FIR Podcast Network

When companies talk about trust, the conversation usually centers on whether employees trust their leaders. But what happens when employees stop trusting each other? Edelman’s latest Trust at Work study found that trust in coworkers is falling faster than trust in managers or CEOs. That decline can undermine collaboration, weaken communication, and leave employees questioning their colleagues’ motives. Bad experiences with organizational change, including the introduction of AI, may be making matters worse. In this episode of On the Same Page, Shel and Mark explore why internal communicators should pay more attention to peer-to-peer trust. They discuss the everyday behaviors that build or erode trust, how managers shape relationships within their teams, and why candor matters when plans change or answers aren’t available. Along the way, they consider what communicators can measure, the behaviors they can reinforce, and where communication alone cannot solve the problem. Trust may appear in the company’s values, but keeping it alive takes more than putting the word on a wall. Links from this episode: Coworkers say they distrust each other more than ever Trust at Work: Transformation Triggering Trust Demise New Workday Global Research Finds AI is Easing Burnout but May Be Deepening a Connection Deficit at Work Gen Zers are more disconnected and distrustful of coworkers than their older colleagues—and they’re so lonely they’re taking days off work Gen Z doesn’t trust anyone—especially their bosses, data shows PwC’s 2024 Trust Survey Companies overestimate their employees’ trust. That’s bad for business, PwC says. Antecedents of coworker trust: Leaders’ blessings How Managers Impact Team Productivity Raw transcript: Shel Holtz: Mark, trust is key to any organizational communication effort. When I think about trust as an internal communications factor, I think about it in several ways. How much do employees trust leaders? How much do they trust their managers? It works in the opposite direction, too: How much do leaders and managers trust employees? I also think about departments that may not trust one another. I’ve heard some interesting stories about departmental trust. But one thing I hadn’t considered was the possibility that employees simply don’t trust each other. Edelman just released its Trust at Work study, surveying more than 10,000 employees across 10 markets. Trust in coworkers fell from 82% in August 2024 to 73% today. Trust in direct managers dropped from 79% to 72%, and trust in CEOs fell from 70% to 66%. Each is a record low in Edelman’s data. Here’s what bothers me: Two years ago, coworkers were the group employees trusted most, ahead of managers and the CEO. Now, their trust is declining fastest. Mark Dollins: We often talk about culture and how, when it isn’t consciously attended to, things happen that usually aren’t what you want. I suspect trust, which is often expressed as a cultural value, is eroding partly because organizations and employees expect it to be there without thinking much about it. Add remote working and team structures in which people aren’t in the same location, and it’s easy to see how trust can erode. In one sense, that decline is shocking. In another, it isn’t surprising that it’s happening. The speed of the decline surprises me most. Shel Holtz: Me too. AI may have something to do with it. Some data suggests employees are turning to AI instead of reaching out to coworkers. The less interaction you have with colleagues, perhaps the less you trust them. There would certainly be implications for internal communications if employees trusted each other less. What do you see as some of those impacts? Mark Dollins: You’re less productive if you don’t trust each other, and you’re less likely to collaborate. Even when you do collaborate, you may not trust what you receive. People start looking for ulterior motives. It’s no longer just about the work. It becomes, “What is this person trying to accomplish? Am I truly a collaborator, or am I standing in the way of what they want?” We’ve all heard employees say, “I get the work done, but I don’t trust that person,” whether they’re talking about a manager, a peer, or somebody in another department. You still have to work together, get along, and build trust. Shel Holtz: It may also affect how employees receive our messages. Someone might say, “I’ll go along with this, but I don’t trust other people to pay attention to it.” What does that do to the impact we’re trying to achieve—the change in behavior, attitude, opinion, or belief? Mark Dollins: If we aren’t paying attention, this will continue. Communicators should be actively engaged in the issue. Trust discussions often focus on external stakeholders and whether they believe the company is doing the right thing. Internally, we’re now recognizing there’s much more to it. If we can’t trust each other to get the job done, we have a problem that starts much closer to home. This is ground zero for internal communicators. Shel Holtz: Some of Edelman’s findings should particularly interest you, given your focus on change. Three-quarters of respondents had experienced at least one transformation in the past year. The most common, reported by 53%, was AI implementation. Among employees who had a bad transformation experience, trust in coworkers with different values dropped from 77% to 50%. When change goes badly, it doesn’t just erode trust in leadership. People retreat into their own camps. Mark Dollins: Sadly, this is only the beginning of change on that scale. AI isn’t going away. I suspect it will become bigger and more complex, especially as regulation adds another dimension to how we use and trust it. That reinforces what we discussed about change management as an essential part of AI adoption or any significant technological change. We can’t treat this as simply a technology rollout. It’s change with a capital C, and it needs to be managed. Shel Holtz: I looked for other research exploring declining trust among employees. Workday’s Human Connection Workplace Index found that a third of employees rarely or never have a conversation with a colleague that goes beyond transactional work. PwC has made the point that people don’t trust what they don’t know. Without regular interaction, you don’t develop trust. Could part of the explanation be that simple? Mark Dollins: I suspect a good portion of it is. Think about what builds trust: setting an example, doing what you say you’ll do, following through, and establishing clear expectations. If you’re a leader, you explain the standard and address situations in which people fall short. Many of the behaviors that build trust between leaders and employees also apply between peers. If I tell you I’ll get something to you today, Shel, and I don’t, your trust in me begins to erode. I deserve that unless I take responsibility and explain: “I know what I promised. I can’t deliver it today, and here’s why. Here’s what I’ll do to make it right.” Taking ownership builds trust. These are simple things—common decency and human behavior—that sit at the center of peer-to-peer trust. Shel Holtz: It’s also about bringing people together and spending time together beyond work transactions. Mark Dollins: It’s easy to distrust people we don’t know. “You’re a stranger. I don’t know you, so I don’t trust you.” Shel Holtz: We talk about this with safety all the time. You can encourage people to speak up until you’re blue in the face, but it’s different when they know each other well enough to care personally. “I know about your family and the challenges you’re facing. I see you doing something dangerous, and I’m going to speak up because I don’t want you to get hurt.” That extends well beyond safety. Mark Dollins: A question for you, Shel: When you work with organizations on their values and how to bring those values to life, trust comes up in almost every set of company values I’ve seen. How do you make it a living, breathing part of the organization? Shel Holtz: For the past nine years, I’ve worked with one organization. Trust is one of our core values and one of the four planks of our strategic plan. We have committees working on it, we’ve researched it, and we’re taking tangible steps to build trust internally and externally. If I were advising an organization today, I’d start with measurement. You can say trust between peers has declined, but you can’t explain why without asking. You need to understand what’s underneath it. Mark Dollins: As you say that, I’m thinking about pulse surveys. They’re a common measurement tool, but I can’t say I’ve seen many that specifically focus on internal trust. Perhaps some of our viewers can tell us what they’re doing to measure trust in their organizations. Even when trust isn’t explicitly named as a value, it often appears in how organizations define respect. Respect is another value that comes up frequently, and its definition often includes building trust among stakeholders. Shel Holtz: We’ve talked about engagement before. I think one reason people have become skeptical of engagement surveys is that they don’t explore these underlying issues. Our engagement survey has 40 questions. We aren’t tying it to Gallup or another packaged survey. We want to understand the issues underlying engagement, and several questions concern relationships with peers. We do explore that where I work. I also found an older study, from 2008, showing that employees trust peers more when their formal leader trusts those peers. That effect was stronger when team performance was poor. Manager behavior helps shape who gets trusted. That connects directly to the manager communication work we do. Mark Dollins: Often, we don’t do enough of it. We can coach managers to lead in ways that build trust. Most of us have experienced a micromanager. Managers need to understand what that behavior looks like and how it affects their teams’ willingness to trust them. Whether or not it’s intentional, micromanagement communicates, “I don’t trust you.” It’s a two-way street. Empower employees to do their jobs and step back. If something goes wrong, address it. But give people the opportunity to demonstrate that they can do the work. That communicates, “I trust you to do the job I hired you to do, and you can trust me to fulfill my responsibilities to you and the team.” Shel Holtz: I’ve been thinking about what communicators can do. There are limits; we can’t fix every issue through communication. First, measure it. PwC found that executives overestimate how much they’re trusted, and most trust measures are subjective. If we don’t ask about peer trust in our surveys, we don’t know where we stand. Second, get