For the last month, I’ve been helping a healthcare company manage a significant issue. This is one we saw coming in November and then, inevitably, it emerged with urgency. Preparing company leadership with the language to handle it with transparency was the easy part: stick to the facts, own the issue and provide reassurance that appropriate steps have been, and will be, taken. Coaching them on the delivery was more challenging.
Honesty isn’t a problem. Communicating with the right balance of responsibility, understanding and empathy can be. As a former client turned consultant, Jenny Allen, recently said, “You can drop the truth bomb WITHOUT detonating the relationship.”
Building, nurturing and keeping relationships fits squarely in the realm of public relations. It is at the core of our discipline and a skill set practitioners uniquely bring to the table of any company or organization they work for. We know the value of relationships—with internal and external stakeholders—and how these can be the difference between a great reputation and a good one.
The whole of communications must be more than the sum of its various parts. Language and delivery must be considered with equal intensity as, together, they form a vital portion of any relationship. They are the building blocks of trust, connection, mutual understanding and overall sense of satisfaction.
Let’s assume the language is right — the information your company leaders need to deliver is well written, clear, concise and all the words can be easily pronounced, something I care about given my focus in healthcare. Every line in every paragraph has also been vetted by the regulatory and legal teams. So now, the focus is to ensure all these well selected, carefully crafted messages land with the desired effect on the audience. Here are four elements to consider:
- Body Language: Ask yourself what you take away when you watch someone – whether in person or doing an interview on TV—who presents as robotic, impatient, smug or defensive. Now think of someone who presents as confident, authoritative but also authentic and human. You can easily see this range in sports team managers when they’re interviewed after a critical win or a devastating loss. In the business context, some company executives feel comfortable communicating –they master the messages, whether good news or bad, and then deliver them in a sincere, empathetic manner that comes through physically. They don’t stand or sit too stiffly. In a crisis, they don’t appear ‘relaxed’ but rather ‘in control.’ They use their hands to make points when they speak but don’t look nervous. They keep their heads at the right angle – not haughty, not downcast. Others are less comfortable physically and it shows. It’s the role of comms practitioners, often working together with a media or presentation trainer, to help leaders understand the role of body language, pay attention to it, and then master what’s needed. Body language significantly influences how any message is received.
- Tone significantly impacts how a message is interpreted. The right tone can make stakeholders feel better—they’ve learned something, they understand more, they’re made to feel like partners. The wrong tone can alienate. I recently read an anecdote about a beloved doctor who treated very ill patients, many of whom were at the end of life. The family reported, “his visits didn’t cure the illness or change medical outcome. But they did something else. They gave a flicker of joy to the fading. They softened the hardest moments for grieving families. And they reminded everyone in the room, patients, parents, nurses, even the doctor himself, that laughter still had power, even at the edge of goodbye.” The anecdote ended like this – “Sometimes, healing isn’t about medicine. It’s about making someone feel alive, even for a moment, when the world says they shouldn’t.” A good reminder of the power of tone in any context.
- Tempo: We’ve all heard speakers who communicate so quickly you don’t quite get every word and those who are so slow and methodical that your mind wanders after a few minutes and at the end, you don’t know exactly what the key ‘takeaway’ was. Talking too fast can communicate agitation, anxiety, even fear and the sense that the speaker just wants to get this over with. It can also damage credibility. Too slow and the stakeholder might conclude the speaker is tired, overly academic, and maybe even speaking ‘down’ to the audience. Finding the ‘just right’ here is individual to each speaker, but the general rule is to be calm and steady.
The importance of staying on track and always factoring in the feelings or tensions involved in each specific situation your speaker is addressing must also be top-of-mind.
Whether in an issue, a crisis, or everyday exchanges, the language and the delivery used in all the various roles we play in our lives, matter. Getting them right is the difference between great communication and a strong relationship and those that need work.
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