Keep 1.8m apart? Lessons in leadership communication during a crisis from COVID-19 Part I
Crises come in different shapes, colours, and scales. From emotional to professional to financial; from family to local to national and even global (like what the world is going through right now). And then there are the those that may look small but can cause untold grief—like the toilet paper shortage brought about by COVID that had many in a state of genuine panic. Individuals go through crisis. As do families, companies, nations and even, as we have seen, the whole world.
As the whole world begins the slow, steady and careful process of recovering from the damage inflicted globally on lives, community, and the economy by the invisible Coronavirus, we have an opportunity to learn a few lessons—perhaps too many to be covered in any one article. We have seen so much bravery, resourcefulness, courage, kindness, resilience and goodness. We have also seen staggering amounts of selfishness, willful blindness and egregious stupidity.
You take the good with the bad, I guess.
As a student and teacher of persuasive public-speaking, I have been watching closely how people in positions of influence (leaders) have been communicating (and miscommunicating). What they have said, how they have said them and what the effects have been.
Therefore, in this series, I want to share some important lessons on leadership communication during a crisis.
Crisis Communication Fact—They are looking to you
The thing to know is that as a leader, when it comes to crisis is that it is not a question of if, it is a question of when and how big. Few happen on a global scale. We are more likely to face crises on a personal, family or business-related front in our lifetimes than the once-in-a-century kind of crisis the world is recovering from in 2020.
Whatever the case, during a crisis, people look to their leaders for direction. Employees look to their mangers, directors and CEOs; citizens look to their governors, premiers and other elected officials. During a crisis, people—anxious, unsure and often fearful—look to their leaders.
That is why when that leader is you, it is important to understand some key principles of effective communication during a crisis.
Whenever we find ourselves having to lead through a period of the unknown—a period of intense difficulty, or a period of trouble or danger, there are a few principles of communication to keep in mind.
During a crisis, keep it simple
Image by Markus Winkler from Pixabay
In a time of crisis, the people you lead do not need a flowchart, a process diagram or a 12-point agenda. They need simple, clear and defined direction on what to do, and what not to do. The work here lies in the ability to distill all that you know or that you have been advised by the experts in your team into short, pithy and memorable instructions or statements that can be easily be communicated without confusion.
Choose simplicity over accuracy
As we saw with the most effective leaders during COVID, instructions were always clear and simple. Have you ever stopped to notice that 6ft is not equal to 2m? It is in reality equal to 1.82m. But c’mon! Who is going to ask anyone to keep 1.82m apart? That is a recipe for confusion.
We all know what 6ft and 2m looks like roughly. And roughly is all you need during a crisis. The 0.2m nuance would actually hurt the effectiveness of the message as it saddles the person receiving the message with the task of figuring out what 1.82m looks like. They will just end up with a rough approximation anyway—which is what 2m is. But at least with 2m, they are more likely to remember it and thereby abide by it. Better to round up and err on the side of ease of compliance than accuracy.
Any extraneous detail that adds to the computation people have to make in order to comply makes your communication that much more ineffective. In a crisis—whether organizational, socio-political, financial or, as with COVID, health—people are already dealing with a lot. Emotions tend to be high—especially fear and anxiety. And both are notorious for hampering sound cognitive functions of memory, learning and executive function.
So, do yourself and the people you lead a favour and keep the direction simple. It will save a lot of trouble, and depending on the seriousness of the crises, even save lives.
Pick a vital few talking points
During a crisis, there is probably a lot you could be talking about when you communicate with the people you lead. But what should you be talking about?
You are best served in picking the highest-impact set of instructions—the vital few—that your insights have revealed will produce the best results. This is what effective leaders do. They focus on the vital few. In the language of the late and great Stephen Covey, they focus on the big rocks.
For COVID, there was a lot that could have been talked about. The research revealed many nuances that affect the manner in which the virus spreads. From different residency times on various surfaces—from skin, to metal, to acrylic to latex etc.—to its temperature tolerance. All these bits of information were objectively valid and useful but when it came time to communicate and provide direction, they would have been counterproductive. What did we hear instead?
Wash your hands frequently. Cough into your elbows. Keep 2m apart.
Simple. Memorable. Effective.
Sift. Simplify. Speak
It turned out that if you sifted through the research available on flu-like viruses and Coronavirus in particular, it was possible to arrive at 3 simple and succinct instructions to direct people’s actions during the crisis. The most effective ways of stopping the spread.
No one asked anyone to “stand at a distance that ensures that virus-carrying droplets cannot be accidentally transferred”. You might think you are respecting people’s intelligence by providing this judgement opportunity (and you probably are), but you are doing more—making it more difficult to comply.
When you find yourself in a crisis—any crisis where you are in a position to lead (even if the only person you need to lead is yourself) then do your best to review and distil what you know into a simple set of high-impact tenets to guide you and the people you lead.
Avoid getting bogged down by details and nuance. There is a time and place for nuance—a crisis is not it.
Depending on the nature of the crisis, and your leadership role, you might need to consult experts, or your own prior learning. The goal of the consultation is to educate yourself as best you can. But it is also to develop a simple, straightforward, effective and consistent message to communicate to the people you lead.
Speaking of consistency…
In a crisis, keep it consistent
As we talked about earlier, during a crisis, communication is trickier because people have a lot on their minds. Even when things are rosy, audiences typically need to hear a message multiple times for it to stick. There are ways you can help it stick by using crafted language and story-telling, but even then, repetition is still central to how those methods work.
During a crisis, repetition becomes even more important. Don’t be surprised if you are asked the same questions over and over even if you have answered them already a few days (maybe even a few minutes) before. Your audience is not stupid, they are stressed.
On your part, the pressure is to not give a different answer each time but to keep your consistent (given the caveat that the answer is aligned with the current reality). This consistency needn’t be optimistic nor pessimistic. It just needs to be reliable. This takes forethought and deliberation. So, put in the time to decide in advance on your messaging and then craft it, and stick to it. You may need to rephrase it at times but keep the thrust the same.
The obvious caveat to this is when new information becomes available or there is significant change in circumstances. If these call for a change in approach, then communicate the change. And until things change again, keep that communication consistent. As a general rule, you don’t want to be changing too frequently and ‘moving the goal post” as they say. This usually translates to complexity and confusion in people’s minds. And as we have seen from earlier in this article, that is a bad mix.
So, as much as you can, keep your messaging consistent. As for what the message should contain… that will be in the next article. For now, if you are having to communicate during this crisis, or any other crisis, in the capacity of a leader, keep the tips in this article handy—Keep it short and simple, distilled and cogent, and keep it consistent.