honest about change. Edelman’s prescription is “truth well told”: Explain what’s changing, what isn’t, and how employees have a say. That requires a real conversation, not simply a rollout announcement. Third, equip managers. Gallup says managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement. They help establish the conditions in which peers trust each other, yet many have never been trained to do that. Mark Dollins: A culture of trust begins at the top. In many organizations I’ve worked with, a lack of transparency and candor has interfered with trust, particularly during significant change. I’ve always advocated that it’s okay to say, “I don’t know,” or, “I can’t tell you,” provided you explain why. You might say, “Shel, I know the answer and would like to tell you. Here’s why I can’t, at least not yet.” Or, “About 80% is settled, but the remaining 20% could change what I tell you, and I don’t want to give you information that turns out to be wrong.” There are many ways to explain what you know, what you don’t know, and why you can’t share everything. The Dow–DuPont merger is a good example. People wanted specifics about the organizational structure, but we couldn’t provide them because divestitures were still being negotiated in the United States, the EU, and elsewhere. Those decisions would affect the portfolio and, ultimately, the structure. The discussions were difficult and confidential, including negotiations outside the company. Until those were resolved, we couldn’t fully explain the outcome. I advocated explaining that uncertainty, even if we had previously said we expected an answer in six months. We could say, “The negotiations are more complex than anticipated. The world around us is responding differently to our plans. We’re working on it, and we’ll update you.” Give people a revised time frame if you can: “We’re aiming for the next 60 to 90 days.” I kept pushing leaders not to stop at, “We don’t know,” or, “We can’t answer that.” After hearing that repeatedly for eight or 10 months, people may conclude, “Either you’re lying to us, or you don’t know what you’re doing.” You don’t want either conclusion. Transparency doesn’t mean revealing trade secrets or Willy Wonka’s chocolate recipe. It means giving people as much explanation and context as you can. Shel Holtz: I’ve encountered this during periods when communications are restricted around a merger or acquisition. Sometimes even explaining why you can’t say more can disclose something you shouldn’t. But there are usually things you can say instead of saying nothing. Mark Dollins: Right. You can refer to what you’ve already announced and explain that it’s taking longer than expected. “Hang in there. We’re working on it.” Shel Holtz: More recently, this has come up with AI. Initially, we told employees, “Use it. Experiment. Try things.” Now some organizations are saying, “We need to move beyond general experimentation and become more focused on how we apply AI.” They’re also saying, “Please stop burning through so many tokens. It’s costing a fortune. We need you to dial back what we previously encouraged.” Some leaders seem embarrassed by that rather than explaining what changed. Perhaps the organization moved from a subscription arrangement to token-based pricing. Explain it, and people can understand. Mark Dollins: Absolutely. This is new territory. We don’t have 10 years of experience with these tools in their current form. Change isn’t a straight line, and we’ll have to adjust as we learn. You can say, “Thank you for experimenting. You did what we asked. Now we need to adjust, and here’s why.” It’s about candor. Shel Holtz: AI could also contribute to declining peer trust. Suppose I use it to produce a polished document, save myself time, and send it to you. You start reading and realize it sounds good but has no substance. Now you have to spend two hours making sense of it. Your trust in me is likely to decline. Mark Dollins: I teach at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and I’ve seen students use AI in ways that make it clear they haven’t done the necessary work. In one case, a student advocated something that didn’t exist. That doesn’t apply to everyone, but it happens. It makes me examine that person’s work more closely because I can see they’re using AI without checking it. I start wondering whether they’re being careful. Why wouldn’t the same thing happen at work? If someone produces sloppy or substandard work, I don’t want that to reflect on me, particularly if we’re supposed to be partners on a project. Shel Holtz: We can address that during AI adoption. You may save time, but if the result is slop, you’re transferring work to colleagues, and their trust in you may suffer. There’s also a generational dimension. The Workday report found that Gen Z employees were 16 times more likely than Gen X employees to say they don’t trust their coworkers. That makes communication across generations an interesting challenge. Mark Dollins: It does, and we need to pay attention. A one-size-fits-all approach to trust won’t work. Different generations may have different expectations about what matters and how trust is established. Something else occurs to me about working in teams. Whether someone has submitted inaccurate AI-generated work or simply made a mistake, trust can be built through how others respond. If it’s an honest mistake, that’s an opportunity to say, “I understand how that happened. I’ve done something similar. What can I do to help? Don’t beat yourself up over it.” Intentional misconduct is different. But when somebody makes an honest mistake, showing support can go a long way. That’s especially relevant if you’re aware that others don’t trust you. Supporting Joe or Sarah when they make a mistake can help people see you differently. Again, these are basic human behaviors. Getting to know people and standing up for them when there’s a problem can build or rebuild trust. Shel Holtz: This is an area where communicators can play a significant role because it’s a culture issue: “This is how we do things around here.” We can reinforce those behaviors through communication and encourage leaders to recognize people who demonstrate them. Leaders also need to address behavior that works against trust. Mark Dollins: Leaders have opportunities to build trust through how they manage conflict. Almost every team has people who don’t get along. Managers can help find common ground between individuals or groups. Communicators, working with people who have the right expertise, can develop content and experiences that help managers and employees learn to navigate conflict. Shel Holtz: Having the managerial courage to hold those difficult conversations is a big deal. That might be a topic for a future episode. Mark Dollins: Exactly. You don’t need a master’s degree in conflict resolution. A few useful tools can help you accomplish a lot. Shel Holtz: Can you get a master’s in conflict resolution? I didn’t know that. Somewhere you can, no doubt. Mark Dollins: I’m sure you can, Shel. I’ll find it for you and get back to you. Shel Holtz: Sounds great. Listeners and viewers, we’d love to hear what’s happening in your organization with peer-to-peer trust. Are you measuring it? Have you noticed a decline? Email [email protected], leave a comment in the show notes at FIRPodcastNetwork.com, or respond on LinkedIn, Facebook, Bluesky, or Threads, where we announce new episodes. We’ve received comments and will collect and share them in an upcoming episode. Until then, thank you, everybody, and thank you, Mark. It’s been fun. Mark Dollins: Thanks for joining us. Good to see you, Shel. Take care. The post OTSP #10: The Decline in Employees’ Trust in Each Other appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Most communicators long for that coveted seat at the table. What do those who have attained it have to say about it? What does it take to achieve it? And does it deliver the kind of influence top-level communicators want? Neville and Shel explore the data and share their own thoughts in this short midweek episode. Links from this episode: How communicators in the C-suite are staying at the table Inside the CCO Mindset The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, October 26. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz: Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 532 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson. Today’s topic is one we’ve discussed on FIR many times over the years, and one the communication profession has debated for as long as I can remember: the communicator’s seat at the top table. For decades, senior communicators have argued that communication deserves a place alongside finance, operations, legal, HR, and the other functions involved in shaping an organization’s direction. We’ve talked about becoming strategic advisors rather than simply the people who communicate decisions made elsewhere. But here’s something I’ve been thinking about: Maybe the question isn’t whether communicators deserve a seat at the table anymore. Maybe it’s what they contribute once they’re there—and what makes the CEO and other executives want them to stay. That question came to mind when I read a recent Axios article with the apt title “How Communicators in the C-Suite Are Staying at the Table,” by Simon Hernandez-Arthur. It draws on conversations with senior communication leaders and identifies four principles that seem to distinguish those who have become trusted strategic advisors. First, operate like a peer, not a provider. Don’t wait for instructions about what needs communicating. Participate in the decisions that determine what needs to be communicated in the first place. Second, think beyond the traditional boundaries of communication. Understand the business, its risks, the regulatory environment, and stakeholder expectations. Third, don’t confuse AI’s speed and analytical capabilities with the judgment that comes from experience. AI can help us see what’s happening, but it doesn’t necessarily tell us what to do about it. Fourth, invest in the next generation of communication leaders. If experience and judgment are becoming more valuable, we need to ensure younger practitioners have opportunities to develop them. What struck me is how closely these principles connect with a book I reviewed last December, Chief Communication Officers at Work, by my good friend Tabita Andersson. Tabita interviewed 23 CCOs from major organizations across different industries, exploring what their roles involve. What emerged was a picture of communication leadership much broader than managing messages, media relationships, or corporate reputation. These people