PRWeek TV: Leadership and communication effectiveness

Cartwright offers some of the key findings of the research as well as explaining Ketchum’s reasons for conducting it and its practical applications.

‘We were struck firstly by the extent of the ongoing leadership crisis; as with last year one in four people globally view leaders as being effective and a similar number view them as being accountable when things go wrong,’ he says.

‘But also from a PR and comms perspective we were very struck by the extent to which there is also a communications crisis. In fact we saw a 24% drop year on year in the effectiveness in leaders’ communication.’

The survey was carried out by Ipsos as a 15- to 18-minute online survey of 6,000 people in 12 markets.

Cartwright adds: ‘Another really standout finding for us was the extent to which the CEO and the c-suite more broadly are outranked by employees.

’We asked a question about credible sources of information when forming views on a company and the CEO came in at number six with other senior management at joint number seven along with the media.

‘Top of the list was "an employee who you know". This tells us that employee engagement is absolutely critical if you want your brand to be credible with consumers and other stakeholders.’

This article was first published on prweek.com