Conflicts are perhaps the ultimate litmus test of a business leader’s ability to keep their political views to themselves. Do your Linkedin followers really need to know your views about the US and Israeli war on Iran? Will declaring your support or disagreement with the attacks help your business? The answer, in all likeliness, is no.
There is, of course, a place for good thought leadership. Demonstrating expertise in a field is a good way of boosting a personal profile, which in turn can help boost the profile of the company you represent. I regularly give talks on this very subject to CEOs, start-up founders and representatives of NGOs. And one of the key points that I always make is that unless your business has a direct stake in a conflict and can add value to the conversation (such as an airline boss discussing the current chaos in the skies over the Middle East, or a Ukrainian founder talking about building a business in the midst of Russia’s ongoing invasion), avoid commenting. Stick to what you know, never make yourself the main character, and if you have nothing directly relevant to say, then say (or write) nothing.
The past few days have demonstrated that few business leaders understand this. Social media is awash with people who really ought to know better either cheering on the US and Israel, or condemning their actions. Others have seen fit to throw cheap jibes at tax exiles living in the United Arab Emirates, or defend them. None of this (regardless of what side of the argument you take) resembles a good look; not for the commentator nor for their firm.
The pull of social media
Part of the problem is ego. The pull of social media has convinced many executives that their followers are genuinely waiting for their views on geopolitics. Some are, but most are not. The rest are watching to see if you say something that will give them a reason to stop doing business with you.
It has not always ended gracefully for those who forgot this. When Larry Fink of BlackRock weighed into the ESG debate, he found himself attacked from both flanks: by conservatives pulling pension fund mandates, by progressives insisting he was not doing nearly enough. Disney’s protracted battle with Ron DeSantis over Florida’s education laws cost the company years of legal headache, all for a political intervention that ultimately changed nothing on the ground. These are not small outfits with nothing to lose. If it can go wrong at that scale, it can certainly go wrong for a mid-sized consultancy in Warsaw or a start-up in Tallinn.
Bridging the Reinvention Gap
The underlying impulse is not hard to understand. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, many business leaders felt (and in some cases correctly) that silence was itself a statement. That moment reshaped a generation of communications strategies, and the lesson some drew from it was that staying quiet is always risky. The lesson they should have drawn is more precise: there are circumstances in which your industry, your workforce, or your supply chain make your perspective directly relevant, and circumstances in which they do not.
Knowing the difference
The war on Iran falls squarely into the second category for the overwhelming majority of those currently sounding off about it. What expertise does a fintech founder in Bucharest bring to questions of missile strikes and regional sovereignty? What does a management consultant’s LinkedIn post add to a debate being shaped by governments, generals, and diplomats with decades of experience? Very little, in most cases, and everyone scrolling past already knows it.
Good thought leadership is specific. It draws on direct knowledge, hard-won experience, and genuine perspective. A founder who has done business across the Gulf, or who has staff in Tel Aviv or Tehran, has something real to offer. Everyone else is adding noise to an already deafening conversation while simultaneously alienating clients, partners, and employees who happen to sit on the other side of a deeply polarised argument. The return on that kind of bravado is almost always negative.
There is a version of this that business schools will never teach: the most effective personal brand is often the quietest one. Some of the sharpest operators I have encountered over the years are also, conspicuously, among the least talkative on social media. They write when they have something to say. When they do not, they say nothing. The contrast with the current torrent of hot takes could not be more striking.
Reinvention, be it of a business or a personal brand, rarely involves making yourself the loudest voice in the room. It requires consistency, credibility, and the discipline to stay in your lane when the news cycle tries to drag you out of it. The executives currently flooding LinkedIn with their views on events they cannot influence would do well to reflect on that. Nobody ever became a worse business leader for holding their tongue.
Photo: Dreamstime.
