CEOs are too scripted and lack courage, say business bloggers

“It would be great to just hear someone say that things need to change,” one said.

The10Company offers some advice to CEOs for how to do a better job of being authentic—shun corporate-speak, tell stories, be blunt—but how easy is that to do? There’s more to it than simply typing the honest truth about everything into a Twitter feed, communicators say.

The good points

The bloggers who were interviewed make good points, says Katrina Olson, a lecturer at the University of Illinois and principal at Katrina Olson Strategic Communications. Avoiding jargon is imperative for anyone who wants to seem authentic, she says.

“Not only bloggers, but today’s savvy consumers see right through this kind of wording and assume the CEO who uses them is trying to hide the truth or not disclose all the facts,” Olson says. It would be quite refreshing to hear a top executive simply state that someone was fired for embezzlement and that the company is working on new safeguards, for example, rather than hearing that someone is leaving “to spend more time with his family.”