Looking for Communication Manager: 9 Brutal Truths Every Leader Must Face in 2025

Every organization hits the wall—a project goes sideways, team messages devolve into noise, and the feedback loop feels like a Möbius strip of confusion. If you’re looking for communication manager talent, you’re not alone—but you’re probably not ready for the uncomfortable truths that the role (and the search itself) drag into the light. Forget the sanitized job postings and rose-tinted LinkedIn endorsements. The reality? Communication chaos is killing businesses from the inside. Invisible, corrosive, and—according to hard research—costlier than most leaders dare to admit.

This isn’t just another corporate trend piece. We’re tearing into the gritty data, the human fallout, and the rise of AI teammates that have already outpaced many of yesterday’s “comms pros.” If you’re here to tick a hiring box, stop reading. But if you want to know what really separates high-performance teams from the rest—and why your next move could define your organization’s fate—strap in. We’re exposing the nine brutal truths every leader must face when looking for a communication manager in 2025, what most leaders get wrong, and what the future (yes, the present future) really demands.

The silent epidemic: why communication chaos kills organizations

Hidden costs of poor communication

Let’s drop the polite fiction: miscommunication isn’t just a “soft skill” failure—it’s an operational, cultural, and financial sinkhole. According to recent industry research, communication breakdowns are directly linked to missed deadlines, failed projects, and high employee churn. In 2024, Gallup research found that teams with poor internal comms experience up to a 45% increase in turnover compared to well-aligned teams. And it doesn’t stop at the exit interview.

The hidden costs? Reputational damage, loss of trust, duplicated efforts, and a toxic culture that quietly erodes accountability. Recent data from PassiveSecrets, 2024, shows that nearly 70% of employees cite unclear communication as their top frustration at work, with a direct tie to burnout and disengagement. This is not a minor HR issue—it's a root cause of systemic dysfunction.

Table 1: The financial and operational fallout of communication breakdown. Source: Original analysis based on Gallup 2024; PassiveSecrets 2024.

These aren’t theoretical losses—they’re real dollars, real reputations, and real people disengaging one Slack ping at a time.

Communication chaos doesn’t just throttle productivity; it’s a silent epidemic that metastasizes into every corner of an organization. The longer leaders ignore it, the more mundane errors snowball into existential threats. And when the bill comes due, no amount of “team-building” workshops can patch the holes left by chronic misalignment.

Stories from the trenches: when teams implode

Every leader has a story—the product launch that never landed, the “urgent” email thread that looped for weeks without resolution, or the crisis that spun out of control because no one knew who was supposed to speak up.

"Communication is the antidote to chaos. It brings calm, clarity, and resilience. When organizations neglect it, they invite confusion and risk."
— Jenni Field, Communication Consultant, Workshop, 2024

True failure rarely comes from a single catastrophic message. It’s the accumulation: months of muddled priorities, unspoken grievances, and conflicting directives. The implosion is never sudden, just suddenly obvious.

In the trenches, managers describe their days as firefighting exercises—reacting, clarifying, and smoothing over missteps that could have been avoided with the right structure and leadership. The result: trust erodes, teams fracture, and the best talent quietly exits. If your organization has survived one of these implosions, you know: communication chaos isn’t just painful—it’s existential.

Data never lies: statistics on miscommunication

Numbers reveal the scale of the problem with ruthless clarity. As of early 2025, Zippia’s industry analysis reports that only 49% of US companies have a formal crisis communication plan—despite the fact that organizations with such plans recover from incidents 40% faster. According to PassiveSecrets, 2024, 57% of remote employees say asynchronous miscommunication directly impacts their productivity, while 68% of managers list “enabling internal comms” as a top priority.

Table 2: Recent statistics exposing the cost and prevalence of miscommunication. Source: Original analysis based on Zippia 2025; Workshop 2024; Gallup 2024; PassiveSecrets 2024.

The takeaway? If you’re operating without a dedicated strategy or expert, odds are you’re already bleeding value through invisible wounds.

Who really needs a communication manager? (And who doesn’t)

Signs your organization is overdue

It’s not always obvious when you need a communication manager. But the signs are there, blinking red, for those who dare to look.

