Saturday, September 13, 2025
Saturday, September 13, 2025
Mike Klein:
The time for Communication Leadership is upon us.
As I prepare for the Communication Leadership Summit in Brussels on 19 September, recent interviews for various speaking engagements have helped me think through something important: how the coming months offer an unprecedented chance to redefine what communication professionals do and how we create impact.
There are libraries full of books about leadership communication – how leaders communicate more effectively.
But literally nothing has been written about communication leadership: how we, as communication professionals, make a difference in the organizations, communities, and societies where we operate.
This distinction will be central to our Brussels conversations because the remainder of 2025 presents a convergence of forces that could reshape our profession in our favor.
AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, creating new efficiencies while highlighting areas where human strategic thinking remains valuable.
Organizations are flattening structures, potentially creating more direct paths for communication professionals to influence decisions.
Budget scrutiny is intensifying, which creates openings to demonstrate concrete value.
Rather than seeing these changes as threats, we have the opportunity to reposition ourselves as communication leaders who help organizations navigate complexity and communities build resilience.
The Communication Leadership Summit – and the conversations it sparks beyond the event – offer a chance to collectively explore how we step into these expanded roles and then take that step..
Multiple trends are coming together right now that make the coming months very interesting.
AI is moving beyond content generation to strategic analysis and relationship mapping.
Organizations are questioning every function’s ROI as economic pressures mount.
Remote and hybrid work patterns are permanently altering how influence flows within companies.
There’s an accelerating commoditization of traditional communication outputs. The same executives who have long been skeptical of the value we add now see AI producing similar content at a fraction of the cost and time – and see dollar and euro signs dancing in their heads.
This trend towards economizing belies a deep misconception about how decisions are made in organizations.
I suspect a lot of people believe senior leadership makes all of the important decisions in an organization.
But this is deeply untrue and profoundly disconnected from reality – and this gap is widening as organizations flatten and accelerate decision-making processes.
Leaders make certain key decisions, but in making those decisions, they leave countless other decisions to be made by employees, communicators, customers, and other stakeholders.
In 2025’s fast-moving environment, leaders have even less bandwidth to micromanage these secondary decisions, leaving a massive number of decisions in the hands of employees, and susceptible to the interventions we communication leaders can take.
This creates openings for communication professionals willing to step into their real leadership roles rather than just supporting other leaders and their functions.
The shift from a reactive to a proactive orientation – from seeking permission to seeking forgiveness – isn’t just an evolution – it’s an impact strategy worth considering.
AI can excel at reactive tasks and improves at them daily. What AI cannot do is identify what needs to be done before anyone asks for it, particularly in complex human systems.
Communication leadership means seizing initiative in areas where we have scope to operate independently. It means choosing to prioritize certain issues, helping frame organizational priorities, choosing the words and images that illustrate them, and making it clear what’s being de-prioritized.
Between now and the end of 2025, organizations will be making rapid decisions about resource allocation, strategic direction, and operational efficiency. Communication professionals who position themselves as proactive strategic contributors can influence these decisions. Those who remain in reactive support roles will likely be driven – or eliminated – by them.
The message-obsessed approach to communication is becoming obsolete faster than many professionals realize.
AI can craft messages, personalize them, and distribute them across multiple channels simultaneously. What AI cannot do is understand the complex human networks that determine whether messages actually create change.
Communication leaders recognize that their real power might come from the networks they build and maintain. We know people – lots of people. We know who’s well-connected and who’s isolated. We know who has influence and who needs support.
By the end of 2025, our ability to understand, identify, and catalyze networks will be a primary differentiator between genuine communication leaders and those who face commoditization.
This doesn’t require a massive amount of analysis – though this analysis is extremely valuable and surprisingly accessible(1).
But the most basic step is the most accessible. When you create a relationship between two people in an organization, you’re not creating a two-person relationship.
You’re creating a three-person relationship that positions you as the connector, the facilitator, the person who makes things happen.
And when you do that repeatedly, you put yourself at the center of an emergingly powerful network.
The communication landscape is being fundamentally altered by increased information flow and decreased institutional trust.
Organizations aren’t necessarily becoming more intentionally transparent, but it’s becoming impossible to maintain information control in traditional ways.
This trend is accelerating through 2025 as digital natives move into senior roles and as AI tools make information analysis and sharing even easier.
Communication leaders can work with this dynamic rather than against it. Instead of trying to control information flow, they can focus on providing context, reducing ambiguity, and ensuring that when information does travel, it’s accurate and constructive.
Organizations that adapt to this reality will likely thrive.
Those that don’t may face increasing dysfunction as formal communication channels become less relevant and informal networks become more powerful.
Most organizational leaders still see reputation management as distinct from communication strategy, and internal communication often doesn’t even get a seat at the reputation table.
This disconnect is becoming increasingly expensive as social media and employee review platforms make internal communication deficiencies more visible externally.
Reputation is the financial difference between what your costs are and what you can sell something for.
Most organizational profits and viability depend on reputation. The activity of employees is a major driver of reputation, yet internal communication professionals are often left on the sidelines of reputation discussions.
The coming months present a unique opportunity. AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, but their inability to adequately replace human strategic thinking will likely become better understood as well (perhaps through high-profile fails). Communication professionals who establish themselves as true communication leaders in the coming months will be best positioned for whatever emerges in the post-2025 landscape.
Communication leadership isn’t about waiting for permission or formal authority.
It’s about taking initiative within your existing scope, making connections that benefit both individuals and organizations, and consistently demonstrating value through outcomes rather than outputs.
It means moving beyond the comfort zone of message creation and distribution to embrace the messy, complex, relationship-heavy work of actually leading change within organizations.
The profession is at an inflection point.
We can continue to focus on tactical execution while AI and organizational restructuring reshape our roles around us.
Or, we can embrace communication leadership – using our unique combination of strategic thinking, relationship skills, and organizational insight to drive meaningful change.
The choice is ours, and the opportunity is right in front of us.
+++
Limited seats remain for the Communication Leadership Summit in Brussels on 19 September. For more information or to register, visit: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/communication-leadership-summit-tickets-1330894113119.
Many thanks to sponsors Speakap, BBN Agency X, and Corporate Diplomat for making this event possible.
+++
Mike Klein is Editor-in-Chief of Strategic, founder of #WeLeadComms, and an IABC Fellow.
Written by: Editor
© 2025 Stratpair Ltd., trading as Strategic. Registered in Ireland: 747736
