Tag: FleishmanHillard

License to Lead by FleishmanHillard

About the paper

The report examines what FleishmanHillard calls a company’s “License to Lead” — the stakeholder permission leaders need to change course, move quickly and manage disruption without losing legitimacy.

It is based on original quantitative research: an online survey conducted by TRUE Global Intelligence from 15 December 2025 to 4 January 2026 among 5,550 respondents, comprising 4,000 engaged consumers, 1,400 executives and 150 policy stakeholders.

The data is global in scope, covering 15 markets across four regions: North America (US, Canada), Latin America (Brazil, Mexico), Europe & Middle East (UK, France, Germany, Brussels, Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, UAE, South Africa) and Asia Pacific (China, Japan, South Korea).

Length: 42 pages

More information / download:
https://fleishmanhillard.com/2026/01/license-to-lead-playbook/

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central argument about leadership in an age of permanent uncertainty?

The core argument is that uncertainty is no longer a temporary disruption but the standing condition of leadership. On pages 2–3, the report says leaders now have to make high-stakes decisions faster, with less certainty, under greater scrutiny, and in environments shaped by political volatility, geopolitical change, technological acceleration, media fragmentation and rising stakeholder expectations.

Its main claim is that the real constraint on execution is no longer strategy quality alone. It is whether stakeholders are willing to let leaders act, especially when strategic shifts involve disruption, short-term pain or visible course correction. FleishmanHillard calls this permission structure “License to Lead”. On page 3, the report explicitly argues that organisations stall not because they lack strategic brilliance, but because stakeholders do not have enough confidence that the new direction is justified and worth following.

That framing is important because it shifts the leadership discussion from planning to permission. In this report’s logic, reputation is not a nice-to-have or a downstream outcome of success. It is a precondition for making strategy executable when conditions change.

2. What does the global survey reveal about stakeholder expectations of business leaders today?

The report shows that stakeholders increasingly expect leaders to be adaptable, clear, accountable and visibly fair. On page 5, 84% of engaged consumers and 82% of policy stakeholders say the current business environment is more unpredictable and disruptive than it was three years ago. Among engaged consumers, the top leadership quality for the next decade is the ability to adapt quickly to change, cited by 51%. Clear and simple communication comes next at 40%, followed by the ability to communicate effectively about changes and pivots at 37%.

Page 6 deepens this picture. Around half of engaged consumers say their expectations of companies have risen when it comes to acting with customers in mind (52%), doing the right thing (50%) and taking a balanced stakeholder approach (47%). More than 90% say several actions are key to confidence in leadership: clear communication of strategy, message consistency, transparency about difficult decisions, genuine listening, and accountability when things go wrong. The highest figure is 95% for taking accountability when things go wrong.

The report also shows that long-term loyalty is not driven by lofty rhetoric alone. On page 6, the top three loyalty drivers are the product itself (42%), the company’s mission and purpose (38%), and how the company treats employees and stakeholders (38%). That suggests stakeholders still value purpose, but they place it alongside product performance and treatment of people, not above them.

3. Where is the biggest trust gap between leaders and stakeholders?

The sharpest gap is between how executives assess corporate leadership and how engaged consumers assess it. Page 7 is the clearest evidence. While 49% of executives are very optimistic that large companies will address major challenges over the next 10 years, only 20% of engaged consumers say the same. Likewise, 51% of executives say they have “a lot” of confidence that leaders of large companies will act in the best interests of society, compared with just 19% of engaged consumers. On preparedness, 44% of executives believe large companies are very prepared to lead effectively during future disruption, versus only 15% of engaged consumers.

The report reinforces this perception gap on page 9 and in the appendix tables on pages 37–38. Engaged consumers place extremely high importance on integrity and honesty, accountability, transparency and consistency, but far fewer believe company leaders demonstrate those qualities often. For example, 76% of engaged consumers say integrity and honesty are very important, yet only 23% say leaders often demonstrate them. Accountability shows a similar gap: 74% say it is very important, but only 22% say leaders often demonstrate it.

This matters because the report is not merely saying trust is low. It is saying business leaders systematically overestimate how much trust and legitimacy they currently enjoy. That misreading, in the report’s view, is itself a strategic risk.

