Erica Parker on Navigating the Leadership Crisis and Evolving Corporate Responsibilities

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Erica Parker, the Managing Director of Custom Research at the Harris Poll, joins us to illuminate the evolving expectations of modern leadership. What happens when trust in public institutions crumbles and the spotlight shifts to corporate leaders? Erica shares how this shift has intensified in recent years, especially through the pandemic, leading to a complex web of political entanglements. Discover how consumer purchasing decisions are now heavily influenced by perceived political stances and the notion that leaders may be impeding social progress. This episode is a deep dive into the leadership crisis, unraveling the intricate connection between societal anxieties and corporate responsibility. 

In our conversation with Erica, we tackle the pressing societal issues highlighted by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, from hunger and poverty to health and education. How can leaders effectively prioritize and address these challenges in a world fraught with public stress and institutional distrust? The episode emphasizes the need for collaborative efforts among public, private, and individual sectors to foster genuine change. We discuss the essential qualities leaders must embody—selflessness, innovation, and hard work—and explore the shift from corporate-driven initiatives to broader cooperative approaches. Join us as we map out the path forward for impactful leadership amidst today's unprecedented challenges.

#harrispoll #ideagen #gls2025 

View Erica's LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erica-wolf-parker/

See more from Harris on Demand here: https://theharrispoll.com/solutions/harris-on-demand/
View the entire 2025 Global Leadership Summit here: https://www.ideagenglobal.com/2025globalleadershipsummit

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Good afternoon everyone.
My name is Erica Parker and I'mthe Managing Director of Custom
Research at the Harris Poll.
At the Harris Poll, we striveto reveal the authentic values
of modern society.
So today, what I plan to sharewith you will be a variety of
different data points we'vecollected, be it thought

(00:35):
leadership on our own behalf, onbehalf of our clients, or data
we actually collected just fortoday's summit presentation.
And really all that data willdo and share with you will
really tap into the realities ofthe modern leader and how
expectations have really rapidlyshifted and changed for those
leaders just in the past fiveyears.

(00:57):
I actually just watched back tothe future with my children.
So what we're going to do iswe're going to get in the
DeLorean and go back and travelback in time to 2019, which
probably feels like a verydistant past to many of us.
These days, we have an annualstudy called the Reputation

(01:18):
Quotient, or RQ, that weactually release with Axios now.
That really keeps the pulse onthe public's expectations of
corporate America.
So at this time in 2019, whenwe measured this, there was a
lot of erosion of trust inpublic institutions,
particularly in government, andthe public was really turning to

(01:40):
companies at that time toreally create change across
various social issues and thelist here you can run down the
list from data privacy,healthcare access, veteran
support, health and well-being,education, et cetera.
And then, of course, thepandemic hit in 2020.

(02:03):
And we started a tracker wecall America this Week, where we
were immediately trackingvarious fears.
That fear of emerging variancesgave way to threats of a
recession, of job loss, ofglobal conflict.
So just painting the picturefor sort of how Americans are

(02:42):
feeling at this time and thatanxiety around those issues
really started to translate intofear and threat to one's basic
needs.
Work that we conducted onbehalf of MetLife was really
showing that the psychologicaland physiological floor was
really crumbling for folks.

(03:02):
Wealth inequity is a seriousnational issue and, according to
Gen Z and millennials, 81% sawthat and believed in that and
additionally, gen Z globally,61% of them really felt that
they would expected that theywould need to relocate due to

(03:25):
issues in their environment inthe next 20 years.
Now let's fast forward to today,and that lack of trust we saw
in institutions, particularly ingovernment, is now extending to
other organizations Bill, yousort of alluded to this earlier,
and now it's including bigbusiness as well as the news

(03:48):
media and social media.
And what was, you know, once anexpectation of the public for
leadership to take a stance andspeak out and be visible on
particular social issues?
Now really has leadershipcaught up in political battles

(04:09):
and social wars.
Majorities of Americans saythat companies are becoming more
political than ever and wishtheir brands would stay out of
politics, and nearly threequarters of Americans aren't
interested in supportingcompanies that have become too
political, even regardless ofwhether they agree with their

(04:30):
stances on the issue.
Ceos speaking out really nowpresents risk to organizations.
The words once used in a lot ofpublic statements, even by CEOs
, are politicized and now areseen to drive a wedge between
the public.
The public sees companiesgetting into more controversy as

(04:53):
they try to appease both sidesof the aisle, and corporate
stances on social issues are notseen as authentic and are seen
more, as you know, a marketingploy.
Certainly, we had some researchthat said that companies are
now, all of their climateactivities are more greenwashing