• Chronic confusion about priorities: If daily standups devolve into clarification sessions, your teams are probably suffering from message overload or outright misalignment.
• High turnover among top performers: Research ties “poor communication” directly to disengagement and the loss of high-value contributors.
• Frequent crisis mode: If every minor issue escalates, you likely lack clear channels or crisis playbooks.
• Persistent silos: Information hoarded in one department never makes it to another, torpedoing collaboration and innovation.
• Passive-aggressive email chains: When people “reply all” instead of resolving issues directly, you’ve got a cultural (and comms) problem.
• Ad hoc internal announcements: If every memo feels like a surprise, your organization has lost its narrative control.

If any of this looks familiar, consider that your next critical hire isn’t a rainmaker or another project manager—but the one who can bring order to the signal-to-noise ratio.

The brutal truth? Most organizations wait until the damage is already done before they look for a communication manager. By then, you’re often hiring from a position of weakness, forced to fix what should have been prevented.

When hiring is not the answer: exploring alternatives

Not every comms breakdown requires a full-time hire. In some cases, leaders default to posting communication manager roles when the root problem is structural, not personnel-driven. Consider these alternatives:

• Deploy AI-powered tools: Platforms like futurecoworker.ai can automate routine comms functions, triage email noise, and help managers coordinate asynchronously—often at a fraction of the cost.
• Upskill existing leaders: Sometimes the gap is in skill, not headcount. Targeted training in digital communication, crisis management, or cultural intelligence can yield rapid gains.
• Redesign internal processes: If messages bottleneck at one layer, or meetings spiral without outcomes, it’s time for operational surgery, not a new hire.
• Leverage external consultants: For acute crises or major transitions, short-term expertise can stabilize the ship without the long-term overhead.

Before you launch another hiring round, interrogate the problem. Is it a missing skill set, broken process, or scale issue? Sometimes, the answer is evolution, not expansion.

Case study: when DIY went wrong

Consider the story of a mid-sized technology firm that leaned on their project managers to “own communication” during a high-stakes product rollout. The logic: these were the smartest folks in the room, surely they could handle a few extra emails and meetings.

"We assumed our senior managers could ‘just handle’ the messaging. Within weeks, deadlines slipped. Stakeholders were left in the dark, and our best engineers quit out of frustration. It took months to fix the trust we lost."
— Anonymous CTO, Tech Industry, 2024

The lesson? DIY comms is a false economy. When messaging is everyone’s job, it’s nobody’s job—and accountability vanishes. Smart organizations recognize this early and invest in clarity before chaos consumes them.

Cracking the code: what a communication manager really does

Beyond buzzwords: core responsibilities

Communication manager job descriptions can read like a parade of buzzwords: “alignment,” “storytelling,” “stakeholder engagement.” But what do these actually mean in the trenches?

Communication managers are architects of clarity. They design, deliver, and defend the organizational narrative. Their remit crosses every function—HR, operations, crisis management, marketing—synthesizing raw noise into focused action.

Key responsibilities:

Organizational Messaging : Crafting and curating messaging that aligns with business objectives and culture. Every announcement, update, or crisis response runs through their filter for clarity and consistency.

Crisis Communication : Developing and executing crisis playbooks—because in a world where only 49% of companies have a formal plan, the comms manager is the firewall between chaos and recovery.

Internal Enablement : Equipping managers and teams to be effective communicators, not just passive recipients. This includes training, playbooks, and feedback loops.

Measurement and Analytics : Proving impact through analytics. Modern communication managers must be as comfortable with dashboards as with drafting memos.

Cross-Channel Coordination : Orchestrating messaging across email, video, intranet, and social channels—ensuring nothing gets lost in translation.

In sum: The communication manager is equal parts strategist, operator, and therapist. Anything less, and you’re hiring a glorified memo writer.

Their success is measured not by “noise made,” but by clarity delivered and chaos averted. The difference is existential.

Skills that separate amateurs from pros

So what turns a generic comms “specialist” into a true operator? The modern communication manager is a polymath—a blend of creative, technical, and interpersonal mastery.

• SEO and content fluency: Knowing how to craft messages that cut through algorithmic clutter and reach the right audience—internal or external.
• Digital tool mastery: From Slack hacks to video editing, pros wield software with surgical precision, automating what they can and personalizing what matters.
• Data-driven mindset: The ability to analyze engagement metrics, spot trends, and pivot strategies in real time.
• Crisis calm: A high emotional IQ and the ability to make hard calls when everyone else is panicking.
• Cultural intelligence: Understanding how messaging lands across diverse, global teams—especially in asynchronous environments.
• Ethics and nuance: Navigating sensitive political, social, and environmental issues requires a deft, principled touch.

