> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.nevillehobson.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The executive narrative meets reality - URL: https://www.nevillehobson.io/the-executive-narrative-meets-reality/ - Published: 2026-10-01T06:22:17.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-01T07:50:35.000Z - Description: New research shows investors increasingly judge executives by the gap between what they say and what their organisations do. As reputation becomes a more volatile and valuable asset, communicators face a growing challenge: helping leaders ensure their actions support the stories they tell. - Author: Neville Hobson - Tags: Communication, Strategy, Social Networks There was a time when corporate leaders could establish their reputation through a series of carefully managed moments. A polished presentation to investors, a confident media interview, a persuasive annual report or a speech setting out the company's ambitions. These were opportunities to shape how the outside world understood the organisation and the people running it. Those moments still matter. But the space between what executives say and what their organisations actually do is becoming increasingly visible. Employees can challenge the official account of organisational culture. Customers can publicly contradict claims about service or product quality. Investors can examine corporate behaviour against commitments made months or years earlier. Information that once stayed inside an organisation can now travel well beyond its boundaries. The result is a more demanding environment for executive reputation, where credibility depends less on the quality of the narrative and more on the evidence supporting it. New research from FTI Consulting suggests that institutional investors are paying particularly close attention. ## **A world without narrative slack** FTI's report, *Executive Reputation: Priced, Prized, and Easily Lost*, draws on a survey of 300 institutional investors globally, including 100 based in the UK, conducted in May 2026. 💡 One finding stands out: 89% of respondents say they scrutinise the consistency between executive messaging and company actions more closely than they did five years ago. FTI describes this as a world without narrative slack, where audiences test corporate statements against behaviour almost immediately. It's a useful expression for the distance that can exist between the story an organisation tells about itself and the reality people experience. Traditionally, that distance could sometimes remain relatively undisturbed between formal reporting cycles or significant public events. Today, the report suggests, investors are less willing to accept the narrative without examining what sits behind it. The research also finds that, under normal conditions, consistency between words and actions is the most frequently selected building block of a strong executive reputation, cited by 51% of respondents. That places it ahead of industry expertise and credibility, and consistent delivery against targets, each cited by 44%. This doesn't mean financial performance or executive expertise have become unimportant. It means investors are looking beyond them when judging whether leadership deserves their confidence. For communicators, there's a significant implication. We spend considerable time helping executives articulate their strategy, explain their decisions and communicate their ambitions. But the effectiveness of that work increasingly depends on something outside the communication itself: whether the organisation's behaviour supports the story. A compelling narrative remains valuable. An unsupported one becomes a liability. Consider the controversy surrounding Manchester City Football Club. For years, the club maintained its innocence over alleged breaches of Premier League financial regulations. Yet on 29 September 2026, an independent commission found that City had committed serious breaches over nine seasons, including arrangements that artificially inflated revenues and reduced costs. Manchester City disputes the findings and intends to appeal. The proceedings are therefore not concluded, and the findings do not establish that individual executives knowingly misled the public. Nevertheless, the contrast between the club's public position and the commission's conclusions illustrates the reputational challenge when an organisation's narrative encounters independent scrutiny. Manchester City's considerable sporting success cannot, in itself, resolve questions about its financial governance. Nor can communication alone settle the disagreement over the evidence. The case illustrates something central to FTI's findings: organisations may control what they say about themselves, but they cannot control all the evidence others use to judge those statements. ## **When internal reputation becomes external evidence** Another finding in FTI's research deserves particular attention from communication professionals. Eighty-nine per cent of investors agree that an executive's internal reputation is now as important as their external reputation. Think about what that means. A chief executive might be highly regarded by financial analysts, deliver confident presentations at investor meetings and maintain a carefully considered public presence. But what happens when employees describe a different leader? Perhaps the CEO talks enthusiastically about an open, collaborative culture while employees experience something quite different. Or the company publicly celebrates its values while internal decisions appear inconsistent with them. Those contradictions can become evidence against which external claims are judged. This challenges an organisational distinction that communicators have lived with for decades: the separation between internal and external communication. The disciplines have different audiences, channels and objectives. But the reputations they help shape are increasingly interconnected. 