When should a CEO speak up about social matters?

Less often, according to a new survey co-sponsored by the Stanford Graduate School of Business [PDF]. Forty-five percent of Americans say CEOs shouldn’t “use their position and potential influence to advocate on behalf of social, environmental, or political issues that they care about personally”—a ten-point increase from the previous survey in 2018.

In the report, professor David F. Larcker writes, “The social events that have dominated the headlines over the last several years have only increased the sensitivity of the public toward opinions that might not align with their own. People are clearly wary of executives using their position to advance a message.” 

That’s certainly true for particular issues, according to the survey: A majority of Americans take a “keep your mouth shut” attitude to CEOs talking about religion and politics, and have limited tolerance for chatter about abortion, war, and LGBTQ issues. But that’s not the whole story, and certainly not a mandate for association executives to stay silent on issues that matter to their organizations.

For one thing, Americans are more tolerant of outspoken CEOs when the subject is relevant to their organizations. In the new survey, 76 percent of Americans say CEOs of large companies should “use their position to advocate on behalf of social, environmental, or political issues if those issues directly impact their business or employees,” a four-point increase.

People do vote with their wallets, especially if they have a negative feeling toward the opinion being expressed: The report says, “consumers are considerably more likely to recall withdrawing business from a company than rewarding one for taking an agreeable position.”

There’s little question that, for a variety of reasons, organizations are more hesitant to step into divisive political matters, unless they specifically touch on an advocacy goal. But a different environment doesn’t mean an association should stop living its values, and communicating what those values are.

In an Associations Now Deep Dive in 2024, I explored some of the processes that inform effective statement-making. That involves listening to a variety of voices in your community, not just the loudest ones in the room, consider how a statement might be received by different audiences, and determine what serves the association best.

Sometimes that means speaking out, sometimes not. As ASIS International CEO Peter J. O’Neil, FASAE, CAE, put it, “My experience in the last 30 years has been that it is dangerous for an organization to make a public statement about something that does not directly impact the profession or trade that they serve.”

An Association Insights Center survey conducted in 2023 echoes that point: A strong majority (77 percent) endorse a statement “when there’s a risk to the association or field,” but few (30 percent) support doing so “simply because an associate or leader is passionate about or affected by it.”

An exhausted country is understandably weary of being told about yet another social, environmental, and political challenge. But that needn’t be interpreted as pressure to be silent—just to be more intentional about when and how to break the silence.