help organizations interpret their environment, anticipate problems, challenge decisions, and navigate complex relationships. They bring the outside world into the organization and help leaders understand the consequences of what they do, not just what they say. In my review, I drew three conclusions: The CCO’s value lies in anticipation rather than amplification; clarity is a leadership behavior; and the role is expanding while becoming—perhaps surprisingly in the age of AI—more human. That’s the connection with the Axios article. For a long time, we’ve talked about earning a seat at the table. Perhaps the real measure of success is whether the communicator contributes something that would otherwise be missing from executive decision-making. There’s also the question of how representative these examples are. We’re hearing from highly accomplished leaders in major organizations. Is this how the profession operates more broadly, or are we describing an ideal many practitioners struggle to achieve? Have we finally moved beyond the old argument about earning a seat at the table, or are we giving the same argument a new name? What do you think, Shel? Shel Holtz: We’re giving the old argument a new name. No question. This is one of my favorite topics. I love talking about the seat at the table because every communicator wants it, but in any organization, there’s only the potential for one communicator to have it. Neville Hobson: I would question that. I’m not sure every communicator wants it. Shel Holtz: You have a valid point. Some communicators want to remain individual contributors and write articles. Some want to manage departments. But we all talk about the seat at the table as the ultimate goal for communications. Go to a conference, and you’ll hear in half the sessions that doing this or that will earn you that coveted seat. I had some issues with the Axios piece. It was almost entirely anecdotal and cited little, if any, data. Some of its sources have commercial interests: agencies and an AI-monitoring vendor. If you look at the data, Korn Ferry’s 2025 survey examined 78 Fortune 500 companies. It found that 47% had chief communication officers reporting to the CEO, up from 40% in 2023. Fifty-one percent sat on the executive committee. Among industrial organizations, including companies like mine, that drops to 36%. This year, Page’s Navigator Benchmark looked at 179 CCOs in 33 countries. It found that 65.9% said their scope had expanded, but 45.9% said resources hadn’t kept pace. Budgets fell for 31.1%, up from 24.8% last year. Page’s Candace Steele Flippin said the data show that access—reporting to the CEO—isn’t enough. What I mostly want to discuss is what Jim Lukaszewski says about this. Jim has spent years on the speaking circuit, written many books, and counseled CEOs, particularly on crises. He calls the table a myth. In a podcast from about 10 years ago, he said real decisions often happen after the group meeting, when the boss pulls one or two people aside. Jim’s advice is to “be the table.” Don’t wait to be seated. Build the skills and habits that earn the boss’s attention. Then you can bring that influence into any room, whether or not you’re the CCO sitting at that particular table. He also says one-on-one beats committee. Meaningful decisions often emerge from an advisor’s work with a leader, and the more people involved in the discussion, the lower the odds of a productive result. Leaders choose their advisors for expertise, insight, loyalty, and specialized knowledge. Advisors who offer only one functional skill, such as communications, tend to be consulted mainly about that function. If you want to be a senior advisor who influences decisions, with or without an executive committee seat, you need to expand your knowledge of how your business works and how business works generally. Finally, you need to start from the boss’s perspective. In his 2008 book, Why Should the Boss Listen to You?, Jim treats most business problems as management problems first. A communicator who thinks only like a department head rather than a business manager won’t be in the room. Do you need a seat at the table to influence decisions? I don’t know. I remember reading an article by Dean in Communication World, back when IABC published a printed member magazine. This must have been in the 1980s or ’90s, before I met him. He described the communicator as a hired gun: somebody brought into town after things had gone wrong to clean up the mess. Instead, you want to be there when the decision is being made, saying, “This is a bad decision. You can’t communicate it well. You should reconsider or revise it.” I don’t disagree with that. But if you want to be an executive committee member with an officer title and everything that goes with it—which is a whole different rabbit hole—you need broader knowledge and the ability to engage in discussions beyond the communication angle. Neville Hobson: I see that point in many articles, including Axios, and it comes across strongly in Tabita’s book. It raises a question for me: Does being at the table mean having influence? No. Those are different things. A fancy title with “officer” in it, an executive reporting line, or regular invitations to leadership meetings don’t necessarily confer influence. There’s a difference between being present when decisions are announced and being able to shape them before they’re made. How do we distinguish an influential CCO from someone with executive access who is still treated primarily as a service provider? Shel Holtz: That gets back to Jim’s point about wielding influence in whatever room you’re in, whichever meeting you’re attending, and whichever leader you’re speaking with. It doesn’t come simply from being in a room with a group of people. As Jim says, the more people in the room, the more your influence can be diluted by all those voices. If the CEO makes the final decision after the meeting, who gets the call for that last piece of advice or to explore implications the executive committee hasn’t considered? I want to be that person—the person they pick up the phone and call. That matters more to me than attending a weekly meeting where everyone’s opportunity to influence the discussion is limited. Neville Hobson: That’s interesting because a friend of mine is CCO at a large British public company. He has told me that meetings with the executive team are among his most significant opportunities to move conversations in the direction he wants them to go. He has influence in that setting. They listen to him. Being present when decisions are announced and shaping them beforehand are different things. If the executive team still treats you primarily as a service provider, that suggests they don’t see you as someone with influence. Shel Holtz: I don’t disagree with that at all. Neville Hobson: If you’re a CCO in that position, you have a problem. You may not be fulfilling the role as you should. You need the things you mentioned: knowledge of the business and the broader perspective described in the book you quoted. I can’t imagine someone going into those meetings without that background knowledge—being completely up to speed on the organization, its place in the landscape, and what’s happening elsewhere. Others, particularly the CEO, may have that perspective too. That brings us back to the Axios point: What can you add to the discussion that would be missing if you weren’t there? You need specific examples to assess that. But I’m not convinced that a private word in the CEO’s ear after a meeting is necessarily more significant than being in the meeting and talking to everyone. Shel Holtz: My point is that the decision often gets made after the executive committee meeting. The CEO is the person at the top who has to live with it, based on the input received. If they haven’t made up their mind and call for your perspective afterward, that’s great. But I’m equally happy to be called before the meeting. That has happened: “I’m going into a board meeting tomorrow or next week, and I’d like your perspective.” It’s about people seeking your counsel. But you’re right that we need a perspective broader than communication. The Medill CCO Monitor surveyed 125 senior communication leaders in February this year. Respondents ranked business and financial acumen, executive presence, and C-suite counsel ahead of communication craft among the skills they most needed to develop after advancing. Develop those skills, and you’re less likely to be seen only as a service provider. One respondent’s advice was to learn to tell senior leaders what they don’t want to hear, calmly and clearly. That means challenging decisions. If you can challenge a decision from a broader business perspective as well as a communication perspective, your counsel will be more valuable, and you’ll be more likely to be invited into those conversations. Neville Hobson: That makes sense. Some of the interviews in Tabita’s book suggest senior communicators increasingly operate across strategy, culture, governance, reputation, and other areas. That seems like a natural evolution at that level. Communication is your background, but the role embraces other parts of the organization you need to understand and discuss. One implication is that CCOs may need to challenge decisions that are commercially attractive but potentially harmful to trust. That’s another reason the group setting matters: You may need to challenge other executives, not only the CEO. But what happens when you do that and your advice is ignored? Shel Holtz: They end up being reported on this show in stories about how things went awry. Neville Hobson: We’ll get some names next time we discuss this! How far does the CCO’s responsibility extend? Should the modern CCO be the organization’s conscience? Shel Holtz: According to the Global Alliance’s Melbourne Mandate from more than a decade ago, yes. Being the corporate conscience was central to that model. The CEO–communicator partnership requires the courage to disagree when necessary. Corey duBrowa of Burson makes the point that communication leaders can fall short when they wait to be briefed instead of getting into the room where decisions are made. We can keep talking about a seat at the table, but that CEO–communicator partnership matters much more to me. And what does it mean to be a corporate officer? You may report to the CEO, sit on the executive committee, and be identified in the company’s Form 10-K, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Do you need an officer title? We now have chief AI officers, chief storytelling officers, and all sorts of other titles. In many organizations, those aren’t necessarily