Twelve years ago, I wrote a town hall script that I’m still not proud of. It was clear. It was on-message. It was signed off by everyone who needed to. And when the CEO read it word for word, the room went silent — not in shock, but in the way that says we don’t believe you.

That meeting taught me something I’ve returned to throughout the rest of my career. In moments of transformation, the comms doesn’t just inform people. It tells them whether their leaders can be trusted with what comes next.

Twenty-five years in comms, the same lesson keeps surfacing across different organisations, sectors, and change programmes. And right now, in a world where transformation has stopped being a project and started being real life, it matters more than it ever did.

The gap I keep seeing

Gallagher’s 2026 Employee Communications Report tells us that 73% of internal communicators want to operate as strategic consultants. Only 18% actually do. 49% describe their main function as broadcasting announcements. One in five sees themselves as a reactive service desk.

None of us came into this profession to be a service desk. So what’s happened?

What’s happened, in my experience, is that we’ve spent twenty years training internal comms teams to be brilliantly responsive. Brilliant at turnaround. Brilliant at making someone else’s brief land. The quiet trade-off is that we stopped being brilliant at saying – hold on, that’s not the message that needs to go out.

The reframe

A broadcaster delivers what they’re handed. An editor decides what gets through.
Same content. Different positioning.

The shift from broadcaster to editor isn’t a job title rebrand. It’s how internal comms claims its strategic seat – not because anyone offered it, but because you walked in and sat down.

Three small moves you can make this week to start that shift:

1. Replace “here’s the comms” with “here’s what I’d advise.” It sounds tiny. It isn’t. It changes how the leader hears you and, more importantly, how you hear yourself.
2. Ask the strategic question: “What aren’t we saying yes to right now?” The moment you can name what’s been deprioritised, you’ve stopped being a delivery channel and started thinking about strategy.
3. Back your team publicly the first time one of them pushes back on a leader. If you don’t, the lesson they learn is that it isn’t safe, and you’ll never get it back.

And one thing on Mondays

The readiness gap your organisation is trying to close,  between where it is and where it needs to be,  doesn’t close at conferences. It closes on Mondays, in the small moments where you choose to advise rather than deliver.

You are not a message carrier. You are an editor of change. Your organisation needs that more than it knows.

Ready to make the shift? I work with internal comms teams and individuals on three things: building leadership confidence in comms roles, spotting and addressing burnout (in yourselves and your teams), and coaching senior comms practitioners through continual transformation. I support clients through: •  One-to-one coaching for comms leaders and specialists •  Team mentoring through transformation and change •  Consultancy for in-house comms functions looking to step into a strategic role Get in touch:  vishnee@vscomms.co.uk

First delivered as a session at Gallagher’s 2026 Communications Summit, London. Stats: Gallagher 2026 Employee Communications Report.