Back in 2015, communication researchers demonstrated that it was possible to identify underlying patterns in the way CEOs communicate using quantitative analysis. Analysts have been using this data for some time now to analyze financial conversations during earning calls: does the CEO really believe what he or she is saying, or is it mainly because he or she is expected to show resilience and optimism? In other words, to what extent does the CEO use hedging techniques in his or her communication ?
Thanks to AI, these scientific practices are now also finding wider applications.
FINN/Gosselin & de Walque applied these methodologies to Belgian CEOs for the first time by analyzing 86 CEO interviews published throughout 2025 in the Belgian business media (L’Echo, De Tijd, Trends and Trends/Tendances).
We believe this type of study is relevant today, as CEOs have been operating for nearly five years in a polycrisis, or even a permacrisis: every day, an event disrupt the normal functioning of their companies.
Moment of truth
Since the invasion of Ukraine, the European continent has been in crisis mode. Belief in our own sustainability ambitions and the “Brussels effect” is crumbling, the peace dividend seems to have evaporated, and the inflation shock and expensive energy have still not been digested.
The number of bankruptcies and collective layoffs in Belgium peaked at the highest level of the last ten years, and in the chemical industry, existential distress signals are sounding. Meanwhile, gigantic new challenges loom in the form of runaway government debt and a demographic cliff, with millions of baby boomers leaving the labor market.
Some commentators speak of a polycrisis or even a permacrisis: it has seemed for several years that we no longer have any trump cards on this continent.
Belgium – and Europe – are clearly at a moment of truth. If the continent wants to take its fate into its own hands, we must strengthen ourselves politically, militarily, and economically.
Economic growth is therefore vital – it is the key to maintaining our sovereignty, but equally our welfare state. It is therefore relevant to understand how our captains of industry view their own activities and their environment.
We did this by thoroughly analyzing and comparing 86 CEO interviews in business media (De Tijd, L’Echo, Trends, and Trends/Tendances).
What Topics Keep CEOs Awake?
First we analysed which topics kept CEOs awake in 2025? Mindful of the saying that sometimes nothing happens for decades and then there are some years in which decades happen, 2025 was certainly not a “business as usual” year.
CEOs across all sectors are primarily concerned about European competitiveness, policy, and (over)regulation. The tariff war and the situation in Ukraine complete the top 3. It is notable that China is mentioned by relatively few CEOs.
AI and digitalization play a smaller role than you might expect. And unlike a few years ago, the “war for talent” is much less top of mind for CEOs.
However, that picture changes when you look at the intensity with which CEOs comment on certain topics. Here, European competitiveness remains highest on the agenda, but we see that climate and China complete the top three.
The conclusion is that not all CEOs suffer from European rules for climate transition and Chinese competition. But for the CEOs who talk about them, they are indeed existential topics.
Are Belgian CEOs Really Combative, or “Strategically Positive”?
Next, we examined how CEOs view their company and sector – are they more offensive or more defensive? That is: do they talk about initiatives they are taking for the future, or is the conversation more focused on explaining why some past results turned out less positive than hoped? Additionally, we look at the extent to which they qualify their own statements (“hedging”) or, in other words, how convincing and authentic their statements sound.
Offensive-defensive measures the substantive message: does the CEO communicate about opportunities, growth, and progress (offensive), or does he/she primarily acknowledge challenges, difficulties, and limitations (defensive)?
Authentic-performative measures persuasiveness: does the CEO speak with direct certainty and strong positioning (authentic), or does he/she use many nuances, qualified statements, and carefully formulated language (performative)?
This research method has its origins in financial communication analysis of earnings calls, particularly the work of Davis, Ge, Matsumoto & Zhang (2015), which demonstrates that “manager-specific optimism” is systematically measurable in how CEOs talk during their earnings calls.
A CEO must be resilient and positive, but he or she must also remain credible. A CEO who systematically qualifies their own statements does not inspire confidence.
They discovered that CEOs produce detectable patterns: performative communication is characterized by high hedging density (“would,” “can,” “possibly”) and vague abstractions, while authentic conviction manifests itself in concrete figures and language with which the CEO personally vouches (“I believe,” “we will”).
Some examples of “hedging” categories:
- Refusing to predict: “That’s hard to say… It’s impossible to say when that market will change” – CEO repeatedly refuses to make predictions about market recovery, even when directly asked.
- Conditional formulations: “2025 will be a year of growth… without major geopolitical or macroeconomic calamities” – Optimistic message is immediately qualified with a major condition that nearly undermines the statement.
- Qualifying through “hope-language”: “I especially hope that… If we achieve that, the rest will follow naturally” – Passive hope language instead of active commitment.
- Hedging: “I think so” instead of “Yes” – CEO uses cautious belief formulations where a simple affirmative answer suffices.
- Defensive introduction: “First and foremost, I want to emphasize that…” followed by a denial – CEO feels the need to defensively preface an explanation before the actual answer.
The two dimensions are independent of each other: you can be defensive and authentic (transparent about problems), or offensive and performative (cautiously optimistic), which together gives a nuanced picture of how CEOs shape and convey their message.
By combining the two dimensions in a quadrant, we can see how comfortable Belgian CEOs feel today.
What stands out? First, that the vast majority of CEOs communicate authentically.
This is not entirely unexpected. Of course, a CEO must be resilient and positive, but he or she must also remain credible. So it’s important to be careful with “performative” signals and hedging. A CEO who systematically qualifies their own statements does not inspire confidence.
