The Communication Pro Who Must Speak Up, Look Outward, and Reinvent: All at Once

Sukanya Chakraborty:

Managing upwards, navigating across cultures, and staying relevant in a world that keeps shifting — the modern communications leader is being asked to do all three simultaneously. Here is what that actually demands.

There is a conversation that repeats itself across boardrooms, leadership offsites, and strategy sessions across cities and industries. It usually begins with a question about risk. It ends with someone turning to the communications leader in the room and saying: “What do you think we should do?”

That moment is both an opportunity and a burden. Because what it demands is not just an answer. It demands the credibility to be heard, the cultural intelligence to read the room correctly, and the professional agility to respond to a world that has fundamentally changed the nature of what communication means.

These three pressures — managing upwards with influence, operating across cultures with fluency, and evolving with a profession in transition — have always existed in some form. What is different now is that they are arriving simultaneously, at pace, and with much higher stakes than before.

The art of managing upwards

Managing upwards is, at its core, a communication challenge, yet it is rarely framed that way. It tends to be discussed in terms of personality dynamics or political savviness, often focusing on how to handle difficult leadership or earn a seat at the table. But these conversations miss the point.

The real work of managing upwards is the work of translation. A communications leader operates at the intersection of what the organisation wants to say and what the world is prepared to hear. Bridging that gap requires the ability to take a position, sometimes an uncomfortable one, in rooms where the default is consensus.

Consider what happened when a global aircraft manufacturer faced one of the most scrutinised safety crises in aviation history. Or when a pharmaceutical giant navigated a product contamination issue decades earlier — a case that remains a benchmark in crisis communications. In both situations, the pressure on communications leadership was not simply to craft a message. It was to hold a position about what needed to be said, how quickly, and to whom.

I experienced a version of this during the COVID-19 pandemic, managing communications across a global operation spanning multiple governments and geographies, addressing travellers, partners and employees, each with different needs and varying levels of anxiety. The framework adopted was deliberate: lead with empathy, engage consistently, and educate continuously. Applying that across markets and languages, while the world was changing faster than any response cycle could keep up, required the kind of advocacy that only works when there is trust in your judgment. Conversations with peers across industries during that period revealed a consistent pattern: the communicators who managed upwards most effectively in those moments were not necessarily the most technically skilled in the room. They were the ones who had built enough trust, over time, to be heard when it mattered most.

The communicators who do this well share a particular quality: they have learned to separate their personal discomfort from their professional obligation. Telling a leadership team that a planned announcement is premature, that a campaign carries reputational risk, or that silence in a particular moment is not neutrality are not easy conversations. They are only possible when trust is built in the ordinary rhythm of leadership engagement through consistency, demonstrated judgment, and being present before you are needed.

The intercultural dimension

Spend enough time working across geographies and a truth becomes inescapable: communication is not a universal language. The words may translate. The meaning rarely does. I have managed both external and internal communication mandates across more than 145 countries. That breadth teaches you, faster than any framework ever could, that what works in one market can quietly fail in another without anyone in the room quite understanding why.

What constitutes directness in one culture reads as aggression in another. Silence in a meeting may signal respect, disagreement, or deep discomfort, depending entirely on context. A crisis response that would be considered appropriately swift in a regional media environment may feel presumptuous or tone-deaf in a market where deliberation and collective decision-making are the norm.

One experience taught me this most unexpectedly in a region I had approached with preparation but, in retrospect, insufficient humility. I agreed in good faith on a story’s angle and tone. It felt aligned, until the piece changed completely before publication, without explanation. It wasn’t dishonesty as much as unseen pressures and relationships I hadn’t accounted for. The lesson was not about that market specifically, but the fact that a shared professional language does not guarantee a shared professional reality. And the communicator who discovers this late pays a higher price than the one who learns to ask deeper questions sooner.

The communicators who navigate cultural complexity well are not those who know the most facts about the most cultures. They are those who have developed the discipline of genuine curiosity — who ask before they assume, who localise not just content but judgment, and who remain genuinely open to being wrong about what they thought they understood.

A role in reinvention

The communications profession is not simply changing. It is being asked to redefine its own value proposition at a moment when the external environment is shaped by geopolitical instability, AI-generated content, collapsing trust in institutions, and the blurring of internal and external audiences.

For much of my career, the architecture of the role was relatively stable and its boundaries were clear. Channels were defined, gatekeepers were known, and the craft of communications lived largely in the quality of relationships and the precision of narrative. That clarity has dissolved. The gatekeepers have multiplied beyond recognition or disappeared entirely. A teenager with a smartphone and an opinion can move a story faster than a newsroom. A single unverified post, amplified by algorithm, can outpace any prepared response.

The profession did not see this shift as a single event. It accumulated — platform by platform, cycle by cycle — until one day the old map no longer matched the territory.

That realisation, uncomfortable as it was, is the beginning of professional reinvention rather than the end of professional relevance. The communicators who will remain indispensable are those who use technology for the repeatable, and reserve their judgment for what isn’t. AI will draft faster than any human. It will not decide what should be said, to whom, and at what moment. That remains ours.

What this moment asks of us

Managing upwards, working across cultures, and reinventing the role are not three separate challenges. They are three expressions of the same underlying demand: that communications leaders grow their influence at exactly the moment the ground beneath the profession is shifting.

It is not a comfortable ask, but it is the right one. The profession has spent decades arguing for relevance. The world has, somewhat abruptly, made the case on our behalf. The question now is not whether communications belongs at the leadership table. It is whether we are prepared for what sitting there actually requires.

The answer will depend less on tools, titles, or budgets than on something less tangible and more durable: the willingness to speak clearly, listen carefully, and keep learning — in every language the role demands.

Note: All views expressed are those of the contributor in a personal capacity. 

+++

Sukanya Chakraborty is a SCMP® certified communications leader with 26+ years of experience leading communications function globally. Based in Dubai, she has held Chief Communications Officer for a communications mandate covering 145+ countries and senior marketing communications roles spanning international markets, with deep expertise in enterprise technology, outsourcing, real estate, and global services industries.