corporate officer positions. They’re titles bestowed on people. There are so many of them. Neville Hobson: We talked about that a year or so ago—the proliferation of officer titles. Shel Holtz: I remember. Neville Hobson: There’s a counterargument worth considering. Is it realistic to expect a CCO to serve as an independent challenger when they’re employed by, report to, and depend on the CEO? Shouldn’t that responsibility belong to the entire executive team rather than being assigned disproportionately to the CCO? Shel Holtz: That’s an interesting question. It depends on what people perceive the CEO’s expectations to be, because that’s where their fortunes lie. It’s interesting that OpenAI hasn’t had a chief communications officer for nine months. Hannah Wong left in January, and the discussion about filling the role has included whether it should report to CEO Sam Altman, president Greg Brockman, or the chief marketing officer. Chief marketing officers are much more prevalent than chief communication officers. I can see organizations asking whether they need both on the executive committee or whether one should report to the other. Personally, I think it’s all communication: marketing, public relations, corporate communications, internal communications, investor relations, government relations, and community relations. It all has to align with the strategic narrative, presumably developed by the communication function. People will probably still be arguing about this long after you and I are gone. But some organizations don’t have CCOs because they say, “We have a CMO. The top communicator can report to them.” Neville Hobson: This is a big topic, and we won’t go down that rabbit hole today. But we’ve discussed why the CCO, or whoever the senior communicator is, shouldn’t report to marketing: The communicator’s role embraces everything the company does, while marketing has a more specific remit. Marketing has relatively little to do with investor relations or employee communication. I don’t think that makes the marketer the right person to oversee all communication. If anyone is going to have that responsibility, it seems to me it should be the communicator. Others would disagree. It’s one of those circular debates that won’t be resolved soon. There’s even talk of senior communicators reporting to HR. Shel Holtz: No, they should report to legal. Neville Hobson: I’ve seen people suggest that too. Returning to what communicators contribute once they’re at the table, one thing they do is make difficult decisions understandable. You don’t have to be a CCO to do that, although it helps to be fairly senior. We’ve seen how that can fail at prominent companies. Tesla comes to mind, where Elon Musk seems to be the person expected to handle communication. But could a communicator’s greatest contribution be explaining why a proposed decision is unwise before it becomes an organizational problem? That returns us to whether fellow executives believe the CCO has a perspective worth listening to. It’s complex—perhaps unnecessarily so—but that’s the reality. From what I recall, that kind of concern didn’t dominate the 23 interviews in Tabita’s book. The CCOs talked much more strategically about their roles, rather than focusing on who listens to whom. It’s a fascinating book. This certainly isn’t a concluding discussion. Shel Holtz: Good heavens, no. Neville Hobson: It’s another chapter, and we’ll no doubt return to it. Shel Holtz: I’d like to, as more data emerges and we hear more about it. I’ll conclude by saying that it depends on the culture of your organization and its leadership. As the saying goes, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This is another situation where that holds true. And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #532: Do You Really Want That “Seat at the Table”? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

When misinformation strikes, PR professionals swing into action, directing people to accurate information. But will people follow your links? One study found that people are far more likely to see what you have to say if the invitation sounds much like the language used to invite them to the original misinformation. Neville and Shel discuss the idea in this short midweek FIR episode. Links from this episode: A new study finds that to counter misinformation online, we need to copy its style Prebunking misinformation techniques in social media feeds: Results from an Instagram field study Video inoculation against election misinformation across 12 EU nations Confronting misinformation related to health and the environment: a systematic review The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, October 26. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Neville Hobson: Hi, everyone. Welcome to For Immediate Release. This is episode 531. I’m Neville Hobson. Shel Holtz: And I’m Shel Holtz. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, you find a misinformation campaign online targeting your company, your products, your industry, or whatever. You immediately embark on an effort to combat it using all the strategies, tactics, and tools we’ve been trained to use. Is that a good idea? Researchers in Australia ran a dozen paired tests on Facebook. In each pair, they ran two ads carrying exactly the same accurate, consensus-based information. One was written the way PR people usually write this stuff: neutral, careful, and measured. The other was written in the style of the communities spreading the misinformation. It was warmer, more direct, and more personal. The styled ads won every time. All 12 pairs favored the styled version, and 11 of the 12 results were statistically significant. On a message about school education, the styled ad had a click-through rate of 6%. The neutral version—the one using traditional PR techniques—had a rate of 1.1%. That’s about five times as many clicks to get people to exactly the same facts. Now, “style” can sound like a euphemism for spin. Here’s what the researchers actually did: They built personas of people who engage with misinformation and matched their tone, directness, and emotional framing. One example in the article said, “You want to keep your little one safe. Wondering what vaccinations will mean for your baby?” That isn’t a lie or a scare tactic. It’s how a person talks. Even styles that weren’t a precise match for the audience beat the neutral version in most of the tests. I’m reading between the lines here—this is my interpretation, not a claim by the study’s authors—but it suggests that part of the problem isn’t just that we’re failing to speak the audience’s language. It’s that our language is so bland it barely registers. You may be thinking this contradicts what we’ve heard about prebunking, and you’d have a point. Other research I read, including work from Harvard’s Kennedy School that I encountered in Communications Psychology and a review of 32 studies in the Journal of Science Communication, mostly points the other way: Don’t imitate the manipulation; teach people to recognize it. The Harvard study is a good example. A 19-second Instagram Story ad shown to more than 375,000 users in the UK taught people to spot manipulation techniques. Afterward, 59.55% of those who saw the ad correctly identified the technique, compared with 38.21% in the control group. So, which is it? I’d say both. Here’s the line I would draw: Copy the warmth, familiarity, and directness, but don’t copy the fear, scapegoating, or fake urgency. The paper suggesting that we imitate the style of misinformation purveyors draws the same line in its ethics section: no impersonation, no amplifying fear, and no stigmatizing language. The review of 32 studies found no gold-standard intervention. Effects were small to medium and depended heavily on the specific myth. Think of these as tools in the same box rather than competing theories. I have one caveat: The misinformation study measured clicks, not changed minds. A click is a first step, but it isn’t proof of persuasion. That first step matters, though. If nobody clicks, nobody reads. Nobody gets the accurate information, and you have no hope of changing anybody’s mind. There’s plenty of adjacent work. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health runs a creator program, and the World Health Organization has a network called FIDES. Both focus on getting trusted voices into the channels where people already are. Public health agencies have been working on this for a while. But I looked for a business doing what the study describes, and I couldn’t find one: a company countering a rumor, hoax, or false claim about itself or its products by deliberately adopting the style of the people spreading it. I couldn’t find a single example, despite the research showing stronger engagement. I’d argue that’s an invitation to experiment. Here’s what I would do. First, listen. Pay attention to how people talk about your company or industry when they’re worried, skeptical, wrong, or deliberately spreading misinformation. Don’t focus on your talking points. Focus on their words. Then test it. Run a simple A/B test with the same evidence in two versions: your standard statement and one written in your audience’s voice. That’s what the researchers did. Finally, measure beyond the click. Look at comments, shares, sentiment, and whether the rumor’s reach actually shrinks. Start with something low-stakes, such as an FAQ, an employee-facing rumor, or a customer-service reply. Somebody should be trying this. Why not us? Neville, communicators spend years learning to sound credible and measured. This research suggests that being measured might be part of why our corrections get ignored. How willing do you think companies would be to test a warmer, more direct voice? Would legal and leadership kill the idea before it had a chance? Neville Hobson: That’s a good question. I think the brave ones would do it. But listening to you, and having read the piece in The Conversation, another question comes to mind: Are we sometimes so concerned with making our information accurate and authoritative that we forget to make it relevant and worth engaging with? I’m circling around that thought because some of the conclusions drawn from this study seem questionable to me. If someone is going to use techniques associated with misinformation campaigns, something is missing. To clarify the distinction, misinformation is incorrect information shared without an intention to deceive. Disinformation is a deliberate attempt to mislead people or influence them to do something they otherwise might not do. Either way, techniques are used to attract attention. Are we seeing people bring in