authentic when accompanied by a company's established corporate social responsibility activity. The study also found that this alignment could even reduce backlash among people who disagreed with the CEO's political position.
Implication: Executive positioning cannot be separated from organizational behavior. Before encouraging a CEO to speak publicly on a contentious issue, communications leaders should ask whether the organization's actions provide credible evidence for the position the CEO intends to take.
The Best AI Users Don't Just Use AI More. They Use It in Different Ways.
KPMG and researchers at the University of Texas at Austin analyzed more than 1.4 million AI interactions from approximately 2,500 employees to determine what separates routine AI adoption from sophisticated human-AI collaboration. Their findings suggest that organizations shouldn't simply measure adoption or prompt volume. Instead, leaders need to identify and strengthen behaviors associated with higher-quality AI use, then translate those behaviors into training and clear workplace expectations.
Implication: The next phase of AI leadership is less about telling employees to use AI and more about defining what good AI-enabled work looks like. Executive and internal communications can play an important role in making those expectations understandable, visible and repeatable across an organization.
Doing Good Isn't Enough: Employees Have to Recognize It as Leadership
A new paper published in the Journal of Management Studies examines why some executives may believe they are practicing servant leadership while employees interpret their behavior differently. Across multiple experiments, researchers found that leaders are more likely to be recognized as servant leaders when they frequently and consistently demonstrate observable, personally costly behaviors that put followers first.
Implication: An executive persona cannot simply be declared. If a CEO wants to be perceived as empathetic, empowering or people-first, employees need repeated behavioral evidence that supports those attributes. Executive reputation is ultimately built at the intersection of communication and experience.
Thank you for reading this month's Executive Insights. Forward to a colleague, share feedback, and stay tuned for next month's research roundup.
© 2026 The Communications Board®
