The clearest leaders let substance do the talking

With brands more synonymous with the people who lead them – whether that be Grace Beverley at Tala, Greg Jackson at Octopus Energy or Sam Altman at OpenAI – there’s a growing demand for honesty and accountability from leaders.  

 

Despite this, the fundamentals of effective corporate communication have not changed. Employees need to understand decisions, customers need to know what changes mean for them and stakeholders need confidence in the organisation’s direction. Yet when pressure mounts, communication can become less specific and more emotive, leaving audiences with vague platitudes of resilience and team commitment that offer little practical clarity.

 

Curious to understand how pressure shapes communication under the highest scrutiny, Sinch analysed cliché usage across this year’s World Cup manager press conferences. The findings revealed that, as the stakes increased, managers relied more heavily on familiar phrases than specific tactics, with the average expected cliché (xC) score rising from 28 at the end of the group stage to 36 by the final.

 

While the pressures facing international football managers are unique, the underlying communication challenge is familiar to every business leader. Effective communication is about giving each audience the information, context and clarity they need to understand what the business stands for and the direction it’s heading in.

 

Clarity requires substance, not just confidence

Like World Cup managers, business leaders communicate under intense scrutiny. Investors, board members, employees, customers and even government figures all have an interest in the same organisation, just as millions of supporters care about their national team.

 

However, each audience brings different concerns that require nuanced information. Investors want evidence of long-term value while employees need to understand how decisions affect their roles. Addressing all these expectations at once creates a high-pressure communication challenge. Faced with the risk of disappointing one audience or revealing too much, leaders can retreat into broad, familiar language designed to reassure everyone.

 

World Cup managers displayed a similar instinct during this summer’s tournament with “we respect every opponent” the tournament’s most common cliché. While the phrase was safe and difficult to dispute, it revealed little about how a team intended to approach the match. Corporate terms such as “transformation” and “resilience” often serve the same purpose.

 

Although each may describe a genuine priority, broad claims without evidence or explanation leave audiences to interpret them for themselves. In trying to keep everyone satisfied, leaders can end up giving nobody the information they need, especially during periods of business uncertainty.

 

Effective communication requires a consistent central message, adapted to address the specific concerns of each audience. Specificity turns corporate ambition into information that employees, customers and stakeholders can understand, evaluate and act upon.

 

Effective communicators explain their thinking

Our World Cup analysis revealed significant differences in how heavily managers relied on familiar language. For example, Uruguay’s Marcelo Bielsa recorded the tournament’s lowest average cliché score, while Spain’s Luis de la Fuente averaged one of the highest xC scores after repeatedly returning to phrases about “the process” and hard work.

 

Their contrasting results show that while there is not one correct communication style, it’s easy for familiar language to shape communication under pressure.

 

For business leaders, it’s, therefore, vital that their chosen language gives each audience enough meaningful information to understand a decision while also galvanising a team. A company restructuring provides a clear example. Employees need information about changes to their roles and job security while customers require reassurance about continuity of service, and investors expect an explanation of the long-term commercial impact.

 

Each audience requires different detail, but the central facts and reasoning should remain consistent. Broad statements about “transformation” may support the message, but they cannot replace the practical information people need.

 

Motivation must translate into useful direction

As the tournament progressed, another trend emerged as several managers moved away from tactical explanations towards language about heart, belief, hard work and togetherness. England’s Thomas Tuchel was one of the most cliché prone managers in his pre and post-match press conferences as he focused heavily on mentality and heart.

 

Tuchel’s adoption of the emotional language used by fans illustrates how emotional language can play a valuable role in leadership. During periods of uncertainty, people often want confidence, reassurance and a sense of shared purpose. However,  motivation has limits when people do not understand what they are expected to do next. Messages about ambition, purpose or transformation must, therefore, translate into practical direction.

 

Employees need clear responsibilities and priorities, customers need relevant information about any impact on their experience, and stakeholders need evidence that supports the organisation’s position. A call for resilience becomes meaningful only when people understand the challenge they are facing, the support available to them and how they are expected to respond.

 

Consistency is key

Clarity must extend across every interaction. Although employees, customers and investors require different levels of detail, the central message should remain consistent. Contradictory announcements, leadership updates and customer communications can quickly create uncertainty, even when each message sounds polished in isolation.

 

Sinch’s World Cup communication analysis shows how easily specificity can disappear when scrutiny intensifies, and the same risk applies to corporate communication because the greater the pressure, the stronger the temptation to retreat into familiar scripts.

 

Effective leaders are those who resist that instinct by explaining their thinking, adapting information to the needs of each audience and making clear both what matters now and what comes next.

 

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Robert Gerstmann is Co-Founder and Chief Evangelist of Sinch

 

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com and jacoblund