too much of those approaches? Some elements may be useful, but I’m thinking of an article I read—and I believe blogged about—on AI in warfare, particularly the war in Ukraine. I think it was published on Deutsche Welle’s English-language website. It discussed misinformation and then disinformation that others mirrored, perhaps unintentionally. I wonder whether people may bring in the whole package, knowingly or unknowingly, and conclude that it’s acceptable to exploit vulnerabilities or manufacture emotional responses that people identify with. Did I answer your question? I probably did, but here’s one for you: If we borrow the persuasive techniques of misinformation, how do we ensure we aren’t also borrowing the manipulative behaviors that make it effective? I haven’t looked for guidance on this, and agencies may already have it: “This is what misinformation looks like. Don’t do that. Here’s an example of what you should do.” If that doesn’t exist, there’s an opportunity to develop it because the ethical dimension matters. There’s also a danger that we celebrate winning the battle for attention without knowing whether we’ve made any progress in helping people understand the message or building trust. Those fundamental questions should be at the forefront. That connects to your question about why organizations should address this properly. If they don’t, they’re missing opportunities and failing to help the broader community understand what’s right and what’s wrong. Shel Holtz: I come at this from the perspective of wanting to get people to accurate information. Remember, the A/B test concerned what got people to click. Once they clicked, the information was the same in both versions. The warmer, friendlier language attracted more clicks than the typical bland PR language. The researchers in Australia included that ethics section addressing stigmatizing language and other concerns. But here’s what I kept thinking as I read it: In marketing, and to some extent in public relations and certainly in internal communications, we’ve embraced audience personas for years. We get to understand different groups within a larger audience based on their characteristics. We often boil those down into a fictional person who embodies them: “Mary is a 33-year-old single mother and administrative assistant.” Here’s what she’s likely to believe, what she pays attention to, where her skepticism lies, and so forth. That helps us craft messages for different groups within the audience to get the best possible results. Why aren’t we doing that when confronting misinformation? We wouldn’t need to use every persona. We’d focus on the groups attracted to the misinformation or being targeted by it. Instead, we tend to default to a crisis communication or issues management approach: “Here’s what they’re saying, and here’s the truth.” That isn’t attracting the clicks. Again, the study didn’t determine whether people changed their minds after clicking through, and I wish it had. I would have loved to know. But when you have about five times as many people clicking through with a more persona-based approach, it seems to me that’s something we would want to try. Neville Hobson: I agree. But what’s the real lesson? It certainly isn’t that communicators should behave like misinformation purveyors. It’s that factual accuracy alone isn’t a communication strategy. It often surprises me how we miss the essential element: understanding the people we’re trying to reach, speaking in language that resonates, and getting their attention without compromising our integrity. We also need to remember that getting someone to click isn’t the same as getting them to understand, believe, or trust. That’s a different part of the process. As you said, the click is a first step. I’ve seen things on LinkedIn and Facebook that others called out as disinformation rather than misinformation. One example came from a well-known brand. I’d like to think they didn’t realize what they were doing, but they were called out quite strongly on Facebook. It’s a minefield. It’s no surprise that people make mistakes, but the consequences can be greater than in the early days, when less of this was happening. We’re in a time when things happen that we couldn’t have imagined even a couple of years ago. Bad actors, including governments and other groups, manipulate brand messaging to confuse people or get them to click something that downloads malicious software. We’re seeing more of that. To my knowledge, there isn’t a playbook for this. If you want to emulate how the bad actors attract attention, how will you do it without adopting what they do? Shel Holtz: I think Philippe Borremans, whom we interviewed several months ago, is right: You can’t rely on a crisis manual that gives you a sequence of steps guaranteed to address the crisis. You need the scaffolding to manage a crisis in whatever form it takes. You need holding statements ready to be adjusted and published quickly because you have to respond quickly. You need prebunking in place, anticipating what bad actors might say about you and making the facts available beforehand. If you can get independent, third-party media sources to establish some of those points so you can refer to them later, even better. But how do you get people to look at that information once misinformation or disinformation has been published? That’s where this study comes in. We need to listen to how the people we’re trying to reach talk. They may not respond when we sound like PR people. They’re more likely to respond when we speak in a way that resonates, demonstrate that we care about their concerns, and share something they find relevant. That’s why listening matters. It isn’t just about identifying misinformation. It’s also about understanding how it’s being presented in a way that gets so many people to click and pay attention. We need to engage with that rather than simply push back. We have to listen and participate in the conversation using language that fits the people already having it. That isn’t what I see in many organizational or institutional responses to misinformation. Neville Hobson: Your point about prepared crisis messages is important. You should have those. But these situations are often so fluid that you also need to be capable of responding on the fly. You may have no prepared message for what somebody just did, and you need to address it in an original way. That requires the communicator to have the knowledge and confidence to do it. I was going to call it training, but perhaps preparation is a better word. Shel Holtz: I would say training too. Neville Hobson: Preparation leads to the point I wanted to make: This isn’t necessarily a new technique for countering misinformation. It’s a reminder that good communication has always begun with understanding the audience. That thought keeps coming back to me. I read an article about a supposedly new approach, and I think, “We’ve always been trying to understand the audience.” It’s a complex picture. You need to recognize that you may confront this almost daily, especially if you’re a prominent brand, individual, institution, or government. Even if you aren’t, some people will take a dig at you simply because they don’t like you. Some brands are experiencing that. You have to prepare. That’s where “what if” scenarios come in. Spend time working through them because I think this is only beginning. Shel Holtz: It’s going to get worse. And you’re right: This is nothing new. The new consideration is to apply what you’ve been doing all along—understanding your audience and speaking to people in ways that resonate—to your responses to misinformation. That’s something we haven’t been doing enough. Neville Hobson: Absolutely. Shel Holtz: And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #531: Should You Mimic Your Detractors? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

Companies are urging employees to adopt AI—but a software rollout, training session, or announcement doesn’t necessarily prepare people for changes to their work. When expectations keep shifting, and the destination remains uncertain, how can organizations build trust and help employees move forward? In episode 9 of On the Same Page, Shel and Mark explore AI adoption as a change management challenge and the role internal communicators should play. They discuss listening to employees, challenging leadership assumptions, and building a flexible approach to change—along with the gap between recognizing the need for change management skills and developing them. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz: Hey, Mark, how’s your experience with AI these days? Mark Dollins: It’s never-ending. I keep getting both excited and frustrated with it, but it’s all about learning, right? Shel Holtz: It is. It’s about learning for a lot of employees as well. Many companies are still struggling to introduce AI and drive adoption in their organizations. I was reading about the Financial Times’ AI transformation program in 2024. They started by listening. They surveyed employees and received 725 responses. What they found was that the biggest obstacle was a lack of time, and that helped shape their approach. A lack of time isn’t resistance. When we’re asking people to adopt AI and integrate it into their workflows, we’re asking them to make a change. We tend to look for resistance, but not every challenge is resistance. How have you been thinking about change management and AI adoption, given your passion for change management and internal communications? Mark Dollins: Ironically, one thing communicators have increasingly been doing over the last several years is using AI to become more productive. It’s already saving us time. But I think professionals in this space increasingly understand that AI isn’t simply a technology rollout. It’s one of the biggest waves of change we need to step into, get in front of, and help manage. Shel Holtz: I guess the question starts with our role in managing this change. Are we taking the lead? Are we trying to get that coveted seat at the table so we can influence it? Are we waiting for the training and IT departments to say, “Here’s the program. Communicate this and drive the change”? What should we be doing? Mark Dollins: It’s a little of everything. In the research we’ve done—and we’ll talk more about this in another podcast—Jon Stemmle and I conduct an annual survey about communicators’ attitudes toward and uses of AI. We talk to a couple of hundred communicators around the world to understand what’s changing, what we’re working with, and what we’re struggling with. We’re finding that communicators are getting a bigger seat at the table. We’re