(05:14):
activities than anything elseof their climate activities are
more greenwashing activitiesthan anything else, and thus the
majority of public reallybelieves that it is risky for
CEOs to speak out on socialissues today.
So what does this mean and howdoes a CEO speaking out affect
brands and companies?
Well, we have this sort ofpicture here to tell you and

(05:38):
illustrate that people aren'tjust voting in the voting booth
these days, where once they sortof relied on the consumer side
of their brain when they wouldbe making purchase decisions and
the sort of political side oftheir brain when they were
voting, consumers are now takingsort of that political side of
their brain into the store andto the checkout screen with them

(06:01):
and, as I'm sure you're allwell aware of all these
headlines, the past two yearsseveral companies got themselves
caught up in politicalcontroversy and culture wars
which did impact their customerbase and ultimately, their sales
.
And what we found in someresearch we conducted along with

(06:23):
US News and World Report, thatleadership is in a state of
crisis today.
87% of Americans believe thereis a leadership crisis today in
the US, believe there is aleadership crisis today in the
US and they are disappointed byleaders in society, particularly
those in the federal government, in big business, organized

(06:44):
religion and even localgovernment and leaders.
With sort of that lack of trustin leaders comes the fact that
the public doesn't see them asequipped to respond to the
emerging crises that we facetoday, and three quarters of the

(07:05):
public really believe thatleaders are even a barrier to
the social progress that we need.
So where does that leave us?
Right, because there stillremains looming issues that are
important yet quite difficultfor us to solve today.
And so there's new data that weprepared to provide for this

(07:27):
summit, where we took the 17 UNSustainable Development Goals
and asked the public to give usa sense of how important they
feel these issues are, alongwith how difficult they believe
they are to solve, and weplotted them together so that,

(07:48):
taken together, we canunderstand where there might be
potential priorities to focusand give sort of a roadmap to
leadership.
So the next slide, these are theresults of that sort of
plotting, right, so we put themost important to solve versus
the most difficult to solve.
So obviously, up in theright-hand quadrant is really

(08:11):
what's high, high, right, it'smost important but probably most
difficult to solve, and we'velabeled those as strategic
obstacles.
Obviously, as I said, they'rethe most important but most
challenging, and we find hungerand poverty sort of falling into
those buckets.
But really what might be thepriority area is sort of the

(08:31):
bottom, right-hand quadrant,right those that society feels
are most important to createpositive change and are
relatively less difficult tosolve but still probably
difficult, I'm sure and thosethat fall into that bucket are
health and well-being, education, economic growth, as well as

(08:56):
clean water and sanitation.
Now, who is really best suitedto solve these issues?
So we asked the public to ratethese, and what you'll find is
really I want to point you tothe data point over here where
most really selected more thanone entity working together.
So there was a lot ofconversation today, obviously,

(09:18):
about partnerships and howimportant it is for both public
and private sector to worktogether, as well as individuals
and organizations, to reallytackle these types of social
issues, and these issues arereally going to require certain
characteristics in leaders tomove these forward.

(09:42):
So what we did was we asked thepublic and we presented them
with different characteristicsof a leader and which they would
associate with those 17sustainable development goals
and, as you can see, it willtake a variety of different
attributes and characteristicsto address these issues.
Selflessness is going to berequired to address poverty,

(10:10):
hunger and inequities.
Innovation needed, inparticular, for two priority
areas health and well-being, aswell as clean water and

(10:32):
sanitation, logic when it comesto education and hard work for
work and economic growth.
So, in summary, we'll kind ofwrap up all that we learned here
with what we shared.
So the tables have turned right.
We were talking about sort ofthe pendulum swinging from, you
know, the public in 2019 saying,hey, companies, corporate
America, I need you to take astance on these issues because I
don't feel like, you know, thegovernment is really making an

(10:54):
impact here.
But where once stood thatmandate to get involved, it's
now sort of swung the other wayand presents risk to leaders and
organizations when they speakout on particular issues.
And right now, you know,consumers are burdened and the
public is burdened with quite alot.

(11:15):
Right, there's a lot of redflags when it comes to them in
terms of the level of stress,and we talked about mental
health issues that folks arefacing, and there is just their
basic needs are threatened,right, so they lack trust and
confidence in institutions andin leaders to address the
fundamental issues that wouldultimately help them.

(11:39):
But there is still a call toaction.
Right, there are still issuesthat need to be addressed in
society, and we know that itcan't be done by any one person
and it's really going to requirecollaboration across all of
these different organizationsand leaders to achieve these
goals.
So that's to the point ofthere's really no I in team

(12:02):
right.
Collaboration across public,private, individuals and
organizations is needed to beable to address these issues.
Characteristics to be effective, qualities such as selflessness

(12:22):
, innovation and honesty arereally required to evoke real
change.
And that is all, Thank you.