4. What are the practical consequences when companies lose this “License to Lead”?

The report argues that the consequences are commercial and operational, not just reputational. Page 8 is especially direct: 98% of engaged consumers say they are paying attention to corporate follow-through, and 48% say inconsistent or conflicting messages from leadership greatly decrease their confidence in the company. A further 44% say such inconsistency somewhat decreases confidence, meaning only a tiny minority are unaffected.

The behavioural consequences are significant. In the past 12 months, after losing confidence in a company, 58% of engaged consumers say they stopped buying from it or significantly reduced spending, 50% switched to a competitor, and 40% privately advised friends or family against the company. Those figures appear both in the key findings and in the appendix table on page 35.

The report’s broader argument is that poor alignment and weak explanation create friction that slows execution. Pages 10–11, in the “License to Lead Maturity Curve”, describe how low-maturity organisations become reactive, then merely stabilising, because stakeholders interpret abrupt pivots as instability rather than disciplined adaptation. The report’s implication is that execution failures are often self-inflicted: leaders do not sufficiently prepare stakeholders before and during change, so even necessary moves become harder to carry through.

5. What leadership model does the report propose as the answer, and what are its wider implications?

The proposed answer is a leadership and corporate affairs model built around five conditions and an integrated operating system. On pages 12–17, the “new leadership playbook” identifies five practices: simplification as an antidote to complexity, ruthless leadership alignment, campaigning the strategy, owning the “why”, and stakeholder relevance without shortcuts. These are presented not as communications tactics in isolation, but as interdependent conditions for sustaining permission to act.

The logic is consistent across these sections. Simplification means reducing complexity into a repeatable direction that stakeholders can understand. Alignment means leaders must resolve disagreements privately and present a unified public narrative. Campaigning the strategy means treating strategy as an ongoing effort rather than a one-off announcement. Owning the “why” means showing the logic, trade-offs and changed assumptions behind a pivot rather than presenting it as an unexplained verdict. Stakeholder relevance means proving fairness through operational decisions, not just values statements.

Pages 18–24 then elevate corporate affairs into an “operating system” built on three capabilities: insight, influence and adaptability. The report argues that insight helps leaders distinguish real external signals from noise; influence turns reputation into an active enabler of execution; and adaptability helps organisations maintain legitimacy across repeated cycles of change.

The wider implication, especially on pages 23–25, is that corporate affairs should no longer be treated as peripheral or reactive. The report claims that execution velocity is now partly a reputational capability. Strategy will keep changing; reputation must be built before it is needed; and corporate affairs now determines whether leaders can move quickly without losing stakeholder backing. In that sense, the report is not just about communications. It is an argument for repositioning corporate affairs as core leadership infrastructure in conditions of permanent volatility.

13 January 2026
Corporate Affairs Trends for 2026 by FleishmanHillard

About the paper

This is a forecast-style corporate affairs report for 2026 from FleishmanHillard, centred on three linked forces shaping the field: fragmentation, declining trust, and a more confrontational geopolitical environment.

Methodologically, it is best described as a mixed-methods thought-leadership report grounded in the author’s original analysis, observation, discussions with colleagues, contacts and clients, and selective use of external datasets; there is no single disclosed sample, respondent count, or fieldwork design, and the geographic scope is broad but not clearly delimited, drawing on examples from markets including the UK, US, Germany and Japan.

Length: 32 pages

More information / download:
https://fleishmanhillard.co.uk/2025/12/corporate-affairs-trends-for-2026/

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central argument about the corporate affairs landscape in 2026?

The core argument is that corporate affairs is becoming harder because the environment is simultaneously more fragmented, less trusting, and more geopolitically adversarial. The report says three forces stand out for 2026: fragmentation, decline of trust, and an increasingly confrontational geopolitical landscape. Rather than treating these as separate developments, it presents them as mutually reinforcing pressures that reshape how communicators reach audiences, build credibility and advise leadership.

The report also makes clear that AI is not a standalone trend in this edition because its effects are now embedded across all the others. In other words, AI is treated as a horizontal force altering research, measurement, publishing, direct engagement and execution, but not replacing the need for human judgement in areas such as geopolitical assessment.

