Communicating Corona / COVID-19: 8 tips for Australian Leaders

You don’t need me to tell you what’s on the top of everyone’s minds right now. But to define just how much of ‘a thing’ COVID-19 is in the minds of Australians, last weeks Newgate Research study showed it was the leading unprompted issue for Australians — with 70% extremely or quite concerned.

A piece of new qualitative research by Principle (us! 👋🏼) found that this concern largely broken into two thematic categories. Firstly, are people concerned about the immediate health risks to themselves and people they love (38%), but secondly, a larger slice was much more concerned about the longer term system impact (62%).

We’re talking the economic impact — specifically as seen in measures like job security and whether we’ll be able to keep paying the bills. As well as larger challenges that feel further away from us — like will the workers in supermarkets, logistics companies, manufacturing and select retail and hospitality workers be able to make sure our society keeps running? Will our doctors, nurses, hospital cleaners and others who keep our hospitals running — be able to keep them running?

This is an important insight — because it gives anyone with a public platform guidance on what the public wants to and needs to hear from our leaders. You can apply this in your organisation — and it’s really what leaders like Scott Morrison should be doing too.

1. Don’t be clinical — effective care requires a bedside manner.

We all know that even the most brilliant doctors can end up leaving their patients more terrified after a consult if they don’t acknowledge the emotional context of their patient.

Our leaders need to do this too — which means speaking to the emotional anxieties of the Australian public. As we saw above — this is primarily driven by a fear that our social systems may begin to break down.

Therefore to genuinely give comfort and security to Australians, our leaders need to be frequently emphasising that the state remains strong, that our systems and social order remain robust and that we can rely on the brilliant, courageous and hardworking people of our essential services to keep food in our mouths and our lights on at night.

Yes.

Leaders will fail if they:

1. Predominantly talk in statistics and operational responses

• such as Gladys Berejiklian’s press conferences — which include lines like “here was no rationale for closing down schools … All the advice we have received is that schools should stay open … please don’t feel anxious about what you might hear or read which is outside what the Prime Minister or what I say or our officials who are making these decisions say. Please be confident that we will be open and transparent with you — we will tell you exactly what you need to know when you need to know” or,
• NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant, who said “we are seeing an increasing pattern in coronavirus among overseas returning travellers and an increase in the number of cases where the source of infection has not been found.”

2. Attempting to create ease by minimising the virus

• Such as Sydney’s Flow Athletic saying they hoped that “everyone will stay calm, keep training and remain positive in how you go about your every day”.
• NOTE: This is becoming rare amongst our elected officials — but still surprisingly common in corporate communications.

3. or, make highly quotable comments which judge, criticise or dismiss the unease felt by many.

• Such as Scott Morrison saying “Stop Doing it! It’s Ridiculous! …. Stop hoarding — it’s un-australian! …. It’s one of the most disappointing things I have seen in Australian behaviour” or,
• Alan Jones saying “Unless I’m moving in different circles, the almost universal reaction I am getting is that we have gone mad … And in this modern world, at the slightest provocation it seems, we revert — in spite of all the money spend on education — we revert to hysteria and alarmism.”

Isolation

We can also help reduce this social anxiety by reducing the usage of terms like “social isolating” and “social distancing”. These terms emphasise the terrifying social consequence of sickness — that you will be cut off from your community.

Instead we should use language which actually describes what is actually being asked — that people maintain ‘physical distancing’, and ‘physical isolation’.

Healthy people need their hearts treated as much as their minds. We must emphasise people can have peace of mind — our society is strong, our state is capable of solving this problem, we are all looking out for each other and people can have confidence that the right people are in the right places doing the right work for us all.

2. We’re solving a puzzle, not going to war.

We often drift into using the “medicine is war” metaphor when facing a challenge.

Examining metaphors behind our language is worthwhile because it clarifies our subconscious assumptions about how we understand the current situation, and the metaphors we use actually encourage or discourage certain policy responses and emotional reactions to the problems we’re facing.

