- Spring Seminar
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At the 2026 Page Spring Seminar, Linda Findley, the CEO and President of SleepNumber, with roots in journalism and PR made a compelling case that communications is not a detour from business leadership. It is, in many ways, the best possible preparation for it.
Her argument was grounded not in theory but in practice. Two habits formed early in her career have stayed with her across every leadership role since: an obsession with detail, and the discipline of anticipating the next question.
The habit for detail came from the early days of work when she focused on learning how things actually get done before developing opinions about strategy. That instinct to go deep before going broad has shaped how she enters every new organization: listening first, asking what people always wanted to do but couldn't, and building from there rather than arriving with a predetermined playbook.
People hate uncertainty more than they hate a truth they don't like. The truth of where we are is usually liberating.
The second habit — anticipating the next question — turned out to be as useful in the boardroom and on the earnings call as it ever was in a newsroom. Whether the audience is investors, employees, or the media, the instinct to ask what people are really thinking, what they need to hear, and what they are about to ask next is the foundation of both great communication and great leadership.
Perhaps most strikingly, she argued that influence, and not authority, is the underrated operating skill of modern leadership. Communications professionals, she noted, have always had to earn their outcomes through credibility and trust rather than positional power. That is exactly how effective organizations run. No leader owns every team. Everyone has to find a way to connect, persuade, and bring people along.
For communications leaders looking to expand their impact inside their current organizations or beyond, her session offered a clear and practical framework.
Strategic credibility is earned from the ground up. Understanding how things actually work — financially, operationally, culturally — is what earns you a seat in decisions that matter.
When entering new situations, ask what people always wanted to do but were held back from. You get the same information as leading with criticism, but you get buy-in alongside it.
Trying to manage bad news with vague language or false positivity destroys trust faster than the news itself. Clarity, even about hard things, is what gives people the psychological safety to contribute and stay.
The ability to move people without authority, through credibility, trust, and genuine listening, is not a soft skill. It is the core operating mechanism of every high-performing organization, and communications professionals already know how to do it.
The message for communications leaders is this: the capabilities you have built are more transferable than the business world often acknowledges. The path forward is not to leave those skills behind but to apply them more broadly, more visibly, and with greater confidence in their value.
In volatile environments, communications is not a support function. It is the mechanism that determi…