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