The War Metaphor manifests in a number of familiar ways:

It’s an overwhelming infection; she’s got an infiltrating carcinoma; the body’s defences; he’s having a heart attack; killer T cells; we must treat him aggressively and use everything in therapeutic armamentarium; we’ve wiped out smallpox; go to casualty and the house officer will deal with you

Or more recently, Health Minister Brad Hazzard said NSW was

“in a battle with a virus that knows no boundaries … This budget announcement will empower our frontline troops to fight the battle that we all expect and that battle will be fought in every part of the state.”

The War Metaphor itself is attractive for many leaders as it inspires resilience — we see ourselves as courageous soldiers enduring and overcoming challenges on the front lines. It can give us the energy to keep going when we feel un-empowered, it makes it easier to trust in hierarchies of power (the “chain of command”), and it also makes it easier for politicians, doctors and other health professionals to bear the failures of medicine if they construct the ‘real’ enemy as the disease. A disease that we don’t have have the ‘intelligence’ on yet, and which is actively ‘fighting back’ against our efforts or ‘sabotaging’ our work.

However — we should deliberately and intentionally try to avoid these language constructions.

The War Metaphor ultimately places ordinary people — that is those who aren’t part of the ‘battle’ — as passive observers. We are dehumanised, and merely a side-effect of the disease. This creates deep anxiety in the community, and further distrust of those in positions of power — as its clear implication is that decision makers are likely to accept ‘collateral damage’ or ‘civilian casualties’ as part of this battle.

It also has the further problem of creating a conflict mentality in the community. When speaking about a contagious virus, it ultimately sets up others in our community (whether sick or not) as the potential “enemy” and unintentionally creates a greater risk for vigilante action.

Instead — we should articulate this challenge as a puzzle for us all to solve.

It is by its very nature exploratory, and it is intrinsically uncertain. We will make mistakes as part of the process — but intelligence, grit and perseverance will ultimately succeed. It also celebrates and reinforces the roles of experts, and specialists — but also emphasises that this is a collective, communal challenge to address and one where everyone’s contribution is valuable.

Because after all — medicine is cooperative and many people are involved, whether Corona/COVID or otherwise. We know patients, their family, health workers, and researchers all play a critical role in any medical procedures success. Success depends on working together to solve each problem with the knowledge and value each person can contribute. Neither success or failure is the sole responsibility of any one person; in other-words; it is not the surgeon alone who ‘cured’ the patient. Just as important was the patients own physical ability to ‘heal’ themselves, with the support of members of staff, their family, the community and so on. Embedded in this metaphor too is the idea of ‘labour’, reminding us that medicine depends on hard work and skill of both patient and doctor.

3. People want to feel empowered — give them something to do!

As you’ve probably noticed in the last two points — a recurrent theme here is that we need to be instilling a sense of agency, empowerment and control in people’s lives, and give people an outlet for the community to develop a sense of collective responsibility.

This means that people need to have a clear sense of what role they can play in the broader response and feel like they are making a valuable and meaningful contribution to a successful outcome — rather than just feeling trapped at home while maintaining basic hygiene, locked up and waiting for the jackal to arrive.

This is one of the most fundamental differences between the Australian experience of Corona/COVID and the recent Bushfires.

Both situations demonstrated an existential threat beyond human control affecting the lives of thousands. We saw runs on grocery stores, and people suffering enormous financial cost.

But we also saw the best in our communities — as people made sure nobody missed out on essentials if the local supermarket was empty. We gave lifts and beds to those who needed them, and donated to support those who lost so much. We knew when the directive came to evacuate, you’d have to make a call — do I stay knowing the risks or do I choose to seek safety? The choices and the actions could be carried by ordinary Australians.

Meanwhile — in our current situation, we have people feeling stuck at home without a clear way to help. Much of the advice is to stay home and wash your hands frequently. Which, you absolutely should do. However, this doesn’t create a sense of community or collective response.