Taken together, the report argues that the traditional model of corporate affairs, built around broad-reach media, relatively stable trust assumptions and a more predictable global environment, is no longer sufficient. The emerging model requires more precision, more segmentation, more direct publishing capability and greater sophistication in dealing with political risk and stakeholder complexity.

2. Why does the report say that “everything gets smaller,” and what does that mean in practice?

“Everything gets smaller” is the report’s shorthand for accelerating fragmentation. Drawing on Nicco Mele’s The End of Big, it argues that media, audiences, brands and institutions are all under pressure from digital atomisation, polarisation and weakening institutional authority. In practical terms, this means audiences are harder to reach at scale, general-interest channels are less dominant, and niche publishers, creators and platforms matter more than before.

The report says audiences are moving towards specialist, high-value and trusted outlets, including titles such as the FT, Economist and Wall Street Journal, alongside podcasts and subscription platforms such as Substack. On page 13, it also points to the visual evidence that major news sites are seeing steep traffic declines while Substack shows growth, reinforcing the idea that the mass-media centre is weakening.

A second part of this trend is economic: digital publishing is under pressure. The report argues that advertisers are likely to favour retail media networks and more directly attributable formats over traditional display advertising, while referral traffic from Google is declining as more users get information through AI-driven systems. That combination threatens publishers’ business models and may shrink the overall supply of quality journalism and analysis.

For corporate affairs leaders, the implication is strategic rather than merely descriptive. The report says they will need to widen relationship-building beyond the “usual suspects”, understand audience channel preferences in greater depth, include niche publishers and influential Substack writers in plans, and adjust measurement frameworks to prioritise relevant reach and business-linked outcomes over broad reputational proxies.

3. How does the report redefine trust, and why does it argue that “absolute trust” is ending?

The report argues that trust can no longer be treated as a stable, universal measure of reputation. For years, communicators often used trust as a broad proxy for reputational strength, but the report says that assumption is breaking down because trust is now polarised and audience-relative rather than generalised.

Its key evidence is that broad trust in institutions and news sources is weakening, while audiences increasingly trust the sources that align with their existing worldview. The report cites the Reuters Institute’s 2025 Digital News Report and notes that in 53 of the 54 countries surveyed there is a gap between trust in news generally and trust in “the news I use”. It also cites falling generalised trust levels in the UK, Germany and Japan, with US trust remaining low and flat.

This leads to a fundamental strategic shift. A channel cannot simply be labelled “trusted” in the abstract. It may be trusted by one stakeholder segment and distrusted by another. On page 19, the report uses the US example to show how left-leaning and right-leaning audiences consume and trust different sources. That means communicators must think in terms of relative trust within specific audience groups rather than aggregate trust across society.

The report pushes the logic further with the claim that “sounds true” increasingly beats “is true”. That is one of its strongest interpretive claims: in public debate, authority, emotional resonance and perceived credibility may matter more than factual correctness alone. The implication is not that facts no longer matter, but that institutions can no longer assume facts will persuade by themselves. They must communicate in ways that connect with audiences that do not automatically grant them trust.

4. What role does AI play in the report’s view of communications strategy and direct audience engagement?

AI runs through the report as an enabling and disruptive force. Early on, the author says AI is woven through the trends rather than isolated as its own section. The report’s view is that AI can materially improve efficiency, research, measurement and tactical delivery, but that its organisational adoption remains uneven and its limitations still constrain full replacement of human work.

In the context of fragmentation and trust, AI also changes how audiences discover information. The report argues that communicators now need to think not only about reaching humans through media and owned channels, but also about influencing the GPT-based systems those audiences may consult. On page 23, it says earned media accounts for about half of the sources cited by common GPTs in responses about companies or brands, while owned content contributes roughly another fifth. That makes credible earned and owned content strategic assets in both human and machine-mediated discovery.

This is one of the report’s more forward-looking ideas: businesses increasingly need to act as publishers, not only to reach stakeholders directly but also to shape the information environment from which AI systems draw. That makes publishing strategy more central to corporate affairs than in older media models. It also ties back to trust, because the report frames credible earned and owned content as “vital levers of influence”.