having more influence in setting governance and policies, which is good. We’re using AI more, but we aren’t using it for more strategic purposes. The biggest thing we haven’t fully signed up for is treating AI as a change management initiative that we should help lead. We tend to view it as a technology rollout or a policy rollout connected to AI. But artificial intelligence is itself a massive change. We’re talking about seismic adjustments in how organizations work. That’s a space employee communicators should be stepping into, and some are beginning to do that. Shel Holtz: I absolutely agree. The question is whether we’re being asked to help design the change or simply sell decisions that have already been made. We should use the expertise we bring that others in the organization may not have to the same degree: identifying impacts on employees, testing leaders’ assumptions before a rollout, and listening. But responsibility requires authority. We can’t resolve workload, staffing, or incentive problems through messaging. What decisions must we be able to influence if we’re going to be held accountable, to any degree, for AI adoption? Mark Dollins: Even better, let’s not wait to be asked. Let’s step up and say, “We believe we can help this organization better manage this wave of change. Let’s figure out how.” Some numbers provide context for what I call moving upstream. In 2024, about 45% of communicators reported being involved in shaping AI usage in their organizations. That rose to 70% last year and 76% this year. That’s a good sign. We’re saying we’re shaping it, although I’m not exactly sure how that’s happening in every organization. Communicators aren’t just using new tools. We’re helping organizations explain, govern, and normalize new ways of working. That’s where change management comes in. We asked communicators whether they view change management as a competency they should have. That figure rose from 73% in 2024 to 81% last year and is at 79% this year. That tells us this isn’t being treated as a fad. It’s more of a structural expectation. We’re also seeing growing interest in training or certification to become more proficient at managing change through communications. Around 72–73% of this year’s respondents said AI requires significant change management communications. About 80% believe change management—which is different from change communications—is a competency they should acquire. And about 76% believe communicators should be involved in influencing AI use in their organizations. There’s clear evidence that, as a global community of employee communicators, we know what we should be doing. The real question is whether we’re doing what needs to be done. Shel Holtz: At some level, everything we communicate is change communication. We’re putting something out because we want something from people. We want them to do something new or different, stop doing something, do more of something, or think or believe something. All of that is change. But when it’s a software rollout, the scope may be more contained. We’re adopting Workday as our HR and payroll software, and everyone needs to start using it. I don’t know how much of that requires the full Prosci process or whatever change management protocols you follow. AI is different. What does the change look like at the end? One thing I learned when I began studying change communication—and I had a great mentor in Tudor Williams—was that you should be able to close your eyes and envision the outcome. I don’t think anybody can do that with AI yet. That presents an interesting challenge for a change program. Mark Dollins: AI can be a tool for some change management and communication tactics, but we still need to understand the disciplines themselves. The question we should ask is whether we really understand change management and how change communications works with it. Over the years, I’ve asked communicators that question, and I often hear, “Yes, I understand change communications. I put out organizational structure announcements, leadership changes, and executive updates.” Then I ask, “What else went with that?” Often, there’s silence. That doesn’t happen every time. Our community is getting better at this. But my experience is that many communicators don’t get into the specifics of the change management discipline. What do I mean by that? Understanding organizational readiness for change, for example. Is the organization ready to make this change? Who are the executive sponsors? Who are the champions who will help lead it? Do we understand the detractors and barriers? Do we have governance and processes for addressing barriers when the people involved can’t reach a resolution? Those are parts of change management that organizational communicators often aren’t taught when they learn how to communicate change. Whether the topic is digital transformation, cultural transformation, or AI adoption, it’s deeper than simply a technology change. These aren’t one-and-done activities. They require sustained, focused, strategic communications and an understanding of stakeholders’ individual needs. Not everybody experiences change in the same way, and that understanding should inform our communication. There’s far more to change management communications when it’s structured and aligned with the discipline of change management. Without that alignment, you can find yourself in a situation I’ve experienced: “Hey, Mark, we have a big change we want you to communicate.” I ask, “What’s the change management plan?” and get blank stares. Then someone says, “Why don’t you develop that?” That’s why, more than 10 or 15 years ago, I took the time to become certified as a change management professional. I chose Prosci, one of several options. It changed how I viewed the relationship between change communications and change management. The training took about four days and was tremendously helpful. I’m agnostic about which certification people choose. What matters is understanding the concepts we’ve discussed. That understanding helps us drive successful change through communications. How’s that for getting on my soapbox? Shel Holtz: That’s fine. I loved it. What we’ve seen in many organizations is almost the opposite of what you’re describing. Initially, companies asked communicators to tell employees to experiment with AI, without much clarity about the purpose. Then we told people to use AI a lot. We got into this whole “token maxing” thing, where people were using so much that they blew through a company’s annual budget in a month, and organizations had to dial it back. It’s hard to get people to buy into a change when you’re continually clawing back the messages you sent earlier. What are we asking employees to trust? What happens to the time they save? Will there be new expectations? Will roles change or disappear? Who gets development opportunities? We shouldn’t simply accept the message we’re asked to deliver. Part of change communication is pressing leaders to explain what’s been decided, what’s still uncertain, and how employees will be involved. Blanket assurances that AI won’t cost any jobs, or that it will completely transform the way we work, can make the job harder if we don’t have a plan, a vision, or an understanding of the outcomes. Mark Dollins: Completely agreed. There’s a difference between being a tactical communicator who says, “We’re rolling out AI. Use it in these three ways,” and asking, before the message goes out, “And then what? Where is this going? What’s the longer-term vision for AI in this organization?” I’ve had conversations with CEOs who have told me, “In less than a year, every role in our organization will have an AI component.” That’s fascinating, but how are you communicating it, and in what context? If every role has an AI component, what happens next? Will roles be redefined? Should employees expect that? A responsible communicator, working with the CEO, CHRO, and other leaders, should say, “We can’t communicate only one phase of this. We need to think more broadly.” It’s okay if some questions haven’t been answered. But let’s not promise that no jobs will ever go away because of AI. We can acknowledge that it’s possible while also explaining the opportunity for employees to learn technologies that expand their capabilities, wherever they are and wherever they go. Ideally, employees can help us redefine their roles within the organization. That doesn’t always happen, but it’s an outcome worth working toward. We need to be open about what we know and what we don’t: “We don’t know exactly where this technology will take us. Here’s where we are now, and here’s what we want you to explore so we can learn, improve, and help define the next chapter.” Shel Holtz: I read about a company that brought together 100 employees, I think in Nashville. They identified challenges they faced in their jobs, grouped people with similar challenges, and had them vibe-code AI solutions. Rather than look for existing tools to buy—or rent, as is often the case—they built solutions to their own problems. It was apparently successful. But I wondered whether it was a separate, one-off activity or part of a comprehensive strategy. Did employees know it was coming? Had they helped identify it as an approach they wanted to take? I think it’s great that the company did it. I don’t know whether it was part of a broader change strategy. But I worry about one-off activities that aren’t integrated into a process where employees can see progress toward an articulated goal. Mark Dollins: You’re describing exactly why change management creates value. It prompts those questions and discussions before communications go out. Ideally, in that situation, people would have discussed the direction and addressed the questions: “This is one step in a multistep process of defining our future through AI.” That’s where understanding change management comes into play. I’ll be candid: I don’t use every element of my training every time I help communicate a change. I put it in context. We may not need to go deeply into stakeholder assessment because much of that work has already been done. Or I may recognize that we don’t have executive sponsorship and that we need to address that weakness before moving forward. It’s about understanding all the components of successful change management. People sometimes hate hearing this, but communication should follow the change management plan. It shouldn’t have to define the whole plan. We should be able to say, “Here’s our plan for managing change. Now let’s determine how communications can best support it.” We can become better change management practitioners. With the right credentials and experience, we