FIVE COMMUNICATION GAPS EVERY LEADER MUST CLOSE IN TIMES OF CHANGE.
By Faye McCray, lawyer, former media executive, and CEO of a strategic communications firm specializing in guiding leaders through high-stakes change.
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CLOSING THEM ISN’T A MATTER OF MESSAGING. IT’S LEADERSHIP.
Let’s be honest.
Most M&A announcements are written for investors, not the people who actually make the business run. The press release promises efficiency and vision. Inside, employees are left guessing what comes next. That uncertainty can turn even the strongest deal into its biggest liability.
Here’s the cold, hard data on why that matters: M&A deals fail at eye-opening rates, typically 60–90% fall short of delivering expected value, with people-related issues and poor integration cited as the primary culprits (BPE Search, 2025; Phoenix Strategy Group, 2025). Up to 70% of these deals don’t succeed at all (WTW, 2025). And even among completed transactions, 47% of employees leave within a year, and 75% depart within three, often due to cultural misalignment and unclear messaging (EY, 2025).
I’ve spent my career at the intersection of law, media, and strategic communications. As a lawyer, I learned when silence protects and when it creates risk. As a media executive, I saw how quickly silence can cause leaders to lose control of the story. Today, as CEO of a communications firm, I guide leaders through disruption, helping them craft strategies that stay consistent, credible, and clear.
Across industries, The Five Communication Gaps crop up again and again. They explain why even strong strategies stumble, and why closing them makes change take root.
THE PRIORITY GAP
The tell: employees are still grinding on projects that leadership quietly abandoned.
Leaders love to announce bold new goals. But too often they fail to name what is no longer a priority. Without that clarity, teams default to the familiar. Legacy projects drag on. Whole departments keep running plays that don’t matter anymore. The result is wasted effort and the perception that leadership is out of touch.
Closing the Priority Gap requires discipline. Leaders must be explicit not only about what matters now, but what doesn’t. The moment employees are told what to stop doing, energy shifts. They can redirect toward the work that defines the future instead of spinning wheels in the past.
THE TRUST GAP
The tell: rumors spread faster than carefully crafted talking points.
Silence feels safe. But it isn’t. Leaders often wait until every detail is final before they speak. By then, employees have already written their own story. And fear travels faster than fact. This silence hits hardest in the middle. Managers are the people employees turn to first, the ones expected to translate strategy into daily action. When managers don’t have answers, they improvise or retreat. Either way, trust erodes.
Choose presence over perfection. Share what you know, admit what you don’t, and establish a cadence so people know when they’ll hear from you next. Just as important, arm managers with updates and talking points so they can lead with confidence. People can live with uncertainty if they trust their leaders are being honest. What they cannot live with is silence.
THE ALIGNMENT GAP
The tell: the press release says “growth” while LinkedIn says hiring freezes.
Employees read press releases. Customers scroll headlines. Partners compare notes. When the story inside doesn’t match the story outside, credibility collapses.
Alignment doesn’t mean parroting the same words to every audience. It means building one consistent story with different points of emphasis. Employees want to see how their work connects to the future. Customers want reassurance. Investors want confidence. The foundation must hold even as the tone shifts.
I have seen organizations lose trust overnight because their external message of momentum clashed with internal experiences of constraint. Closing this gap requires consistency in substance and precision in delivery. Without it, even true messages ring false.
THE ADVOCACY GAP
The tell: people share half-truths that travel faster than official updates.
Employees are not passive recipients of communication. They are the brand’s most powerful advocates. Every meeting, every client call, every social post carries the story forward.
When employees don’t understand the reason behind a change, they unintentionally dilute the message. They speculate. They fill in gaps. And their version, however incomplete, spreads.
Equip stakeholders with simple, confident language to explain the change. This isn’t corporate spin. It’s empowerment. When people understand how the shift connects to purpose and to their own work, they stabilize culture inside and amplify the brand beyond.
THE CONTINUITY GAP
The tell: change feels like chaos instead of progress.
In every transformation, leaders focus on what’s new. What gets overlooked is what’s staying the same. Without that anchor, employees feel unmoored and customers see instability.
Closing the Continuity Gap means reminding people of the through line. Connect the change to purpose. Emphasize what will endure. Continuity shows that the organization is building on strength, not discarding its identity.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Every transformation raises the same question: will people stay with you?
Employees, customers, and partners decide quickly whether they believe the story being told. The Five Communication Gaps show up in nearly every organization. Closing them isn’t a matter of messaging. It is leadership. And when leaders take them seriously, communication stops being a support function. It becomes the system that carries strategy from announcement to reality.
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