Leadership Lesson with Emily Luscombe, Chief Client Officer, Instinctif Partners

How global events are evolving client needs, the importance of owning mistakes, and how greater public scrutiny has changed the landscape for communications. We recently spoke with Emily Luscombe, Chief Client Officer at Instinctif Partners about her expansive journey into the world of communications, and how she views the sector today.

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Can you tell me a bit about your background, and what drove you to pursue a career in comms?

My journey here has been pretty conventional. I’m lucky – I found my career love early on. I had a brief venture into journalism post-uni, but I quickly realised it didn’t offer the creative space or strategic scope I craved. The roots of my true passion lie at the intersection of business and communications, and this was probably ingrained in me before I knew it;my father was a really progressive corporate affairs director for a major financial services firm. I saw him pushing the boundaries and demonstrating that communications can drive business strategy at a time when PR was quite in its infancy. So thanks for that inspiration, dad!

My path led me through various agency models, from international holding companies to independent specialists. Each experience taught me more of what to do, and what not to do, in running a comms firm. Now, through my role at Instinctif Partners, I feel like I’m living my best professional life. I have the freedom to focus on what sits at the heart of consultancy: our clients. My Chief Client Officer mandate affords the perfect blend of creativity, strategy, and client-centricity – working with brilliant colleagues to drive meaningful outcomes for businesses.

What personal attributes do you think have helped you succeed?

In consultancy, the challenge lies in being adaptable and quick to respond to clients’ evolving needs. Or better still, identify those needs before they’ve articulated them themselves. We seem to live in a permanent state of world-defining events; Brexit, Covid-19, geopolitical conflicts, global warming…no business can avoid being impacted by these. Our clients’ worlds are eternally uncertain; they can’t know support they will require from us next month, let alone next year. But they can know we are an agile, trusted partner who can help them solve their problems – so my role is to stay ahead, anticipating their needs and ensuring we’re equipped to meet them. This demands agility, flexibility, and creativity in problem-solving, so for me, it’s about presenting innovative solutions that clients may not have even considered.

Maintaining high energy and fresh perspective is crucial. We want to lighten and inspire their days; a counterweight to what can be stifling corporate structures they have to operate within.

What do you think are the key qualities needed from leaders in comms in 2024 and beyond?

Having a clear vision of your purpose and values. Your route for achieving your goals is going to change, but if you’re guided by your values, you have a North star. When the industry at large is in such a constant state of flux, being clear on what you stand for, what matters to you as an individual, and leading from the front is key.

Right now, public trust is on the floor. There’s no faith in politicians, institutions, so employees are looking to their leaders for guidance more than ever before. There’s huge pressure on our CEO clients to fill this trust void – and the same applies for agency management. So fundamentally, as a leader you need the courage to back yourself but also admit to mistakes when they occur. Embody resilience. I was speaking to the CEO of a large healthcare firm today; she said, being human is the most important quality for her. It’s this honesty, accessibility, that builds trust with stakeholders – and that’s where communications comes in. Reluctance to do that only exacerbates distrust, highlighting the importance of genuine accountability and vulnerability in leadership.

At the end of the day, you can’t be a successful business leader in 2024 if you cannot communicate. We talk about personal brand, which some CEOs hate. But the reality is, this is what takes your customers, your employees, your investors with you on your journey.

What are the key challenges you’re facing in your role as a comms leader today?

There’s greater scrutiny, from more quarters, than ever before. It used to be, that if we were engaged on a public affairs brief, the stakeholder map might be relatively contained. Now the audience lines blur entirely; we wouldn’t take a corporate reputation brief today without considering political stakeholders, the financial community, employees. This has been driven in part by the fragmentation of media, the continuous emergence of new digital channels, the desire for everything to be visible on social media. People rightly demand consistency in messaging and actions, and can quickly see when a business is saying one thing and doing another; or making conflicting commitments to different audiences.

This scrutiny places leaders, under a microscope, expected to navigate issues beyond their traditional scope, such as sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility. And for us as communicators, our role extends beyond crafting messages to guiding leaders in navigating this landscape with integrity and authenticity.

Can you talk a bit about any more of the shifts you’re seeing in terms of what clients are looking for from agencies?

The majority of clients don’t come to Instinctif with traditional communications problems, and that I think has been the real change over the course of my career. Today’s clients are more sophisticated in their grasp of what strategic communications can achieve. It’s not “I want to be in the Financial Times” (although they often do!); it’s “I need to influence this audience to do this; I have all this data which tells me they know about us and we know about them, but we’re still struggling to persuade them to act.” Then we use our insights specialists to understand the pain points, and what makes them tick; we can deploy all these tools to map their journey, understand the barriers; then we build a strategy that can change their perception, prompt them to act – and that might include being in the Financial Times! But that is the means to the end – not the end goal. That’s so much more rewarding for us – and done right, greatly elevates the importance of communications without our client organisations.

This constantly changing world has embedded in many business leaders a short-term mindset. They’ve had to be reactive, responding to the most pressing immediate need. But that’s brought problems. I’ve been interested to observe how we’ve been talking to clients for 12-18 months about the need to prepare for a Labour government, our political advisors knew this was coming- that businesses had to get ahead. But it’s been put off and put off by many, right up until now. We can see and understand why; but it makes the job for communications that much harder.

Lastly, what advice would you give someone looking to pivot from traditional comms to purpose-driven work?

I would say, it’s not a pivot. If you want a career in corporate communications or corporate affairs, you absolutely have to understand the complexities of ESG and corporate purpose, and you have to understand the needs and requirements of all your different stakeholders. This goes back to the idea of a North Star – because people’s needs will change over time, but one thing that will remain constant is their perception of value, meaning, and purpose.