US Report

The 2019 Worldcom Confidence Index is an invaluable benchmark for the confidence levels of business leaders.  In our second annual Confidence Index, we commissioned Advanced Symbolics Inc. (ASI), a research company that uses artificial intelligence (AI), to create a fully representative understanding of what audiences are saying. We captured and analysed the online contributions, in nine languages, of 58,374 CEOs and CMOs globally. This enabled us to identify which topics are highest on the leadership agenda, and how confident or concerned leaders are about the topic.

Since we published our first Confidence Index, world events such as: the US/China trade war, Brexit, Amazon forest fires, the Hong Kong crisis, the increasing pace of global warming and the resurgence of diseases such as Measles, have continued to create a more uncertain world. Our second Confidence Index shows exactly how confident or concerned business leaders are about dealing with these challenges.

This year’s findings have uncovered a 21% decline in confidence globally since 2018.

The top seven findings for the US are:

#1 US confidence plummets – down 51 percent since 2018

#2 Influencers become top audience for leader attention and leaders are very confident about reaching them 

#3 Employee-related topics dominate leaders’ agenda

• Upskilling and reskilling the most discussed topic
•  Employee-related topics take six out of top eight topics
• Employees has second lowest CI score for audiences

#4 Leaders have low confidence in dealing with a crisis and unacceptable behaviours such as sexual harassment 

#5 The media matters and US leaders are moderately confident about its impact

#6 Global trade agreements and tariffs undermine US confidence

#7 US has lowest confidence globally in the ability to satisfy customers

The Global report for the Worldcom Confidence Index 2019 can be seen here. You can view the full US report here or see the deck below. To have the best viewing experience please use full screen mode.