Communication Leaders: time to be brave in a time of paralysis

2 July 2025 Reading Time: 4 minutes

By Mike Klein

In the times of unpredictability we are facing, leadership paralysis is real. 

As noted author and change innovator Dr. Leandro Herrero noted in our recent conversation, leaders across industries are “restless” and “don’t know exactly what to do.” They’re cutting costs, reacting to the latest crisis, and retreating to mechanistic defaults rather than seeing the whole picture.

For communication leaders, this presents both a massive challenge and an unprecedented opportunity. 

While leaders stumble through reactive decision-making, communication professionals who understand how organizations actually work—through networks, relationships, and peer-to-peer influence—are uniquely positioned to help their organizations navigate what’s ahead.

But only if we’re brave enough to step up.

The End of Top-Down Solutions

The traditional model of organizational change—where messages cascade down from leadership through management layers—is failing spectacularly in the current environment. 

As Dr. Herrero observed, we’re dealing with a convergence of technological, geopolitical, and cultural disruption that requires a fundamentally different approach.

The reality is that whatever changes are coming to organizations—whether through AI-driven workforce reductions or broader economic pressures—the remaining human networks will become more, not less, critical to organizational success. 

The peer-to-peer connections, the informal influence patterns, the bottom-up behavioral change mechanisms that drive real transformation will be the primary source of competitive advantage.

This is where communication leaders need to shift their thinking dramatically. We can’t continue operating as if we’re simply the conduit for leadership messages. We need to become the orchestrators of what Dr. Herrero calls “Viral Change” – the combination of top-down communication systems and bottom-up behavioral transformation.

Beyond the Communication Cascade

Most communication strategies still operate on the outdated assumption that change happens through information distribution. Leadership makes decisions, communication packages those decisions into messages, and employees receive and act on those messages. This model has always been insufficient, but in the current environment, it’s completely inadequate.

The organizations that will thrive are those that understand how to mobilize collective action from everywhere in the organization, not just from the top. This means communication leaders need to become experts in network dynamics, peer influence, and behavioral change mechanisms.

The question isn’t whether your CEO’s message was clear or whether your all-hands meeting had good attendance. The question is whether you’re identifying and activating the informal networks that actually drive behavior in your organization. Are you working with the 3% of people who drive 90% of conversations? Are you understanding how behavioral change actually spreads through your organization?

The Crucial Role of “Agency”

One of the most significant trends Dr. Herrero identified is the growing importance of individual and collective agency—people’s ability to take control, have autonomy, and see a clear relationship between their actions and organizational outcomes. This isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s becoming essential for organizational survival.

Communication leaders need to stop treating employees as passive recipients of information and start treating them as active agents of change. This requires a fundamental shift in how we approach our work. Instead of asking “How do we get people to understand the message?” we should be asking “How do we enable people to take meaningful action?”

This means moving beyond traditional metrics like message reach and engagement scores toward understanding actual behavioral change and network activation. It means spending less time crafting perfect presentations and more time identifying the informal influencers who can drive real transformation.

The Paralysis Problem

While leaders are paralyzed by the scale of change, communication professionals can often fall into their own form of paralysis – doing things like endlessly measuring engagement surveys, optimizing channel strategies, and debating content calendars while their organization burns around them.

The current environment demands that we operate at a different level. We need to become organizational diagnosticians who can read the informal networks, understand the behavioral dynamics, and orchestrate change initiatives that work with, rather than against, how organizations actually function.

This doesn’t mean abandoning traditional communication channels or ignoring leadership messaging. It means understanding these as just one part of a much more complex system of organizational influence and behavioral change.

The Confidence Factor

Dr. Herrero shared a comment from a CEO who said his greatest contribution was giving the organization confidence—the belief that change was actually possible, not just theoretical. This captures something essential about the role communication leaders need to play right now.

We’re not just message managers or channel coordinators. We’re confidence builders. We help organizations believe they can navigate disruption, adapt to change, and emerge stronger. But we can only do this if we understand the deeper dynamics of how organizations actually transform.

This requires moving beyond the surface-level activities that fill most communication roles toward the harder work of understanding and influencing organizational culture, network dynamics, and behavioral change patterns.

The Path Forward

The communication leaders who will be most valuable in the coming years are those who can help their organizations develop what Dr Herrero calls “the orchestration of movement and change from everywhere in the organization.”

This means:

• Understanding your organization’s informal networks and influence patterns
• Developing capabilities in behavioral change, not just message distribution
• Building confidence in your organization’s ability to navigate uncertainty
• Focusing on collective action and peer-to-peer influence, not just top-down messaging
• Measuring actual behavioral and cultural change, not just communication metrics

The current crisis isn’t something to be endured—it’s an opportunity to fundamentally reposition the communication function as essential to organizational survival and success. 

But only can only do this if we’re brave enough to challenge our own assumptions about how organizations actually work and what communication professionals can contribute.

As Dr Herrero put it: “It’s time to be brave and do something and it’s time to have hope and be confident in the ability of people to do great things when they have the conditions to do it.”

The question is whether communication leaders are ready to create those conditions.

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If you want to discuss the moves you should be making in the current environment, reach out to meet with Mike at http://changingtheterms.youcanbook.me.

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Mike Klein, IABC Fellow, is a communication consultant specializing in change, internal, and social communication, and is Editor-In-Chief of Strategic Magazine. 

Written by: Editor