Executive Insights
Why companies keep looking for executives who have seen it all before
The search for experienced leaders raises a harder question: How will the next generation get ready?
In today’s business environment, companies increasingly want senior executives who have already navigated difficult decisions, unfamiliar challenges and organizational uncertainty. From CEO appointments to the search for chief communications officers, that preference raises a consequential question about whether organizations create enough opportunities for emerging leaders to accumulate the experience they will eventually be expected to bring?
From the Board
How do CEOs become industry thought leaders?
Friday, October 23 | 12:00–1:30 p.m. ET | Live Online Workshop
This 90-minute workshop explores how communications professionals can help executives become more deeply embedded in the organizations, associations, conferences, educational platforms, and other institutions that shape industry conversations.
Five Executive Takeaways
1. Experience needs a pipeline. Organizations seeking seasoned executives should give emerging leaders exposure to consequential decisions, unfamiliar challenges and different parts of the organization before a senior position opens.
2. Executive positioning should reveal how a leader thinks. The most useful communications draw on an executive’s experience to explain choices, recognize patterns, and help others navigate uncertainty.
3. Confidence in competence and confidence in care are different. Employees’ assessments of a leader’s ability and intentions can shape whether they actively support decisions, comply, or distance themselves.
4. Small leadership messages can travel far. Research on workplace gratitude suggests that appreciation expressed by senior leaders can cascade through management levels and strengthen coworker relationships.
5. Reputation deserves a closer look than one overall score. Understanding where an organization is especially strong can inform more focused executive positioning and communications.
Why It Matters
The world is complex. With the pace of change, organizations cannot wait until a senior leader leaves to begin developing the next one.
Communications functions need emerging leaders who have participated in difficult decisions, worked across company divisions, and advised executives through uncertain times. All of those opportunities build the skillset and judgment companies later seek in a chief communications officer.
Senior communications leaders can help develop this pipeline process by bringing colleagues into consequential work, explaining the reasoning behind recommendations, and giving them elevated responsibilities.
If experience is becoming more valuable, creating opportunities to gain it should become a leadership priority.
—The Communications Board Team
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Industry Research
Trusting a leader’s ability is different from trusting their intentions
A qualitative study in the International Journal of Organizational Analysis examined interviews with 31 practitioners across 15 organizations. Researchers identified four patterns of followership that are grounded in interpersonal care and associated with different combinations of trust in leaders’ competence.
Implications: Communications leaders should examine both dimensions of trust. Employees following instructions may have very different reasons for doing so, making compliance an incomplete indicator of leadership support.
A leader’s “thank you” can reach beyond the recipient
Research published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that gratitude expressed by leaders can cascade through an organization and strengthen coworker relationships. Across two field studies and a controlled experiment, the researchers found evidence of what they refer to as “grateful attention.” The study makes the case that receiving appreciation helps people notice others’ helpful actions and express gratitude themselves.
Implications: Executive recognition can help establish what employees notice and value. Make appreciation specific to the contribution and its impact, giving others a concrete example of the behaviors leadership values.
An overall reputation score can hide important strengths
A study in Corporate Reputation Review examined whether shareholder performance was associated with consistently strong reputational ratings or a more uneven profile with exceptional strengths in particular areas. Its stock portfolio analysis supported the latter pattern, with additional analysis highlighting the importance of organizational culture.
Implications: Look beyond an average reputation score when setting communications priorities. The findings suggest value in understanding distinctive strengths, while leaving leaders responsible for addressing consequential weaknesses.
Social engagement also serves the audience’s own identity
A Journal of Marketing Analytics study of 440 respondents examined how trust, opinion leadership, information seeking and the desire for popularity relate to engagement with brands on social media. The analysis identified popularity goals as an important pathway connecting audience dispositions with active engagement.
Implications: Although the study examined consumer brands, it raises a useful question for executive content and whether engaging with particular topics help the audiences.
Fluent writing can still make readers work too hard
Researchers from New York University and the University of Massachusetts Amherst used eye tracking with 368 adult readers and compared their reading patterns with predictions from more than 400 AI language models. The models helped explain initial word recognition but substantially underestimated the difficulty readers experienced when integrating words into challenging sentences. This often led to rereading.
Implications: For communications teams, the practical lesson is to review AI-assisted writing for ease of understanding as well as fluency looking for ambiguous phrasing, confusing sentence structure, and missing context.
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