ABOUT THIS EPISODE
A LinkedIn profile and a Wi-Fi connection are all it takes to be visible today. But visibility isn't the same as being believed.
In this episode, Shahar sits down with Roger Christie, founder and managing director of Propel, to unpack why the rise in executive visibility hasn't translated into more trust — and in many cases has done the opposite.
Roger shares data from Propel's own trust diagnostic, including one telling stat: leaders analyzed generated over 1,000 inbound comments across six months, and replied to zero of them. He argues that belief isn't built through broadcasting, but through the same things that build trust offline: listening, curiosity, and showing up consistently when it's tested — what he calls the "pressure moment."
In this episode:
- Why visibility has become "table stakes" since generative AI removed the last barriers to publishing content
- The leadership paradox: the leaders most worth hearing from are often the first to go quiet, while the loudest voices create fatigue
- Why "believability" — not visibility — is the real currency of trust
- The data behind polished, performative content: why over-produced posts create distance rather than connection
- What a "pressure moment" is, and why it's where reputations are actually won or lost — not in the content itself, but in what happens when someone pushes back
- Why corporate reputation and leader reputation aren't the same thing, and how to tell how reliant your organization is on one person
- Roger's advice for Chief Communications Officers: build "bench strength" instead of over-indexing on a single executive voice
- The one piece of conventional wisdom Roger disagrees with: talk less, listen first
About the guest:
Roger Christie is the founder and managing director of Propel, a Sydney-based strategic reputation consultancy, and host of the podcast Your Digital Reputation.
To learn more about stakeholder intelligence and how to track perceptions of global companies and industries, visit groupcaliber.com.
