Should CEOs Speak Out on Hot-Button Issues?
Whether CEOs and board members should speak out on ‘hot-button issues’ depends solely on whether they know enough to move the conversation forward, and whether they want to be recognised in the media discussing the topic.
If the issue directly impacts their industry, sector, or even their company, there’s a clear green flag to contribute to the dialogue and share your views with the media.
I’m a big believer in authentic communication and avoiding corporate-speak that adds nothing to the conversation, so my first piece of advice is to avoid tightly managed statements that have been chopped and changed by a range of comms professionals and internal stakeholders. You need to allow your experts to deliver their opinions, and so long as it’s not an obvious reputational risk, the internal stakeholders' and comms professionals' role should be limited to correcting grammar and ensuring the language is as impactful as possible.
The alternative is that once it’s been through untold rounds of edits, the conversation has usually moved on, and the message delivered is bland.
Companies have hired their leaders as experts for a reason - CEO and board members are supposed to be steering the conversation for your company, so if you don’t trust them to deliver informed opinions to steer the conversation on hot-button issues that relate to your industry, then what was the point in hiring them? You want industry leaders in your company, not wage collectors hiding in the shadows.
To put this into context, if you’re a company that focuses on selling corporate governance courses and Elon Musk does something that directly contradicts good governance practices, you’d be totally entitled to comment and provide your expertise on why that was the wrong decision. By drawing on their informed opinions, a leader could add significant value to the media and the broader discourse by outlining the exact consequences of malpractice.
There may even be slightly dubious areas of overlap with your leader’s expertise, but if the coverage delivered for your brand comes from a sufficiently high-profile publication, there may be long-term value in the recognition.
Saying anything always carries risks, but as long as you stick to your principles and trust your industry experts, the outcome of media and broader sector recognition can be revolutionary. That’s why comms and PR continues to grow as an industry - good PR raises awareness and provides crucial third-party endorsement and recognition. If there are risks to speaking out, your comms team's responsibility should be to plan for them and mitigate them - not tell you to stay shtum.
Listen, when it comes to contentious political issues or off-topic issues, we’re entering different territory. Naturally, you risk upsetting staff, customers or partners with differing opinions. If it’s contentious, it's usually because there are strong feelings on both sides and significant groups with alternative views.
That’s a different case and point, and should be mitigated and discussed internally - any shotgun approach from a rogue CEO could cause exponential blowback on a business that doesn’t remotely align with the business's focus.
In that case, it’s role not soul - the same way you wouldn’t be expected to contradict a controversial company directive publicly, is that same way you shouldn’t directly implicate the business in contentious issues that don’t impact it.
If you want to run for office or campaign on most issues in a personal capacity, people you have the right to do so - but doing so on behalf of the business can be an operational nightmare.