Amateurs focus on “sending updates.” Pros engineer alignment, spark engagement, and—when needed—pull organizations back from the brink.

Get this wrong, and you’ll hire a bottleneck. Get it right, and you’ll gain the most strategic operator in your org chart.

How success is measured (and why most get it wrong)

Most companies judge communication managers by output: number of emails, announcements, or “likes” on the intranet. That’s a rookie mistake. The only metrics that matter are those tied to business outcomes and organizational health.

Table 3: Measuring what matters in communication management. Source: Original analysis based on Zippia 2025; PassiveSecrets 2024.

The bottom line: A great communication manager moves the needle on retention, crisis resilience, and operational speed. Anything else is noise.

The new disruptors: AI-powered teammates and the future of workplace communication

Rise of the intelligent enterprise teammate

Forget the tired fear-mongering about AI “replacing” jobs. The real revolution is happening right now, and it’s more nuanced—and more useful—than most leaders realize. Platforms like futurecoworker.ai are not sci-fi—they’re already automating the most tedious, error-prone aspects of team communication and task management.

As organizations drown in asynchronous messages, cross-time-zone chaos, and information overload, AI-powered teammates step in to:

• Automatically triage, summarize, and assign incoming comms as actionable tasks.
• Identify communication bottlenecks and suggest real-time improvements.
• Distill complex email threads into concise, searchable knowledge.

According to recent research from Workshop, 2024, 68% of managers now prioritize tools that support asynchronous communication and real-time insight. The smart money isn’t betting on AI replacing all human comms roles—but on hybrid models where AI teammates shoulder the grunt work, leaving humans to handle nuance, ethics, and strategy.

In this new landscape, the communication manager’s job is as much about orchestrating tech as messaging people.

Case study: AI vs. human communication manager

Consider a mid-sized fintech company that ran a controlled experiment: half their teams relied on a traditional communication manager; the other half integrated an AI-powered teammate alongside their manager.

Table 4: AI vs. Human comms management—measurable differences. Source: Original analysis based on compiled industry case studies 2024.

The takeaway? The AI-human hybrid outperformed on every core metric except “team culture,” where the human manager’s empathy still reigned. The lesson is clear: don’t ditch your people—instead, empower them with tools that do what even the best comms pro can’t.

AI in this context isn’t about replacement. It’s about augmentation. The true disruptors are the teams that blend both.

Integrating AI tools like futurecoworker.ai

Making the leap to AI-powered communication doesn’t have to be an existential risk. Leading organizations integrate these tools step-by-step, starting with automating low-level tasks and scaling up to more complex workflows.

First, identify the grunt work—repetitive email sorting, meeting coordination, status updates. Deploy AI here, freeing up human bandwidth. Then, use AI-generated insights to inform high-stakes decisions, crisis comms, and culture building.

"AI is not your enemy—it’s your edge. When used right, it enables communication managers to focus on what truly matters: trust, vision, and resilience." — Adapted from Workshop, 2024

The result? Teams that move faster, leaders who see around corners, and organizations that don’t just survive chaos—they thrive on clarity.

Hiring traps: mistakes leaders make when looking for communication manager

Red flags in candidates (that cost you millions)

Not all comms skills are created equal. Here’s where most leaders get burned:

• Obsessed with “culture fit”: When candidates parrot your existing vibe, they may lack the backbone to challenge groupthink or raise hard truths.
• Over-indexing on writing skills: Elegant prose is worthless if the writer can’t drive outcomes or decode stakeholder politics.
• Lack of digital fluency: In 2025, if your comms manager can’t wrangle Slack, analyze engagement data, or automate a workflow, you’re hiring yesterday’s talent.
• All talk, no analytics: If candidates can’t show how they measured impact or improved processes, they’re not ready for prime time.
• Fear of AI: Those who view AI as a threat—not a tool—are signaling inflexibility.

Each red flag may not cost you millions overnight, but over time, they compound into missed opportunities, disengaged teams, and the slow rot of mediocrity.