At the same time, the report draws a limit around AI. In the geopolitical section, it says AI can help manage the growing complexity of communications execution, but management’s demand for geopolitical intelligence, assessment and advice remains a uniquely human capability. So the report is neither techno-utopian nor dismissive: it sees AI as highly useful, but not as a substitute for senior judgement.

5. What are the report’s main conclusions for corporate affairs leaders, especially in a more zero-sum geopolitical world?

The report’s third major conclusion is that geopolitical uncertainty is no longer a background condition; it is becoming a central operating reality for corporate affairs. It describes a world in which governments are more nationalistic, businesses are increasingly treated as instruments of power projection, and economic security is becoming intertwined with national security.

This produces a “zero-sum” environment in which political actors increasingly think in terms of winners and losers, while global companies are trying to create value across multiple markets and stakeholder groups. The report says this tension makes life harder for multinational firms because supporting one government position can complicate operations elsewhere, and localisation strategies, though increasingly attractive, also multiply stakeholder complexity.

Its practical conclusion is that corporate affairs teams must become more sophisticated systems operators. They need better geopolitical sensing, more formal scenario planning, stronger risk tracking and more structured use of AI for targeted execution. But they also need deeper human expertise, because navigating cross-currents between governments, markets and audiences is presented as a high-judgement advisory function, not just a communications task.

So the report’s broader meaning is this: corporate affairs is moving away from broad-message distribution and towards high-complexity influence management. Success in 2026 will depend on understanding fragmented audiences, working with relative rather than universal trust, building stronger direct and AI-visible publishing capabilities, and helping leadership navigate a world where politics, economics and communications are tightly fused.

10 December 2025
UK Corporate Affairs Trends for 2025 by FleishmanHillard

About the paper

The paper is a forecast-style corporate affairs report on the challenges and priorities likely to shape 2025 for organisations operating in the UK.

It is a mixed-input outlook rather than original survey research, grounded in firm data, observation, client discussions, and input from FleishmanHillard’s UK corporate affairs experts; the report does not clearly specify a respondent count, case count, interview number, or formal fieldwork process.

Its geographic focus is primarily the UK corporate affairs landscape, though several trends are framed as global pressures affecting UK-based decision-making.

Length: 32 pages

More information / download:
https://fleishmanhillard.co.uk/2024/12/corporate-affairs-trends-for-2025/

Core Insights

1. What is the report’s central argument about corporate affairs in 2025?

The report’s main argument is that corporate affairs leaders are entering a more volatile, fragmented and demanding environment in which complexity itself becomes the defining condition. FleishmanHillard argues that leaders are being asked to do more by boards, executives and stakeholders at the very moment the information environment is becoming harder to read and harder to influence. Traditional media still matters, but it is no longer sufficient as the primary route to key audiences, whose media habits are spreading across more platforms and formats.

The report says this new reality will be shaped by five interlocking trends: the politicisation of business values, the rise of geopolitics as a day-to-day business issue, the spread of misinformation and inauthentic content, the erosion of reliable data sources alongside the emergence of new ones, and the accelerating operational importance of AI. In other words, the report does not present 2025 as a year of one dominant disruption, but as a year in which multiple pressures converge and force corporate affairs teams to become more adaptive, audience-led and strategically embedded.

2. What are the five key trends the report identifies, and why do they matter?

The first trend, The Values Imperative, argues that politics is increasingly entering business life through employees, public debate and direct political targeting. Companies are under greater pressure to take positions, but the report warns that expression is only rewarded when audiences agree with the stance taken. That makes corporate values more than branding language; they become a decision framework for whether and how to engage on contentious issues.

The second trend, The Corporate Diplomat, says geopolitical issues are no longer distant matters for government relations teams alone. Populism, nationalism, regulatory divergence, supply-chain disruption and state-linked cyber risks mean senior executives and corporate affairs leaders must increasingly act as diplomats themselves. The report suggests that success in one market may now depend on managing tensions involving another market, including a company’s home market.

The third trend, Ubiquitous Malignancy, describes misinformation as a persistent feature of nearly every communications situation, not a rare exception. The report argues that communicators must judge how much of a situation is being shaped by inauthentic or misleading content and develop specific capabilities for intervention, especially as AI-driven deepfakes raise the stakes.