Within that authenticity, we do see two groups: on one hand, CEOs who are highly ambitious and optimistic. They are not coincidentally mainly in the technology corner, including Fabien Pinckaers (Odoo) and Matthias Geeroms (Lighthouse) as extremes.
On the other hand, there are a number of CEOs who take on the role of “Cassandra,” such as Bernard Delvaux of Etex. They are very authentic and convincing, but with a less rosy story. Their message is that we urgently need to change course in Europe.
Again, it will not be surprising that these CEOs are mainly found in energy-intensive sectors.
For all CEOs, the number of “performative” signals (hedging) is close to each other.
We count an average of 0.5 performative signals per hundred words – except for two outliers where we had 1.8 performative signals per hundred words. They were both CEOs who were put under strong pressure by the journalist with questions about the stock price, but where the CEOs did not want to comment.
That said, we do see individual differences between CEOs, even within one sector, regarding the number of “performative” signals.
We see no significant differences between male and female CEOs. The fact that male CEOs are slightly less positive than female CEOs is presumably related to the fact that they are more represented in industrial sectors.
Since we do not (yet) have benchmarks, it is difficult to compare how these CEO communication patterns relate to other years.
Nevertheless, it is striking that relatively many CEOs end up on the “defensive” side of the graph in 2025. This indicates that they spent a lot of energy defending past decisions and other difficult topics.
Hard or Soft Communication: Which Leadership Dimensions Do Belgian CEOs Emphasize?
Finally, we look at the fingerprint of the Belgian CEO: which dimensions do they put on the agenda in interviews?
A company’s reputation is determined by the extent to which their brand is known (“awareness”), the sentiment people have towards the company, and finally how people assess certain dimensions of companies.
For example: does the company have a clear vision, does it have strong products and services, is it a good employer? We measure this by looking at statements about their own sector (“Vision & Leadership”), their own portfolio of products and services (“Products & Services”), or the extent to which their own employees and talent development are discussed (“Employment”).
There is an imbalance towards “hard” topics such as financial performance, vision and leadership, and products and services, which occur almost 50% more than soft topics such as employment and CSR.
This is typical for periods when companies are under financial pressure. We saw this, for example, also during the COVID period.
Just as during corona, we see that female CEOs talk slightly more about how they deal with their own employees.
Conclusions: The Year of Cassandra
One thing emerges very clearly from the research: CEOs want to put the topic of European competitiveness on the agenda.
Despite the Antwerp declaration and the Draghi report, CEOs do not feel that the sense of urgency they experience is shared by policymakers and the general public.
Our research also indicates why: competitiveness, competition from China, energy costs, and climate regulation (such as CSRD and ETS) are existential topics in a number of energy-intensive sectors.
But there are also sectors where things are still going well and where these topics do not play a role (for example, technology, financial institutions, and services).
Based on the analysis of the intensity with which certain topics are on CEOs’ agendas, you can state with some exaggeration that there are two types of CEOs today: those who must contend with high energy costs (and everything that entails in terms of competitiveness, European bureaucracy, climate transition, etc.) and those who must prepare for the AI wave that will (possibly) overwhelm the service sector.
The topics that keep CEOs awake are played out on the world stage or in the European arena. So either the Belgian policy level is performing relatively well, or it is increasingly irrelevant for Belgian CEOs.
Policymakers therefore receive contradictory signals from the business community, and not unimportantly: the consumer does not yet feel a crisis. The National Bank of Belgium published a report in June showing that the Belgian consumer/employee is holding up well in 2025.
We previously described this situation as a “drôle de crise”: in some sectors, it is storming with an intensity we have not seen in the last decade, but we do not (yet) feel it everywhere in society.
One more small note: the Belgo-Belgian level is almost completely absent in the interviews: the topics that keep CEOs awake are played out on the world stage or in the European arena. You can interpret this in two ways: either the Belgian policy level is doing relatively well, or it is increasingly irrelevant for Belgian CEOs.
Methodology
Based on scientifically validated models, we analyzed 86 CEO interviews published throughout the year in L’Echo, De Tijd, Trends and Trends/Tendances. Using AI, we created an individual scorecard for each interview, in which we classified the themes, offensive/defensive signals, authentic/performative signals, and company dimensions (results, CSR, innovation, etc.). These individual scores were verified by our team (“human in the loop”) and aggregated into a general scorecard covering all the aspects studied. We then broke down the scores according to the different aspects in order to obtain a detailed analysis.
Sources
Agenda-Setting Theory
- Carroll, C.E., & McCombs, M. (2003). “Agenda-setting effects of business news on the public’s images and opinions about major corporations.” Corporate Reputation Review, 6(1), 36-46.
Linguistic Authenticity Markers
- Craig, R., & Amernic, J. (2018). “Are there language markers of hubris in CEO letters to shareholders?” Journal of Business Ethics, 149, 973-986.
Manager-Specific Communication Patterns
- Davis, A.K., Ge, W., Matsumoto, D., & Zhang, J.L. (2015). “The effect of manager-specific optimism on the tone of earnings conference calls.” Management Science, 61(3), 639-654.
Strategic Communication Theory
- Marcinkowski, F. (2014). “Mediatisation of politics: Reflections on the state of the concept.” Javnost – The Public, 21(2), 5-22.
- Jarren, O., Donges, P., & Marcinkowski, F. (2021). “Other side of mediatization: Expanding the concept to defensive strategies.” Communication Theory, 31(4), 737-755.