You know the leader I’m about to talk about. I get to work with them all the time.
They can hold attention in a room of four hundred people at a big event. They have years, often decades, of knowledge and expertise, and they know how to make it all feel simple and relatable. This is the kind of leader who takes the time for a five-minute hallway conversation with you, and you leave feeling steadier than when you started.
Then you look them up on LinkedIn and find a headshot from 2019 and four posts, all announcements, from the past two years.
That gap almost never comes from not caring. It comes from not knowing which parts of an ordinary week are worth talking about, and not having the hours to sit down and sort it out. The truth is, they have the material. They probably have more of it than most of the LinkedIn superusers who post every single day. What they don’t have is a sustainable way to move what they know out of their own head and in front of the people they meet online.
The work is not about performing for an audience. Like so many other aspects of leadership, it’s about relationships.
Why this matters more in 2026 than it did three years ago
Public trust in higher education, or the lack of it, has taken over the headlines. Inside Higher Ed’s 2026 presidential survey found that just 16 percent of leaders believe the sector has responded effectively to declining trust. Sixteen percent. That’s coming from the people running these institutions, grading their own field.
But the public isn’t as far gone as the headlines suggest. A national study released this spring found that nearly three in four Americans say they trust colleges and universities to do what is right, and that number holds steady across political affiliation. Most people haven’t turned on education. They’re waiting to be convinced, which is a very different problem and a far more hopeful one. Undecided people can be reached. Someone just has to reach out to them.
The second reason is simpler: people look you up before they meet you. Search committee, donors, reporters. Even the family sitting at a kitchen table with a laptop, deciding between your institution and the one three hours away. More and more, an AI agent does the looking on their behalf and hands over a summary. If all it can find is a title and a years-old promotion announcement, that’s the summary they see.
Edelman and LinkedIn’s annual research keeps landing in the same place. Decision-makers treat thought leadership as a more trustworthy signal of what an organization can actually do than its marketing materials, and roughly three-quarters say a single piece of it led them to consider something they weren’t considering before.
People trust people. That hasn’t changed, no matter how technology shifts. What has changed is how many of those people meet you for the first time on a screen.
The real return on this work isn’t impressions or follower counts. It’s the person who actually replies to your comment. The message that shows up in your inbox. It’s a conversation that starts because someone finally had a low enough barrier to access you without feeling intimidated. Relationships beat reach, every time.
Five posts for connection and community
1. Behind-the-scenes
What it is: A glimpse of the work that normally stays internal. Think about how you can share photos or video clips that show the thought and effort going into day-to-day processes. What does a Tuesday actually look like for you?
Why it works: It answers the question people are quietly asking, which is what do you actually do all day. It also lets people see that the institution is staffed by humans and not run by a logo.
Smallest version: Photograph something from your week and write two sentences about why it mattered to you.
2. Story
What it is: Something that happened to you, with a point.
Why it works: Story is how people remember you. It’s also the single hardest thing on this list to fake, which is exactly why it builds trust faster than anything else. When someone tells you months later that they still think about something you wrote, it’s almost always a story.
Smallest version: Finish this sentence and post it. “I still think about the time…”
3. Social proof
What it is: Credit pointed outward. A team that pulled something off, a colleague’s work, a student or client outcome you had a hand in.
Why it works: This is the type that solves the self-promotion problem, which is the real objection underneath most executive hesitation. You’re talking about people you’re proud of instead of bragging about yourself. Your judgment shows up in what you choose to celebrate. It does something for the person you’re recognizing, too. Being seen in public by your own leader is not a small thing.
Smallest version: Name one person who did something well this month and say what they did.
4. Insight
What it is: A pattern you’ve noticed, explained plainly. Something twenty years in the work taught you that a newer leader wouldn’t know yet.
Why it works: It’s the most useful thing you can give away, and useful content travels. It’s also where your expertise becomes legible to people who have never met you. Give it away freely. Generosity is a strategy.
Smallest version: What’s one thing you believe about your field that you didn’t believe ten years ago?
5. Opinion
What it is: A position, stated.
Why it works: It’s the fastest way to become someone worth following. It’s also, in 2026, genuinely risky for a public university president or an executive director whose funding sits with a board. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
Here’s how I coach it. The opinions worth posting are the ones you’ve already said out loud, in public, more than once. If you’ve made the argument at a conference or in a board meeting and you stand behind it, the platform doesn’t change the risk much. Choose the things you actually want to be known for and focus efforts there.
Smallest version: Something in your field is broken and you know what would fix it. Write that.
Sounding like yourself is harder than it looks
The hard part isn’t sounding like yourself once. It’s sounding like yourself at 9:40 on a Wednesday night, between a team meeting and a flight, for the eleventh time this quarter. Generic writing is what happens when you’re tired or rushed. It isn’t a sign that you’ve lost your voice.
Unfortunately, that is where most AI tools make things worse instead of better. Ask one for a LinkedIn post and it hands back something competent, well-organized, and completely anonymous. It’s writing like an executive, but it probably doesn’t sound like you. Readers can tell, and once they’ve noticed, they stop trusting the posts that actually are yours.
I would rather you publish something a little rough that is unmistakably yours than something polished that could have come from anyone.
Where the Studio fits
This is the problem we wanted to solve with the Executive Communications Studio. We were looking for a different kind of AI-powered tool, but we couldn’t find it. So we built it.
The Studio starts by learning how you actually write. The training process is built in from the start, using your own writing samples and prior messaging to teach the platform your voice before it creates a single thing. The goal is to get you a quick draft that already sounds like you on that night when you have twenty minutes and a board packet waiting. Having a strong starting point for editing cuts down dramatically on the time spent crafting social media posts and other types of communications.
Start with one
Work with the post type that made you think of something specific. Write a couple of sentences. Post it tomorrow morning. Then watch who replies. It might be someone you weren’t expecting. That’s usually the moment this stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like the work you already know how to do.
If you want help making it sustainable, explore the Studio or learn more about how I work directly with leaders to improve communication.
