A LinkedIn poll Jenni ran after last episode’s change-fatigue-versus-strategy-fatigue debate came back split almost down the middle — and that’s before Chuck and Jenni get into the week’s real subject: the growing gap between what leaders think they’re communicating and what employees are actually receiving. Marriott’s CEO gives them a case study in values holding steady while language changes around them, a new report puts hard numbers on the leader-employee communication gap, and a Harvard Business Review piece finally puts language to something Jenni’s been hearing from HR teams for months: psychological safety, misunderstood six different ways.
Chuck comes in hot this week with a rant about a McKinsey stat that will not die — the “employees waste nine hours a week searching for information” line that’s been recycled across LinkedIn for over a decade, sourced to a 2012 study that never said what everyone claims it says. From there, he and Jenni work through a research-backed test that shows employees can’t reliably tell a CEO’s words from an AI’s, a Stanford economist’s case for letting people choose where they work, a LinkedIn post accusing internal comms of getting too intellectualized, and the quiet ethics of hitting “record” on a meeting.
It’s a episode about trusting data less and trusting people more — whether that’s the data behind a viral stat, the data behind a return-to-office mandate, or the discomfort of admitting a CEO’s message had help.
Episode two opens with a thank-you: the response to Frequency’s debut had been bigger than Chuck Gose and Jenni Field expected, and they don’t let it pass without saying so. From there, two bits of news — Jenni is bringing Comms Reboot, the communications unconference, to Toronto in June with Contact Monkey, and a running joke about which Spice Girl each of them would be (Fun Spice and Grudge Spice, if you’re wondering) — set a looser tone before the week’s stories.
The real conversation lands on three things: a new McLean & Company report on what’s actually driving disengagement, a LinkedIn debate over whether a departing Chief Communications Officer should be replaced, and a Harvard Business Review piece that has Jenni rethinking whether “change fatigue” is even the right diagnosis.
Chuck Gose spent months DM-ing Jenni Field about starting a podcast together. On the first episode of Frequency, she finally stopped ignoring him — and the two immediately admit they’re not looking for a fight, though if one happens, it happens.
That mix of warmth and willingness to disagree sets the tone for everything that follows. After trading first-car stories (a dark green Ford Fiesta versus a “borrowed” 1967 Pontiac Tempest), Chuck and Jenni get into the state of internal comms after a decade of change, why a third of US managers say they’d rather use AI than hire a Gen Z employee, and why 31% of employees are actively sabotaging their company’s AI efforts.
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