Communications Leadership Gap

The communications leadership gap is real, it is measurable, and it almost never comes down to communications expertise.

A senior vice president at a mid-sized communications firm reached out to me a few years ago. She was already successful at the SVP level: strong work, trusted by clients, valued by the firm. But her CEO had given her direct feedback: she needed to step up as a leader. Not do more. Lead more powerfully, and show up with greater gravitas.

She wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. And she suspected no one inside her organization could tell her honestly. That’s why she called.

She wasn’t missing communications skill. She had plenty of that. What she was missing was the shift from leading as an expert to leading as an executive. Those are not the same thing. And the gap between them is exactly what executive coaching exists to close.

She did the work. She was promoted to EVP. And eventually to Partner.

The Research Is Clear on What It Takes

Korn Ferry’s 2025 survey of the senior-most communications professionals across the Fortune 500 tells a compelling story. 51% of CCOs now sit on their company’s executive committee. The number of communications leaders reporting directly to the CEO has jumped from 40% in 2023 to 47% in 2025, a 17% increase in two years.

That’s significant. The function is rising. But here’s what the data also reveals: the leaders making it to the top table are being selected on criteria that have very little to do with communications craft.

According to Peter McDermott, who leads Korn Ferry’s corporate affairs practice, companies are looking for three things in their next CCO. Business acumen: the ability to understand where money comes from and goes, and to tie communications strategy directly to financial and commercial objectives. Strategic thinking: knowing when to assert ideas and when to listen, with the self-awareness to tell the difference. And executive presence: the credibility and gravitas to walk into a CEO’s office and make your case in two minutes.

“Anyone who lacks the know-how to tie together the financial and commercial objectives with communications is failing,” McDermott said.

That’s a direct statement. And in my coaching work with PR and communications leaders, I see it play out constantly.

Why Communications Leaders Stall Before the Top

The leaders I coach who are stuck just below the level they know they’re capable of almost always share a common pattern. They are exceptionally good at their craft. They deliver. They are trusted by their teams. And they have hit a ceiling they can’t quite see clearly.

Here is what that ceiling is usually made of:

They lead as experts, not as executives. There is a shift that has to happen somewhere between senior director and VP, and again between VP and the C-suite. You stop being the person with the best answer and start being the person who asks the best questions, builds the right team, and shapes strategy rather than executes it. Many communications leaders are never explicitly told this shift is required. They keep doing what made them successful, and wonder why it’s no longer enough.

They manage up poorly. The higher you go, the more your advancement depends on your ability to influence, advise, and sometimes push back on people above you. This is different from managing your team, and it is different from serving your clients. It requires confidence, political intelligence, and the ability to deliver uncomfortable information in a way that lands well. Most communications leaders are highly skilled at crafting messages for others. Doing it for themselves, in real time, with their own career on the line, is a different skill entirely. (More on this in a future post.)

They underestimate executive presence. Executive presence is not about style or polish. It is about the consistency between what you project and who you actually are as a leader. It is credibility built over time through decisions made well, commitments kept, and hard conversations handled with integrity. Leaders who have it earn trust quickly in new rooms. Leaders who are still developing it often don’t know why certain opportunities keep going to someone else.

They haven’t developed a business leader identity. This is the deepest version of the gap. A communications leader who still primarily identifies as a communications professional will make different choices, ask different questions, and signal different things in a room of C-suite executives than a leader who sees themselves as a business leader with a communications background. The identity shift precedes the behavior change. And the behavior change is what gets noticed.

This Applies to Agency Leaders Too

The Korn Ferry data is corporate-focused, but the same gap shows up in agency leadership.

Senior agency executives who want to move from managing accounts to leading the business, from running a practice to running a P&L, from being a trusted client advisor to being a strategic partner at the executive level, face the identical challenge. The skills that build a strong client relationship and the skills that build a business are related but not identical. And the leadership identity shift required is just as real.

The agency leaders I’ve coached who made that transition successfully all went through a version of the same process: getting honest about where the gap was, doing the specific work to close it, and finding someone outside their organization who could tell them what they couldn’t see from the inside.

Four Shifts That Actually Close the Gap

Based on my coaching work and on what the research tells us about what C-suite leaders are actually looking for, here is what closing the leadership gap requires:

1. Develop genuine business acumen. Not a working knowledge of financial statements. Genuine fluency in how your organization creates value, where the risks are, and how your function contributes to or protects that value. This means conversations you may have been avoiding, relationships with finance and operations leaders you may not have cultivated, and a willingness to speak in business terms, not just communications terms.
2. Build the managing-up muscle. Start treating your relationship with the people above you the way you treat your most important client relationships. That means understanding what they actually care about (which is often different from what they say they care about), preparing for interactions rather than just showing up, and developing the confidence to deliver your honest counsel even when it creates friction. This is coachable. But it requires practice and usually requires feedback from someone who can watch you do it.
3. Invest in your executive presence deliberately. The leaders I coach who develop executive presence fastest are the ones who stop trying to project it and start building the actual foundation it comes from: clear decision-making, consistent follow-through, and the ability to stay steady in rooms that are designed to create pressure. Executive presence is a byproduct of leadership confidence. Coaching helps build that confidence from the inside out.
4. Make the identity shift, intentionally. This one is the hardest to do alone. It requires honest self-examination: Am I still leading primarily as a communications professional? Am I in rooms where I’m being stretched as a business leader? Am I getting feedback that is genuinely honest, or feedback that is managed because of my role? Most leaders need an outside perspective to answer those questions accurately. (For more on why self-assessment gets harder the higher you rise, please see my piece on the leadership perception gap.)

The Gap Is Closable. But It Doesn’t Close on Its Own.

The communications function is gaining influence. The data is unambiguous on that. More CCOs are in the C-suite, more are reporting directly to the CEO, and the function’s strategic relevance is being recognized at the highest levels of organizations.

But that rising tide does not lift every boat automatically.

The leaders who are making it to those rooms are the ones who did the work to close the gap between communications expertise and executive leadership. They developed business acumen. They built the confidence and skill to manage up. They invested in their executive presence. And they made the identity shift that lets them walk into a CEO’s office as a peer, not a service provider.

That work is what executive coaching is for. Not because it is a shortcut. But because the gap is often hardest to see from where you’re standing, and the work goes faster when someone is helping you see it clearly.

The senior executive I mentioned at the start of this piece knew something was missing. She just didn’t know what it was. Six months of focused coaching later, she did. And she closed it.

That’s how this works.

Are you a PR or communications leader who knows there’s a gap between where you are and where you want to be? Executive coaching helps you see it clearly and close it deliberately. I also offer the Energy Leadership Index assessment as a powerful starting point for understanding your current leadership impact. Schedule a complimentary consultation to start the conversation.