may even lead the change effort. But especially when we’re getting started, we’ll probably need a partner who knows more about the discipline and who sees us as a partner as well. Communication is the thread running across every element of change management. Without it, we’re done. Shel Holtz: Try making a change without communication and see how that goes. Mark Dollins: Without thoughtful communication. People communicate all the time, but without a strategic approach, their efforts can fail miserably. Shel Holtz: It’s important to get involved early enough. We’ve said that not every employee difficulty with AI is resistance, but there may well be resistance. You won’t discover what it is unless you ask. You can make assumptions, but I worry about relying on them. Our employee populations reflect the public to a large degree, and we know the range of public concerns about AI: the environmental impact of data centers, privacy and data security, even fears that it’s going to kill us all. You can’t address resistance without understanding it. If a sizable group of employees is likely to resist the way management plans to introduce AI, you need to be able to say, “We should rethink this approach.” That won’t happen if we’re brought in too late. Mark Dollins: Our survey also measured communicators’ skepticism about AI. Skepticism rose in 2026 after falling in 2025. Something happened between last year and this year that made us less trusting. About 45% of respondents said they remained worried about accuracy and privacy. If communicators have those concerns, we can be certain that many of our colleagues do as well. Resistance can have many sources, but as you said, you have to ask. Shel Holtz: You have to ask, and you may need to acknowledge that these issues exist across society, not just within our company. Explain how we’re addressing them, how we plan to use AI, and what we consider ethical adoption. I also think the plan needs to be a living, breathing thing. In many change programs, you know the outcome. With the Dow–DuPont merger, for example, you knew the endgame. We don’t know the endgame with AI. We don’t know exactly how workflows will change. Many companies haven’t even gotten that far. Many haven’t prepared their data so AI can retrieve information appropriately as part of a knowledge management system. This is a different animal. We need a sustainable, ongoing, flexible plan that can pivot as we get new information or frontier model companies release new capabilities. Many factors may require us to change direction. We need to do that strategically and consistently while maintaining employees’ trust that we know what we’re doing. Mark Dollins: Not to mention emerging regulation. The EU is ahead of the United States in this area. Accountability and regulatory frameworks will be another influence on how we use AI. When we talk about both struggling with AI and seeing its possibilities, we also have to recognize all the other influences taking shape. There’s one other research finding I wanted to mention. We looked at whether employee communicators—people with employee or internal communications in their titles or roles—were becoming certified in change management. We reviewed more than 500 public LinkedIn profiles and found a substantial disparity. Remember, 79% of our survey respondents said change management was a competency they needed. But in the LinkedIn profile sample, about 8% indicated that they were certified in change management. There was also a difference by seniority. We saw figures around 10–15% for VPs or heads of internal communications, compared with 2–4% for individual contributors with employee or internal communications in their titles. That suggests more senior communicators are recognizing the value of change management certification, while fewer people further down the talent pipeline are pursuing it. That concerns me. I’ll go back to your earlier question, Shel: What do we do that isn’t related to change? That’s particularly true of internal communications, but I’d make the argument for external communications too. A new product, service, or person involves change. Understanding what enables acceptance and the associated behavior feels like a natural part of our work. Why wouldn’t we want to understand that discipline if we’re going to be held accountable for communicating change and, in theory, the resulting behavior? It was an interesting finding from those LinkedIn profiles. Shel Holtz: It’s fascinating. You know I’m vice chair of the Global Communication Certification Council, and I’m trying to encourage communicators to become certified in communications. But, good heavens, you can have more than one set of letters after your name. They all provide value. I appreciate the time, Mark. Mark Dollins: Always fun, Shel. Shel Holtz: Listeners, we’d love to hear about your AI adoption, change communication, and change management journeys. Let us know. There were comments on our last episode, but I haven’t had a chance to pull them together. The next time we meet, we’ll discuss comments from that episode and this one before moving into our next topic. Mark Dollins: Great. We’d love that. Shel Holtz: See you then. Mark Dollins: All right. Take care. The post OTSP #9: The Uneven Introduction of AI to Employees appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.

The volume of AI slop appearing as thought leadership on LinkedIn has, according to the Financial Times, led to a surge in interest in human ghostwriters. In this short midweek episode, Neville and Shel discuss whether this makes sense or if it’s just another case of people using AI poorly. Links from this episode: AI is creating ghostwriting jobs on LinkedIn Using AI to Write at Work Is Basically Fine — Unless You’re a Writer So AI helped write it. Who cares? FIR #526: Forget Anthropic’s AI Watermark. Can You Defend Every Sentence? The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR is tentatively scheduled to drop on Monday, October 26. We host a Communicators Zoom Chat most Thursdays at 1 p.m. ET. To obtain the credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request them in our Facebook group, or email [email protected]. Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music. You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. You can catch up with both co-hosts on Neville’s blog and Shel’s blog. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this podcast are Shel’s and Neville’s and do not reflect the views of their employers and/or clients. Raw Transcript: Shel Holtz: Hi, everybody, and welcome to episode 530 of For Immediate Release. I’m Shel Holtz. Neville Hobson: And I’m Neville Hobson. AI was supposed to put ghostwriters out of business. Instead, according to the Financial Times, something rather different is happening. LinkedIn is awash with generic AI-generated posts, and the flood of polished but forgettable content is creating new demand for human ghostwriters who can help executives sound human again. There’s a nice irony in that, but it also raises a question I keep coming back to: If I use AI to help write a blog post, a LinkedIn update, or an article published under my name, is AI effectively my ghostwriter? Shel, you and I have touched on this territory before, most recently in FIR 526 in August, when we discussed Anthropic’s text watermarking. We argued that detecting whether AI was involved in writing something tells you remarkably little about who actually did the thinking. A more useful test is whether the author understands the argument, stands behind it, and can defend every sentence. I developed that argument afterward in a blog post titled “So AI Helped Write It. Who Cares?” My point wasn’t that authorship doesn’t matter. It does. But there’s an important distinction between asking AI to do your thinking for you and using it to help express thinking that is yours. Now, a Bloomberg Businessweek article adds another twist. It argues that, for many people at work, using AI to write is simply becoming normal. Writing isn’t necessarily their craft. It’s a means of communicating an idea, answering a customer, updating colleagues, or getting something done. The article introduces another tension. Some businesses actively expect employees to use AI for writing because it saves time. But it also describes the opposite problem at one company, where AI-generated documents became polished, lengthy, and difficult to read. The CEO concluded that AI was making writing quicker for the sender but slower for the recipient—a point we touched on in our last discussion—and asked employees for rougher versions containing their actual thinking instead. There’s a novel idea. That brings us back to ghostwriting. We accepted long ago that a CEO might put their name to words written by a communication professional, provided those words express what the CEO thinks. So, is AI-assisted writing fundamentally different? For me, this raises several questions. If the ideas, argument, and judgment are yours, does it matter whether you, a ghostwriter, or an AI produced the sentences? Where is the boundary between assistance and substitution—editing your thoughts versus generating thoughts for you? In an environment where producing polished prose is becoming almost effortless, will distinctive thinking become more valuable than distinctive writing? And would you feel differently upon discovering that someone’s LinkedIn post was written by a human ghostwriter rather than ChatGPT? If so, why? And perhaps more importantly, does it matter? Shel Holtz: Yes, it does matter. You have to consider the audience’s expectations. Those matter as much as the intentions of the person who drafted the speech, article, or whatever it might be. Think about the difference between an operational update, a CEO’s personal account of a career failure, and a condolence message to an employee. Those messages could be accurate, carefully reviewed, and approved. On the other hand, readers could reasonably expect a particular level of personal involvement from the person whose name appears on them. I think that makes a difference. But I’d like to step back for a minute and explore ghostwriting itself. I’ve known a couple of people who made their livings, or part of their livings, as ghostwriters. You knew the late Shel Israel, a very good friend of mine. Neville Hobson: Sure. Shel Holtz: He was a ghostwriter. He wrote books for people who didn’t know how to write, but he didn’t spend most of his time writing. His clients hired him because they liked his writing and his approach to getting to know them and their styles, so what he wrote sounded like them. How did he do that? Through