For example, see this advice recently shared by Jacinda Ardern and the NZ Government. Most of which are largely person, passive recommendations.

1) Wash your hands.
2) If you don’t need to travel overseas, then don’t.
3) Wash your hands.
4) If you’re sick, stay home.
5) If you sneeze, do it into your elbow.
6) Wash your hands.
7) Stop handshakes, hugs, and hongi — I know this is counter to who we are as a nation, but the best thing we can do right now to show love and affection to one another, is to switch to the East Coast wave.
8) Please be mindful of the older citizens in your life. Check-in on them, but if you’re sick, keep your distance

Therefore — leaders need to be reminding us about the real and valuable difference ordinary people can make.

The Sydney Alliance, a diverse coalition of civil society organisations, has done some fantastic work on bringing people together (online) to give them purpose in this time. Some of their actions include:

• Getting groups of like-minded people in your area to meet virtually on platforms like zoom to coordinate and organise. This includes both how to give care and support to those who need it — but also importantly to plan and build stronger community advocacy to retailers, government and others about how we will manage the new problems that emerge from and during this crisis. This can also be supported with asynchronous organisation through Facebook groups.
• As individual people, setting up interpersonal conversations with as many people as you can — establishing regular, routine time to connect with others is a way of knowing what is happening in your community and keeping everyone connected. Possibly even consider doing this with neighbours or others nearby you don’t know especially well.

Once this crisis begins to level out — and it will eventually — people will be hungry to learn the lessons about how it got so bad, and how we can prevent it happening again. Use this time to start facilitating the relationships and conversations that will ultimately support this now (while also looking out for each other).

The New York Times has also posted a great tip sheet of ideas, “5 Ways to Help Your Community Combat Coronavirus (While Still Social Distancing)”

And for the more introverted of us, who are enjoying the social isolation but still want to contribute — there are programs such as Folding @ Home’s distributed computing work on Coronavirus, which you can participate in by visiting.

4. Emphasise shared responsibility

Emphasise that we pull through this only by pulling together.

I’m sure that you have, as many have, spent spent much of the last decade thinking about how to address a sense of polarisation and fragmentation in our national life.

This moment reminds us as a nation, and as a world, that it doesn’t matter whether you feel rich or poor, whether you’re old, young, indigenous, taiwanese, english, male, female or any other fault line that has been used to seperate us — we are all part of the same society and all responsible for our shared success.

Emphasise that we are each personally responsible for the person next to us in your communications.

US Academic Anat Shenker-Osorio suggested the following talking points:

“Our own health depends on the health of the person next to us, and the person next to them.”

“Ensuring others can access care is how we take care of ourselves.”

“Our families and neighbourhood are stronger, safer and healthier when we come together in moments of joy and celebration, and of illness and crisis.”

“We pull through this by pulling together.”

“This moment calls on us to go all in for all of us.”

5. Don’t hedge

Communicators will often hedge when they’re nervous or timid. Words such as “We seek”, “We hope”, “We’ll try to”, “We’ll endeavour” are common. It’s a mitigating word used to lessen the impact of an utterance in an interaction between the speaker and the addressee, such as politeness or ‘softening the blow”.

It create doubt and uncertainty about your abilities, and reduces confidence in your ability to execute. In this period of tumult, we must state boldly what must be done, and what it will take to do it.

6. Avoid negating, which means defining what something isn’t.

These are sentences which start with “This isn’t a…”, “it’s not about…”, “we’re not…”

There’s one surefire way to make people start thinking the worst — and that’s to negate.

Negating language often intense to challenge assumptions in the reader’s mind. However in this attempt at forming a connection with the reader (acknowledging what you think they’re worried about) — all it actually does is further strengthen the original idea you were hoping to convince them wasn’t a risk. Damn!

Instead of saying what you’re not doing, or what won’t happen — just say what you are doing, and what is likely to happen.

Examples include, “We are not expecting people to stay trapped in their homes for eight months”, “It is unlikely that we will need to create mass burials”, “We won’t need to roll out testing at that scale unless hundreds of thousands of people contract the virus”.

