The last two months have provided a crash course in how -- and how not -- to communicate with the public. Robin Sears writes:
With the exception of powerful communicators like B.C’s Bonnie Henry and the U.S.’s Anthony Fauci, too many public health officials hide behind jargon, incomprehensible statistics, and on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand presentations.
To be fair, crisis-driven public health truth telling is often painful, even heartbreaking. Those are real communication challenges for the most experienced and savvy. Made even tougher if you report to a minister or government that is committed to happy-talk over truth, as Dr. Fauci has had painfully to learn.
Public health officials have had their jobs made more difficult by the slow response to COVID-19:
It is irrefutable that every government in the world waited too long to respond to this crisis, although many were far worse than Canada in avoiding, delaying and denying. It’s not too early, nonetheless, for public officials to concede they were too slow. Leaders win support and credibility when they admit their fallibility and then roll out what they’re doing to correct a slow or inadequate decision.
But there is one example of someone who knows how to communicate in these difficult times -- New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo possesses:
authentic empathy and emotional honesty. His stern reproach to those who complained about his edict this week that everyone must wear a mask in public was powerful.
He pointed out that no one has a right to increase the risk of “infecting me or my family.” Asked to defend his decision to continue the lockdown until May 15, he said he’d be happy to take complainers to visit the families of New Yorkers who have lost a family member – a group that grows by hundreds every day.
If you want the public to do difficult things, you have to level with them.
Image: The Toronto Star
4 comments:
It's a little difficult to stomach the lionization of Andrew Cuomo, given his continued under-funding of New York State's healthcare system; and his decision to leave people imprisoned for minor infractions condemned to exposure of COVID-19, and his other failures on this file.
Yes, yes, yes, we must do better. We must do better in so many ways, on so many things, that they blur and it becomes a struggle just to keep track of them all.
We have stupidly put our trust in the "invisible hand" of the marketplace to steer us safely away from the shoals and for no reason. We chose to blind ourselves to the inherent conflicts in relying on the private sector to safeguard the public sector thereby relieving government of it's most fundamental duties.
If I read one more impassioned plea to end neoliberalism in the wake of this pandemic my head might explode. Who is going to chart a new path? How are they going to free us from neoliberalism's chokehold? Who could imagine doing that without a major, protracted fight against very powerful, very affluent private interests?
The public interest has been indentured to the private interest. Today's levels of ever worsening inequality stand testament to the collusion between government and the private sector. If there is unfairness that is the creature of our councils, our legislatures, our Parliament. They have to unlock the doors through which our betters pass so freely. It was our elected representatives who gave carte blanche to the creation of the precariat. Morneau came out in public and said Canadians are just going to have to accept a future of "job churn." No one asked Morneau one simple question - why?
Is it any wonder there is such disaffection in our land and across the Western democracies? How could there not be? Democracy is losing its currency because our leaders surrendered such fundamental, albeit unappreciated, incidents of national sovereignty to the new, global order. They invited other masters into our house without so much as a "by your leave."
The future? It's hazy with a subtle whiff of dystopia. We're told we'll emerge from this pandemic into a depression. How, in such a weakened state, are we to even our keel, remedy these wrongs, our own failures, and carve out a wonderful new order?
Bonnie Henry and Tony Fauci will return to obscurity, the public consciousness will fade. We'll go back to poring over those glossy cruise brochures.
I continue to hope that won't happen, Mound. But, given our past history, our chances of reversing course don't look good.
Cuomo has a reputation for making enemies, thwap -- which makes his performance in the present situation interesting. Perhaps he's just a realist who understands what's at stake.
Post a Comment