Hiring for comfort is hiring for stasis. Seek discomfort—find someone who makes you rethink the status quo.

The illusion of ‘culture fit’

“Culture fit” is the most overused—and dangerous—phrase in the hiring lexicon. It’s code for “people like us,” and it’s a recipe for stagnation.

"The best communicators are not those who blend in, but those who bridge gaps. If your interviews feel too cozy, you’re missing out on voices that could challenge and elevate your org." — Paraphrased insight, PR Daily, 2024

When “fit” becomes a proxy for “same,” you build echo chambers, not resilient teams. The best communication managers are often the ones who ask uncomfortable questions, challenge norms, and force clarity where there’s ambiguity.

Your job isn’t to find someone who matches your vibe, but someone who can decode—and occasionally disrupt—it for the better.

Outdated interview questions to throw out

Stop asking questions that reveal nothing about real comms prowess. If you’re still using these, it’s time to upgrade:

1. “Tell me about a time you handled a difficult person.” (Too generic—everyone rehearses an answer.)
2. “What’s your preferred communication style?” (The real pros adapt to their audience, not the other way around.)
3. “How do you deal with stress?” (The job is stressful by nature; probe for concrete strategies, not platitudes.)
4. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” (The comms landscape shifts too fast for this to matter.)
5. “What’s your biggest weakness?” (You know you’re not getting a real answer.)

Instead, focus on scenario-based questions, digital tool assessments, and crisis simulations. The goal: see how candidates think, adapt, and operate under duress.

The right questions uncover more than skills—they reveal mindset, agility, and grit.

From chaos to clarity: step-by-step guide to finding the right fit

Self-assessment: do you really need this role?

Before posting another job ad, leaders must interrogate their motives and needs. Here’s how:

1. Audit your pain points: Where are communication breakdowns hurting you most—speed, engagement, crisis response?
2. Map existing capabilities: Who already owns parts of the comms function? Are the gaps skill-based, structural, or both?
3. Estimate ROI: What is the estimated cost of current miscommunication (lost deals, churn, delays)? Does it justify a new hire, a consultant, or technology?
4. Check for process gaps: Are your workflows clear, or do messages get lost in the ether?
5. Assess leadership buy-in: Is there sponsorship for a real comms strategy, or is this just box-ticking?

If you can’t answer these questions with data, you’re not ready to hire—you’re ready to investigate.

The goal isn’t to fill a seat, but to fix the machine. That starts with ruthless honesty.

Designing a job description that attracts real talent

The best communication managers want to solve tough problems, not write fluff. Your job description should reflect that by focusing on:

• Outcomes, not just activities: Detail what success looks like—crisis recovery time, engagement rates, narrative clarity.
• Technical and human skills: Highlight needs for analytics, digital tool fluency, and emotional intelligence equally.
• Opportunity to shape strategy: Top talent wants to know they’ll drive change, not just execute orders.
• Autonomy and support: List reporting lines, available tools, and leadership buy-in.
• Real challenges: Don’t sanitize the mess—show you’re serious about fixing it.

A bland job ad attracts bland candidates. Sharpen your pitch if you want real operators.

The more clearly you define the battle ahead, the more likely you’ll attract those hungry to win it.

Interviewing for impact: beyond the resume

Don’t let polished resumes and canned stories blind you to real ability. Instead, design an interview process that surfaces grit, flexibility, and digital savvy.

1. Scenario-based simulations: Give candidates a real-world crisis or messaging challenge to solve on the spot.
2. Tool proficiency tests: Hands-on demos—can they slice through information using modern comms platforms and analytics?
3. Stakeholder alignment exercise: Ask them to mediate a simulated conflict between departments.
4. Asynchronous challenge: Give a task with a delayed response requirement, mimicking real-world time zone chaos.
5. Feedback loop check: See how they react to critical feedback—do they adapt or defend?

If you want a communication manager who can operate in the trenches, make your interview a proving ground, not a parade.

The goal: hire for what the job is—not what the resume says it could be.

Uncomfortable truths: what nobody tells you about communication managers

The burnout factor: risks for both sides

Burnout isn’t a buzzword—it’s the silent killer of comms effectiveness. Communication managers, often stuck between executive vision and frontline chaos, face relentless pressure to perform emotional labor, firefight crises, and maintain narrative consistency.

