LEBO MADIBA: The CEO as diplomat — business leadership in a fragmenting global order

Power is shifting. Influence is no longer concentrated but dispersed. Narratives unfold across boardrooms, browsers and borders. The old boundaries separating politics, business and diplomacy are increasingly blurred.

As the global conversation fragments, the pressure on corporate leaders to respond with clarity, credibility and strategy is intensifying. In this new environment CEOs need to understand and speak the evolving language of leadership.

In this new global order, policy can be shaped by hashtags. Trade can be disrupted by one presidential tweet. Reputations, built over decades, can unravel in days. Diplomacy itself, once the preserve of statesmen and envoys, has been redefined. In this volatile landscape the corporate leader is increasingly called to play a diplomatic role.

Not because they want to. But because they must.

While diplomacy has long been part of the CEO’s remit, often quietly negotiated in back channels, the modern version is more exposed, more urgent and more politically charged. CEOs must now operate not through handshakes and protocol, but through influence, clarity and foresight. Their voice is increasingly relevant in debates on war, climate disruption, social justice, migration and national sovereignty. Silence is no longer safe. Neutrality is often interpreted as complicity.

Performative statements no longer suffice in today’s environment. The burden of influence has become central to the CEO’s role. The question is no longer “should we speak?” but “what does our silence signal?” In a post-truth world, where misinformation spreads faster than policy and polarisation bleeds into every space, CEOs become more than business leaders. They become representative voices in the theatre of global trust.

This was one of the central tensions explored at the 2025 Davos Communications Summit, hosted by the World Communications Forum Association. The summit gathered senior communicators, corporate affairs professionals and strategists from across the globe to examine the shifting power structures that influence trust, diplomacy and the role of business in society.

One recurring insight came from PRovoke Media founder Paul Holmes, who urged leaders to develop “pattern recognition” — the ability to connect signals across politics, society and markets before they converge into full-blown risk. Rather than crystal-ball gazing, this is a strategic skill, one that involves interpreting early movements in public sentiment, shifts in regulatory tone or ideological undercurrents, and using that insight to guide business positioning before the crisis hits. While governments hesitate, brands are being asked to lead.

Why? Because people still trust business more than politics, media or religion. But that trust is fragile. It comes with expectation. CEOs today are asked to bridge ideological divides inside their workforce. To navigate trade tensions between markets. To defend ESG while avoiding accusations of woke capitalism. To weigh in on misinformation and disinformation, even when the facts are weaponised. In many ways they are asked to do what diplomats once did; hold the line, translate difference and signal stability.

In SA diplomacy is not just international, it is increasingly domestic. Business leaders are being pulled into the fault lines of governance, particularly as US-SA relations become more strained. From greylisting to foreign policy misalignment, tension with Washington has created reputational and investment uncertainty, particularly in sectors dependent on exports, African Growth & Opportunity Act benefits, and investor sentiment.

Business Leadership SA CEO Busi Mavuso recently captured the urgency well, warning that “SA must get ready for war” and calling for a renewed push to “strengthen and diversify our trade relations with other countries”. Against this backdrop, the Brics alignment adds another layer of complexity. CEOs are expected to signal coherence in the face of global polarisation. Figures like Business Unity SA president Bonang Mohale and BSG chair Mteto Nyati have, at times, had to manage both commercial performance and national morale.

Globally, this role is already being played by CEOs such as Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, who has had to balance AI leadership with rising regulation; General Motors’ Mary Barra, navigating EV transition amid union pressures and climate accountability; and Darren Woods of ExxonMobil, facing scrutiny for navigating energy security without slipping into greenwashing. Their decisions ripple across geopolitics and move markets. In today’s climate their values are judged by what they fund, defend or ignore, actions that reveal far more than words alone.

This role calls for a different kind of intelligence, one rooted in cultural awareness, moral clarity, strategic restraint and the ability to read between the lines when the noise is loudest. It also demands courage because diplomacy without courage is appeasement.

At the Davos Communication Summit one truth came into focus — the demands on today’s CEOs have expanded beyond the traditional playbook. Business leaders are expected to read shifting political currents, anticipate reputational landmines and navigate ideological fault lines with the precision of a seasoned envoy.

While they’ve always managed complexity, the challenge now lies in how public, polarised and fast-moving that complexity has become. That’s why diplomacy, in its modern, values-led and often uncomfortable form, has moved from the periphery of leadership to its centre.

As the centre of global consensus weakens, the CEO is increasingly called to steady the noise, translating complexity, listening with intent and responding with balance in an age of extremes. So the question is no longer whether the CEO should act as a diplomat, it is whether leadership, as we know it, is evolving fast enough to meet this moment.

Because the world won’t wait. Leadership today is as much about soft power as it is about strategy. 

Madiba is founder and MD at PR Powerhouse.