a lot of interviews—hours and hours, dozens of hours, on the phone and in person. He challenged the generalities he heard from clients and drew out experiences they might not have thought mattered. As an experienced ghostwriter, he understood which experiences would lend color to the manuscript and what readers would care about. The Financial Times story opens up a more interesting possibility than simply saying humans write better. Perhaps the valuable service of ghostwriting was never just sitting there typing sentences. One person featured in the article said in a public response that AI remains integral to his business, but people still handle the conversations and relationships. Another person I know ghostwrites for an online service. Someone signs up and says, “I want to write a memoir. It’s only going to go to 10 people in my family, but I want somebody to write it.” The service matches that person with a writer. There’s a prescribed number of meetings, but they talk for hours. The writer takes notes and produces a first draft. If I take all those notes and everything I’ve learned about the subject, understand their writing or speaking style, and incorporate that into what I ask AI to produce or help me produce, am I still doing the lion’s share of the work as a ghostwriter? I think I am, especially if the person tasked with doing this isn’t a writer in the first place. We’ve talked before about people in organizations who might be assigned this work but can’t write their way out of a paper bag. Writing wasn’t what they studied, and it isn’t their area of expertise. If AI can help them use the material they’ve gathered by doing the work of a ghostwriter, I have less of a problem with it. Neville Hobson: I have a similar view. The FT article includes a good quote from Bernie Hogan, an associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute. The journalist asked whether LinkedIn ghostwriters could help cut through AI slop. The part that caught my attention was his point that the message behind a post can still be sincere, even if you didn’t write it. He compares it to buying a greeting card: Someone else wrote the words, but the sentiment can still reflect what you mean. I agree with that. His further point is where the rubber meets the road. Because we can’t tell when a LinkedIn post is ghostwritten, is it authentic in readers’ eyes, even if it broadly reflects what the person posting it believes? That sums up the situation we’re in. I don’t think there will ever be agreement on the broad question of whether it’s wrong for someone else—or an AI—to write something you publish under your name. We’ve discussed the details many times: Is it your thinking? Did you contribute to it? Or did you give AI some material, ask it to write something, and post the result without further involvement? It isn’t a simple question. I keep coming back to this: Would you feel differently if you discovered that someone’s LinkedIn post was written by a human ghostwriter rather than ChatGPT? If so, why? I’d particularly like critics of AI-assisted writing to answer that. Shel Holtz: It would be interesting. I like the greeting-card analogy. The greeting was written by a copywriter at Hallmark, American Greetings, or somewhere else, but you don’t just grab the first card off the rack. People spend 15 or 20 minutes looking. Neville Hobson: You might. Shel Holtz: You might, but I’ve never seen anybody in the greeting-card aisle just grab a card and go. They pull one off the shelf, open it, read it, put it back, and try another. They’re looking for the one that expresses the sentiment they have. Then, when they get home, they write a little more. I would consider that the human in the loop. Human ghostwriting deserves the same scrutiny as AI ghostwriting. Someone assigned to write a LinkedIn post can manufacture the persona of the person they’re writing for. They can avoid the hard work, fabricate a profound message, or give someone credit for expertise they don’t have. An AI-assisted post grounded in a leader’s actual experience, with that experience shared as part of the process, could represent the person more faithfully than a human ghostwriter does. So, are we defending authentic communication, or are we defending an outsourcing arrangement we’re already familiar with? Neville Hobson: I think we’re defending authentic communication, but the definition of “authentic” seems to be a movable feast. I don’t believe we’ll resolve this argument in the near future. Where I land—and I think we discussed this in episode 526—is that you, as the human, need to be confident in your thinking and in how the text expresses it. If you are, you can comfortably continue what you’re doing. Apply that to a human ghostwriting a LinkedIn post for a CEO, senior manager, or someone else. The post will appear on that person’s profile under their name. That’s common practice; I know many people who do it. The question isn’t simply whether the manager or CEO is happy with it and praises you. Are you satisfied with it? Does it meet your standard for authenticity? You might outline your ideas, share them with your AI assistant, explain the assignment, and ask it to suggest the best way to tell the story. You might then ask for a proposed draft. It comes back, and you think, “This is a reasonable start. I can work with this.” You might edit it extensively and create something fresh, then pass it back to your AI assistant. It might suggest three changes. You could decide the second suggestion is useful and incorporate that. That process resembles what you might do with a human ghostwriter. So, my question is: What’s the difference? Does it matter? I’ve been accused of being terribly naïve for asking that, but I don’t believe it matters if you’ve satisfied those questions about authenticity, honesty, and confidence in what you’ve created with AI’s help. Others will disagree strongly. I still see absolutist comments on LinkedIn from people saying you can always tell when something was written by AI. I used to ask how they could tell, but I’ve stopped because the responses often suggest they don’t really know. I don’t believe you can reliably tell. I particularly enjoy examples where somebody submits a passage by Charles Dickens to an AI detector and it comes back as 98% AI-written. Or somebody tests an article they wrote for a magazine in 1995, and the detector says the same thing. What can you do with that? Let me ask you, Shel: Would you feel differently if you discovered someone’s LinkedIn post was written by a human rather than an AI? Shel Holtz: Generally, no, assuming they used the AI well. I’ll disagree with you on one thing, but only to an extent. You can sometimes recognize AI writing when it was given a weak prompt and defaults to a familiar approach. But that’s different from giving it detailed information about the person whose byline will appear, helping it understand their writing style and thinking, sharing other things they’ve written, and providing guidance on what the piece should say. You might even interview the person and share the transcript. We’ve had this conversation since the early days of blogs, when people debated whether communicators could acceptably ghostwrite for CEOs. I remember where we came down on it. If the CEO calls and says, “Write a thought-leadership post for me on this topic,” then hangs up and leaves you to invent it from scratch, that isn’t acceptable. If you go into the CEO’s office, interview them, and turn your notes into a post, that’s different. Bill Marriott used to record his thoughts and give the recording to his communicators. They didn’t transcribe it word for word because spoken remarks needed editing to work in writing. But the substance was his. Did he sit there and type it? Was every word one he had chosen? No, but it was his post. In that case, ghostwriting is perfectly acceptable. Today, AI can assist with that process. If we maintain the practices that make ghostwriting effective, authentic, and ethical, I have no problem with it. It doesn’t matter to me whether a human or AI helped produce the wording, as long as it reads well and reflects what the person would have said. That person also needs to approve it. We haven’t mentioned that yet. Neville Hobson: I agree. The process you described, using Shel Israel as an example—interviewing the subject, spending hours preparing, and understanding their thinking—would still apply. I particularly like the idea of using voice-recording tools that connect to Claude, ChatGPT, or another AI assistant. You could ask the CEO to do a brain dump on the topic, as unstructured as they feel comfortable making it. The recording uploads, you get a transcript, and AI can help interpret or organize it and suggest where you might take the story. That can save a tremendous amount of time compared with doing everything the traditional way. There’s a benefit to AI assistance, and I hope professional communicators make the most of those tools. Of course, some people will skim the output or post it as it is. We’re talking about people who bring their professional skills and judgment to the work. Based on the criteria you outlined, I wouldn’t feel differently about a post written with AI assistance. If those steps had been followed, I’d be comfortable with it. Yet I can think of half a dozen people who would strongly disagree. This seems to be a never-ending discussion. Shel Holtz: It is. One other thing we haven’t discussed is disclosure. I don’t think most ghostwriting requires disclosure. I don’t think Shel Israel’s name appeared on the books he ghostwrote. My friend Bill, who writes memoirs through the online service, doesn’t have his name on them either. Those memoirs have a small distribution: “This is my memoir for my children and grandchildren.” But you may remember an instance when a company wanted a PR agency to tweet on the CEO’s behalf while he was at a conference. The agency initially refused, saying, “We’re not you. We’re not going to pretend to be you.” They eventually agreed that roughly every fifth tweet would remind readers that the agency was tweeting on the CEO’s behalf. You have to think about where people might feel deceived and where the writing arrangement simply doesn’t matter. Neville Hobson: I agree. That’s our latest 50 cents’ worth of opinion on this topic. We’d like to hear your thoughts. If you’re a ghostwriter listening to this, we’d especially love to hear what you think. It’s an ongoing conversation. Shel Holtz: And that’ll be a 30 for this episode of For Immediate Release. The post FIR #530: Has AI Created a Demand for Human Ghostwriters? appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.