Their risk profile is higher than most realize. According to industry data, poor communication is both a cause and effect of burnout. The job’s emotional toll is compounded by the expectation to “always be on,” especially in asynchronous and distributed work environments.

On the flip side, leaders who ignore these realities risk cycling through talent, losing institutional memory, and sinking into a perpetual state of comms triage.

Proactive organizations invest in support structures—coaching, peer forums, and AI-powered tools to offload routine friction. The cost of neglect? Lost momentum, rising turnover, and a spiral of disengagement.

Why some leaders secretly resist the role

Let’s be honest: some leaders see communication managers as a threat—not a fix. The fear? Loss of narrative control, exposure of hidden dysfunction, or simply discomfort with transparency.

"Some CEOs would rather risk chaos than admit their culture needs repair. Communication managers surface the cracks that others try to paper over." — Paraphrased from Zippia, 2025

This resistance is rarely explicit. It manifests as underfunding, token hires, or a revolving door of short-term contracts.

But denial is expensive. Organizations that sidestep these truths often find themselves lurching from crisis to crisis, while their more honest competitors build cultures that thrive on candor and clarity.

The message: If your leadership team isn’t ready for the raw truth, no hire can save you.

When communication managers fail: warning signs

• Chronic firefighting: If every week feels like a new crisis, you haven’t fixed the root cause—just patched symptoms.
• Opaque metrics: If impact can’t be measured, the comms function slips into irrelevance (and budget cuts).
• Team avoidance: When employees bypass the comms manager in favor of backchannels, trust has already eroded.
• Tool overload: Too many platforms, not enough integration—leading to smothered signal and lost productivity.
• Leadership indifference: If execs ignore comms recommendations, the function becomes decorative, not operational.

Each warning sign is a call to action, not a death sentence. But ignoring them is the surest way to guarantee failure.

Beyond titles: redefining communication roles for 2025 and beyond

Evolving skill sets in a hybrid world

The hybrid work era demands a new breed of communicator—one who blends technical expertise, strategic vision, and human nuance.

Digital Fluency : Mastery of collaboration platforms, analytics dashboards, and emerging AI assistants is now table stakes.

Content Engineering : Not just producing content, but architecting how, when, and where it lands across fragmented teams.

Contextual Awareness : The ability to decode and adapt to regional, cultural, and functional differences within the same organization.

Analytics Mindset : Using data not just for reporting, but to diagnose problems and drive real-time course corrections.

Ethical Agility : Navigating polarized topics (politics, environment, social justice) with both backbone and tact.

Tomorrow’s comms leaders aren’t just writers—they’re orchestrators, synthesizers, and data-driven advisors.

The old playbook is dead. The new one is being written in real time by those willing to learn and unlearn, fast.

The rise of the ‘collaboration architect’

A new title is emerging in cutting-edge organizations: Collaboration Architect. These operators design the connective tissue between teams, platforms, and cultures.

Their mandate? Engineer seamless flows of information, tailor tools to user needs, and break down silos before they calcify.

They’re not just managing messages—they’re building the infrastructure that makes frictionless teamwork possible. Communication managers who upskill into this role position themselves as strategic partners, not just support staff.

The future will belong to those who see past the title and design for outcomes—not activity.

Future trends: what’s next for communication management?

• Blurring of internal and external comms—every message is now public-facing, thanks to leaks and social amplification.
• Hyper-personalization of messaging—data-driven platforms tailor updates to teams and individuals, not just “everyone@company.com.”
• Generative AI mainstreaming—AI tools handle first drafts, summaries, and triage, freeing up managers for high-impact work.
• New channels ascend—podcasts, influencer partnerships, and video storytelling eclipse old-school memos.
• Emphasis on resilience—comms pros are judged not just by “good times” but by how deftly they steer through chaos.

The only certainty: standing still is falling behind.

Real-world impact: stories of transformation (and failure)

Turnaround tales: how the right hire changed everything

A multinational retailer, wracked by pandemic-induced confusion, hired a seasoned communication manager with a mandate to rebuild trust. Within six months, daily engagement scores were up 38%, siloed teams were collaborating cross-continentally, and crisis incidents dropped by half.

"The difference was night and day. We stopped working in the dark and started pulling in the same direction. Our new comms manager didn’t just transmit messages—they rewired how we listened and responded." — Head of HR, Retail Sector, 2024

It’s not magic—it’s method. The right hire turns chaos into clarity and inertia into momentum.