💡 An executive doesn't have one reputation among employees and another among investors, with each existing independently of the other. Different stakeholders may hold different perceptions, but those perceptions can influence one another. An organisation's internal reality is becoming part of its external investment story. That raises an uncomfortable question. If the communicator knows the external narrative is inconsistent with what employees are experiencing, is the responsibility simply to improve the messaging? Or is it to challenge the leadership behaviour creating the inconsistency? ## **A volatile asset with a substantial price tag** FTI's findings also challenge the way organisations sometimes think about reputation as an intangible asset. The research asked investors to identify which corporate assets they considered most volatile, meaning those whose value could shift quickly and unpredictably. Brand reputation topped the list, with 26% of respondents ranking it first. Executive reputation followed at 23%. Both ranked ahead of the technology stack, physical infrastructure, intellectual property and other tangible or technical assets. In the eyes of these investors, reputational assets are among the most vulnerable to sudden value changes. The financial implications are striking. Fifty-six per cent of the investors surveyed attribute at least 30% of a FTSE 100 company's market valuation to the reputation of its executive leadership team. Seventy-one per cent put the figure at a quarter or more. These numbers require careful interpretation. They represent investors' beliefs about the contribution of executive reputation to company value, not an independently established calculation of its precise financial worth. Nevertheless, they indicate the importance investors attach to leadership credibility. FTI also found that 76% of respondents would be likely to assign a valuation premium to a company led by an executive team they considered highly trusted and credible. The opposite is equally revealing. Presented with a hypothetical scenario involving a CEO embroiled in a personal-conduct controversy, but no criminal wrongdoing, 88% expected the company's value to fall, even if financial performance remained strong. Reputation, in other words, can create value as well as destroy it. Building credibility takes time, while losing it can happen remarkably quickly. The report identifies periods of leadership succession, strategic transformation and regulatory scrutiny as moments when investors place particular weight on executive reputation. These are also moments when it may be too late to start establishing the credibility on which investor confidence depends. ## **What does this mean for communicators?** There is a temptation to interpret findings like these as another argument for investing in executive profiling, thought leadership and a stronger public presence for senior leaders. Those activities have their place. Indeed, FTI's research finds that investors value purposeful executive visibility. Financial media interviews remain important, while LinkedIn has become a significant channel for establishing a visible leadership presence. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/59/f0/59f0f3d2-7a4d-469d-80ba-430572591933/content/images/2026/09/FTIchartLinkedIn.jpg) Among the institutional investors surveyed, 42% identified LinkedIn as essential for an active executive presence, level with industry conferences and keynotes. Financial media interviews remained the leading channel at 64%. Source: FTI Consulting, September 2026. There's an interesting longer-term perspective here. Research from three years earlier examined which social networks investors used to follow companies. While the findings describe behaviour at that time rather than today's habits, they provide a useful point of comparison with FTI's latest research. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/59/f0/59f0f3d2-7a4d-469d-80ba-430572591933/content/images/2026/09/FTIchartSocialchannels.jpg) Investor information habits are evolving. This 2023 research shows which social networks investors used to follow companies, providing historical context for FTI's 2026 finding that 42% of institutional investors consider LinkedIn essential for executive visibility. Source: FTI Consulting CEO Leadership Redefined research. The distinction is important. Following a company on a social network is not the same as considering that network essential for executive visibility. Taken together, the findings suggest that social platforms have become part of the wider information environment in which investors encounter and assess corporate leadership. For communicators, the question isn't simply which platforms executives should use. It's whether their presence on those platforms contributes something meaningful to the evidence investors use to judge their credibility. But visibility is not the same as credibility. An executive can publish thoughtful LinkedIn articles, participate in industry discussions and give impressive interviews without necessarily demonstrating the leadership qualities investors are looking for. And no amount of communication activity can compensate indefinitely for a persistent