The fourth trend, Data Erosion & Accretion, focuses on the weakening usefulness of old monitoring approaches, especially those heavily dependent on X/Twitter and text-based media. At the same time, audience attention is moving toward harder-to-monitor environments such as podcasts, video, WhatsApp and other closed or semi-closed platforms. New tools may help, but the report says the overall picture will become more cluttered and demand more sophisticated interpretation.

The fifth trend, AI Moves Ahead, argues that generative AI is already improving speed and efficiency in communications work, but that bigger structural change is still ahead. The report sees current tools as operationally useful but limited, while newer models may reshape analysis, memory and self-learning capabilities more profoundly. That makes today’s experimentation a preparation phase for deeper transformation.

3. What assumptions or perspective shape the report’s interpretation of these trends?

The report is written from the perspective of a strategic communications adviser addressing corporate affairs leaders who must help organisations navigate uncertainty rather than merely manage publicity. Its underlying assumption is that communications is no longer a support function operating at the edge of decision-making; it is increasingly central to risk management, stakeholder navigation and executive judgement.

A second assumption is that the environment is not becoming simpler or more controllable. Instead, the report assumes fragmentation, unpredictability and cross-border complexity will intensify. This is visible in how it treats politics, geopolitics, misinformation, data fragmentation and AI not as isolated topics, but as overlapping forces that reshape the communicator’s role.

A third assumption is that organisations need clearer frameworks rather than louder messaging. The report repeatedly emphasises preparation: values frameworks, issue-assessment models, broader intelligence gathering, better geopolitical literacy, more nuanced data interpretation and structured AI adoption. That reveals a distinctly managerial and advisory lens. The purpose is less to predict headlines than to encourage more disciplined organisational readiness.

4. What practical capabilities does the report say organisations need to build now?

On values and politics, the report recommends reviewing the organisation’s values statement so it genuinely reflects shared principles, then using those values as a test for whether a political issue warrants engagement. It explicitly advises leaning strongly against engagement where an issue does not connect directly to a core business value or commercial need. That suggests restraint, not performative commentary, as the preferred operating model.

On geopolitics, it argues for broader information gathering, deeper historical understanding, better assessment of tensions across key markets and supply chains, and more diplomatic skill sets such as negotiation and war-gaming. This implies that corporate affairs teams need to widen both their input sources and their strategic repertoire.

On misinformation, the report says teams need methods for distinguishing authentic from inauthentic content, frameworks for deciding when to intervene, and readiness to communicate directly with audiences rather than relying solely on media or fact-checkers. It also stresses that countering misinformation may require behavioural science techniques and emotional engagement, not just rational rebuttal.

On data, the recommendation is to push partners to improve coverage across podcasts and video, interpret reactions across multiple platforms rather than assuming one channel represents the whole picture, and strengthen human intelligence networks to compensate for what tools cannot see inside walled gardens such as WhatsApp.

On AI, the report urges organisations to expand trials, identify tasks where GenAI should make the first attempt, and reposition employees from pure production roles toward advisory roles that guide AI strategically and improve output quality. The practical message is that AI adoption should be systematic and role-shaping, not ad hoc.

5. What are the main implications of the report for corporate affairs leaders in 2025?

The clearest implication is that corporate affairs leaders will need broader mandates and stronger judgement. The function is being asked to interpret political risk, geopolitical change, data ambiguity, misinformation threats and AI-enabled disruption all at once. That means success will depend less on excellence in any single channel and more on the ability to synthesise complex inputs into sound advice for senior leadership.

A second implication is that old playbooks are becoming less reliable. Traditional media relations, basic social listening and fact-based rebuttal are still relevant, but they are no longer enough on their own. The report suggests that influence now depends on audience-led, channel-agnostic and emotionally intelligent engagement, supported by better frameworks and more diverse intelligence.

A third implication is organisational: communications teams must evolve structurally, not just tactically. Values need to be operationalised, geopolitical awareness mainstreamed, misinformation preparedness embedded, data practices modernised and AI integrated into workflows. In that sense, the report presents 2025 as a capability-building year. The leaders who thrive will be those who treat communications as a strategic discipline for navigating uncertainty, not simply a function for message delivery.

16 December 2024