Clarity isn’t a luxury. It’s the lever that moves everything else.

When AI teammates outperformed expectations

In a marketing agency, futurecoworker.ai was piloted during a period of rapid growth. Administrative overhead plummeted by 40%, campaign turnaround times shrank, and team satisfaction soared. The human comms manager used AI-generated insights to coach teams, resolve bottlenecks, and focus on creative strategy—not inbox triage.

The lesson: AI, wielded well, amplifies human strengths and neutralizes the drudgery that burns out even the best communicators.

AI is not a threat—it’s the lever that lets good teams become great.

Hard lessons from failed communication strategies

1. Ignoring feedback: A fintech startup launched top-down messages, ignoring employee feedback. Within a quarter, engagement scores tanked and turnover spiked.
2. Over-automation: A healthcare provider rolled out too many tools at once. The result: confusion and a return to informal handoffs.
3. Hire and forget: An IT company hired a comms manager but gave no authority or resources. Six months later, the role was obsolete—and so was the trust.
4. Data-blind messaging: A logistics firm ignored analytics, sending blanket updates. Critical information was lost; a major deadline was missed.

Each failure is a masterclass in what not to do. The lesson: Communication is a discipline, not an afterthought.

Adjacent perspectives: what else you need to know

The true cost of ignoring communication management

Table 5: The true financial and cultural cost of comms neglect. Source: Original analysis based on Zippia 2025; PassiveSecrets 2024.

Leadership that skimps on communication management pays for it—over and over, in ways that compound beyond the spreadsheet.

Ignoring the function doesn’t make it go away. It only hands the mic to entropy.

Common misconceptions debunked

• “Anyone can handle communication.” Research shows this is false. Specialists outperform “volunteers” by wide margins on every metric that matters.
• “AI is just a threat, not a tool.” The best teams use AI to do more with less human burnout, not as a pink slip generator.
• “Internal comms are less important than external.” Internal confusion always leaks outside—usually at the worst possible moment.
• “Culture fit trumps skill.” Diversity of thought is the antidote to echo chamber paralysis.
• “All tools are the same.” Integration, usability, and analytics make or break comms platforms.

Assumptions are the enemy of progress. Replace them with research and ruthless clarity.

Practical applications across industries

Technology : Software teams use communication managers to bridge dev, ops, and client needs—reducing project risk and accelerating delivery.

Marketing : Agencies rely on comms pros to streamline client feedback, project updates, and campaign launches.

Finance : Firms use dedicated managers to ensure compliance messaging lands with both clients and regulators.

Healthcare : Providers deploy comms experts to coordinate appointments, manage crisis alerts, and reduce admin errors.

In every field, clear communication is a competitive advantage—one enforced by architecture, not aspiration.

The bottom line: how to make communication management your secret weapon

Synthesis: turning insight into action

Too many leaders mistake noise for narrative, volume for value. The organizations that win in 2025 are those who:

1. Face reality: Audit communication pain points with brutal honesty.
2. Define outcomes: Hire (or upskill, or automate) for tangible results—not activity.
3. Measure everything: Tie comms efforts directly to business impact, from engagement to crisis recovery.
4. Blend tech and talent: Use AI as a force multiplier, not a crutch.
5. Empower with authority: Give communication managers real autonomy and integration—not just a seat at the table.

The secret weapon isn’t the title—it’s the relentless pursuit of clarity, alignment, and resilience.

Leaders who invest here don’t just survive—they outmaneuver, outlast, and outperform their rivals at every turn.

Where to go from here: resources and final thoughts

If you recognize yourself or your team in any of the above, it’s not too late. The first step is acknowledging the cost of miscommunication—and the urgent need for expertise, structure, and support. Platforms like futurecoworker.ai offer a next-generation approach to taming the digital noise, but no tool is a silver bullet.

Real change starts with asking better questions, demanding measurable impact, and refusing to settle for the status quo. Whether you hire, upskill, or automate—start now. Because in the end, clarity isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between chaos and competitive edge.

— Ready to transform your team’s narrative? Don’t just look for a communication manager—build the system that lets clarity win. For more insights and tactical resources, visit futurecoworker.ai and join the organizations turning communication into their ultimate leverage point.