Most leaders think they’re good communicators. Why wouldn’t they? Communication effectively pitched the vision, raised the capital, won the trust. But leadership isn’t a static job. The landscape shifts, and the people shift with it. What worked when you were building may not work when you’re scaling. The message that fired up a team of ten might ring hollow with a team of a hundred.

The question isn’t whether you’re articulate or charismatic. The question is whether your communication matches the moment. Can you adjust? Can you connect? Can you lead with your words, not just when it’s easy, but when it matters most?

Leaders Communicate Through Difficulty

When the stakes are high, leaders don’t have the luxury of confusion. In times of uncertainty, employees don’t need answers as much as they need clarity. They need to know what’s happening, what it means, and what’s next.

During the early days of the pandemic, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern set a global standard for crisis communication. She didn’t posture. She didn’t pretend to have every answer. But she spoke like a real human—clear, calm, honest. Her daily briefings followed a recognizable narrative rhythm: the challenge, the shared stakes, the collective path forward. She used metaphor and repetition not to manipulate but to create memory. People listened, and then some. They believed.

Compare that to BP CEO Tony Hayward during the Deepwater Horizon disaster. His now-infamous comment, “I’d like my life back” revealed a total disconnect. He failed to acknowledge the pain, the responsibility, the gravity. His words widened the gap between leader and people. Communication wasn’t neutral; it actively undermined trust.

According to Edelman’s Trust Barometer, during moments of crisis, employee trust hinges on a leader’s ability to communicate frequently, transparently, and empathetically. Silence breeds anxiety. Spin breeds resentment. Story—structured, real, and grounded—builds belief.

Leaders Communicate Through Prosperity

You’d think celebration would be the easy part. But the tough truth to swallow is most leaders under-communicate during good times. The numbers are up, morale is high, and the assumption is: people get it.

They don’t.

Growth without guidance creates confusion. Success without story leads to stagnation. The best leaders mark the moment. They show how today’s win fits into the larger arc of the company’s journey. They turn results into meaning.

Satya Nadella at Microsoft models this. After strong quarters, he doesn’t just cite metrics—he narrates the why. He connects performance to purpose. He reminds people what matters most, especially when momentum makes it easy to forget. He uses times of prosperity to reinforce values, not relax them.

Howard Schultz learned this lesson the hard way. In Starbucks’ early 2000s boom years, the company prioritized expansion without grounding it in the core brand story. Quality slipped. Culture eroded. Schultz returned in 2008, closed every store for retraining, and restarted the story. Literally. His act wasn’t just operational—it was narrative. A signal. A new chapter.

Harvard Business Review reports that when employee recognition is tied to a clear purpose, engagement rises by more than 60%. Your leadership could be defined by prosperity, but only if you communicate throughout it with intention.

Leadership Is Communication

Leadership doesn’t happen behind closed doors. It happens in meetings, emails, town halls, hallway conversations. Leadership is communication—at scale, under pressure, across cultures and functions.

Abraham Lincoln was a political powerhouse, but many believe his real talents were narrative. The Gettysburg Address, just 271 words long, reframed the Civil War as a moral reckoning. He didn’t argue. He aligned. His message wasn’t tactical. It was transformational.

Angela Ahrendts understood this, too. At Burberry and later at Apple, she made communication a leadership discipline. Her role wasn’t just to make decisions. It was to connect people’s actions to meaning. She aligned culture to brand. She told a story in which people could feel proud to play a role.

Science is on the communicative leader’s team too. Research from Stanford shows that people remember stories up to 22 times more than facts alone. Stories activate more areas of the brain. They build empathy. They stick.

The Real Question

You may be a strong communicator. It’s probably one of the reasons people follow you.

But stop and ask: Are you shaping your message to meet this moment in your business? Are you speaking in ways that move people toward the future you’re building, or just reporting on the present? Are you comfortable deviating from the script when someone or something jars your organization off-course?

Communication isn’t something we’re born with. It’s a tool we learn to use over time. It sharpens with practice. It changes with context. And it determines whether people follow you with compliance or conviction.

If your business is evolving, your message has to evolve with it. Leadership doesn’t exist apart from communication. It is communication. Everything else is just noise.