gap between words and actions. This is where the senior communicator's role becomes more interesting, and arguably more demanding. Rather than simply helping executives construct a compelling account of their leadership, communicators need to help ensure that account is grounded in organisational reality. That means understanding what employees are experiencing, listening to stakeholders, identifying inconsistencies and providing candid advice when leadership decisions threaten to undermine stated commitments. It also means being prepared to challenge the decisions themselves. A communicator who waits until a decision is made before considering its reputational implications may already be at a disadvantage. None of this suggests communicators can or should assume responsibility for executive behaviour. Accountability for leadership decisions remains with those making them. 💡 Communication professionals can bring stakeholder understanding, external perspective and constructive challenge into the decision-making process, helping leaders recognise reputational risks before they become public problems. That's a more substantial contribution than simply making the executive narrative sound convincing. ## **You cannot communicate your way out of behaviour** There's a useful connection here with a discussion Shel and I had in the September long-form edition of our *For Immediate Release* podcast, published a few days ago. We examined *Crisis Communication for Boards: A Handbook for Good Governance*, published by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations in association with the Institute of Directors. One line from that handbook particularly resonated with me: "You cannot communicate your way out of a crisis that you behaved your way into." The handbook argues that crisis communication should be a governance responsibility, with communicators involved in understanding risks and shaping decisions long before a crisis occurs. FTI's research suggests the same principle applies outside a crisis. Investors aren't simply examining what executives say when things go wrong. They are scrutinising consistency during ordinary business operations, when commitments are made, decisions are taken, and organisational behaviour reveals whether the leadership narrative deserves to be believed. This connection matters because it shifts the emphasis from managing reputational consequences to addressing the decisions and behaviours that create them. It also raises expectations for communication professionals. If reputation is increasingly tested against evidence, then communicators need access to the conversations in which that evidence is created. Not simply the conversations about how it will be presented afterwards. ## **Credibility cannot be communicated into existence** FTI's research reminds us that executive reputation has consequences that extend well beyond personal image or corporate visibility. Investors say they are scrutinising leadership more closely, placing substantial value on credibility and testing whether executive statements align with organisational behaviour. 💡 For communication professionals, the challenge isn't to abandon the work of storytelling, positioning or executive communication. These remain essential disciplines. It's to recognise that their effectiveness increasingly depends on the quality of the leadership decisions and organisational behaviour behind them. A credible executive narrative is not something a communications team can simply manufacture. It needs to reflect a reality that employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders can recognise. This could be the most important implication of FTI's findings. The communicator's role is not merely to help leaders tell a convincing story. It's to help them understand what makes that story believable in the first place. Sometimes that means being willing to tell a leader that the story and the reality are not the same. --- **References:** - [*Executive Reputation: Priced, Prized and Easily Lost*](https://fticommunications.com/executive-reputation-priced-prized-easily-lost/?ref=nevillehobson.io) (FTI Consulting, September 2026) - [*Executive Reputation: Priced, Prized, and Easily Lost*](https://fticommunications.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/FTI-Consulting-Exeutive-Reputation-Priced-Prized-and-Easily-Lost-September-2026.pdf?ref=nevillehobson.io) (PDF report, FTI Consulting, September 2026) - [Drive Investor Confidence Through Integrated Communications Programs](https://www.fticonsulting.com/insights/articles/drive-investor-confidence-through-integrated-communications-programs?ref=nevillehobson.io) (FTI Consulting, 2023) - [Manchester City F.C. financial breaches scandal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manchester%5FCity%5FF.C.%5Ffinancial%5Fbreaches%5Fscandal?ref=nevillehobson.io) (Wikipedia) - [Premier League Statement: Manchester City FC](https://www.premierleague.com/en/news/4727779/premier-league-statement-manchester-city-fc?ref=nevillehobson.io) (Premier League, 29 September 2026) - [Hard to see how Man City recover from extraordinary guilty verdict](https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/%5F/id/50060178/manchester-city-premier-league-guilty-verdict-accounting-gab-marcotti?ref=nevillehobson.io) (ESPN, 29 September 2026) Photo at top by [Anil Baki Durmus](https://unsplash.com/@anldrms?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/photos/modern-glass-buildings-reflecting-city-lights-at-night-OH9qs7%5FooMM?utm%5Fsource=unsplash&utm%5Fmedium=referral&utm%5Fcontent=creditCopyText).