Or Professor Jodie McVernon, director of epidemiology at the Doherty Institute’s frequently quoted line, “We are not coming to these questions naively or without prior thought.”

7. Stay in your lane

It seems like every hour there’s been a new twist or turn — a big new piece of news or comment from a senior figure.

When things move quickly — it often creates a big information gap in the publics minds. What is the latest? What was speculation? What is still current speculation, and what’s been replaced with new information?

As a result — misinformation, rumours and local grapevine gossip are massively troublesome. In an information vacuum like this, it is tempting to imply knowledge beyond our core skills. Whether this is sharing things we’ve read, making inferences about how other industries or processes work based on their similarity to ones we know well, or at worst, sharing emotive anecdotes we have heard from members, supporters or even our friends and family.

Instead — focus exclusively and diligently on only discussing the impacts or actions related to things you can immediately control. This might be how to collect donations and where they’re going, this might be about how you’re introducing new technology to keep the nature of you work going in a time of physical disruption, or how the current situation might affect an area of policy specialisation you have (industrial impacts, etc).

Where possible — continue to link back to the sites such as the Australian Government’s COVID-19 page.

8. Brevity and frequency

Keep it short

When people are afraid and feel like the world is out of control — there is little any one message or messenger can do to help ground them.

This is why, more than ever, simple and short messages are critical.

Because this such is such a quickly evolving situation there is a lot of information being shared each day on this topic by public health officials and politicians, much of it highly detailed. That information isn’t really designed for the general public — it is primarily useful for doctors, health professionals, business people, government policy workers, and others who are playing an active role in trying to manage the situation. Part of the reason that it is being shared publicly is to speed up lines of communication and to increase the sense of ‘transparency’ in government.

This is great in principle — but it isn’t especially comforting for ordinary people who don’t have a degree in medicine.

Instead, if you’re communicating with the general public, you should be using direct sentences with active not passive verbs. Including the essential details, and keeping it as short as possible.

Instead of this: “The main way the disease spreads is through respiratory droplets expelled by someone who is coughing. The risk of catching COVID-19 from someone with no symptoms at all is very low.”

Say this: “You can catch this virus if you are within a few metres of an infected person and a droplet from their coughing or sneezing gets into your eyes, nose or mouth.”

The difference is that the second version is a direct sentence and the message has only one main point, on the mode of transmission. As important as the second point about risk may be, you want your audience to hear the mode of transmission and not be distracted by a second point.

Also, watch out for anything that might trip-up your message. While the CDC calls the disease outbreak COVID19, short for Coronavirus 2019, the mention of “2019” might confuse a reader who only wants to know what is happening right now. If the detail is not essential, leave it out.

Make it frequent

Once you have a series of short, simple messages — you need to repeat them again and again.

With so much noise and so many different ‘hot takes’, the only way people will start to internalise these critical messages is through frequent repetition over time.

Consider this recommendation from the other angle as well — which means that you should be avoiding new messages each day (even if it feels like the situation has changed a little). Regardless of how usefully crafted they are — without repetition people will not absorb or remember them. They certainly won’t be able to act on them, or feel any comfort from them.

Messenger

This point about frequency applies to the messenger as well. Whether you’re holding press conferences — or more likely posting to social media, live streaming or sending emails — try to establish a strong sense of voice and authorship. WHO are they trusting?

Conclusion

This is a challenging time for all of us as people, and we will all no doubt feel a personal touch of this crisis. However, as communicators, advocates and organisers we have a special role to play in holding our communities and countries together during a time of crisis.

We can use our empathy and understanding of people form opinions to help make this experience more empowering and less terrifying for us all.

If you have the capacity to implement some of these tips — it will make a real and significant difference in people’s lives.

If you do — please share them with me! I’d love to see how your work has evolved. You can email me at daniel@principleco.com.au.

If you’re struggling to implement them — please also drop me a line. I’d be more than happy to help you be more effective.