Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com • March 23, 2020 • Hartford Business Journal 25 OPINION & COMMENTARY TALKING POINTS Communication tips for dealing with coronavirus By Andrea Obston Y ou can fight the coronavirus with your words. Amidst the screaming headlines and clickbait-driven posts, communi- cators can and should use the power of their words to fight the panic that's spreading, well, like a virus. Here are a few tips for com- municating with employees, customers and suppliers: Nix the adjectives: Using words like "deadly" and "catastrophic" fuels the panic that's being fed by social media and gossip. I like this advice to journalists from the Poynter Institute: "There is no law that says every time journalists men- tion the word "virus" that they have to precede it with the word "deadly." It is true some people die. But we don't call the traffic jams every day in every city "deadly traffic jams" even though somebody will die every day in traffic. By now people know this is a serious issue. Stick to the cold hard facts. Choose images carefully: When choosing images for website landing pages, eblasts and blog posts pick those that focus on healthy habits in- stead of sickness. Showing someone in a mask only fuels the fires. "The public is starting to freak out. Don't add to it with screaming clickbait headlines and scary generic images." That's another piece of advice to journalists covering this story from the Poynter Institute. Offer advice. Not emotion: Your employees, customers and vendors are looking for practical information about how this virus is affecting your operations and workplace. They want to know what you're doing and what they can do. For example, Trader Joe's is encour- aging ailing employees to stay home by changing its sick-leave policy dur- ing the coronavirus outbreak to allow unwell workers to get reimbursed. Address the status of upcoming events: The people who depend on your business need to know what you'll be doing about upcoming events. Are you cancelling? Consid- ering cancellation? Going forward? When will you make those decisions if you haven't already? Provide scheduled updates: Now is the time to demonstrate that your business cares about its employees, customers and vendors by serving as a source for clear-headed information. Establish a firm schedule of information-packed communica- tions through eblasts, social media, blog posts, podcasts or YouTube videos. Sticking to that schedule will position you as a dependable source of credible and useable information. Make worker safety a priority: Demonstrate your employee-cen- tered culture by providing workers with information about what you're doing to make their workplace safe. Do this through individual emails to workers, communications on your intranet and YouTube videos by your leaders. Intel also shares this informa- tion with their suppliers and visitors and has been updating it almost daily. As communicators, we are all striv- ing to showcase our companies as thought leaders. Now is the time to do it, but in a responsible way. Make sure all communications provide us- able and not emotional messages. In the rush to deal with this virus, do not get so carried away that you fan the flames of fear. Andrea Obston is president of Andrea Obston Marketing Communications, a reputation- management firm in Bloomfield. BIZ BOOKS How to improve your public speaking By Jim Pawlak "Grace Under Pressure — A Masterclass in Public Speaking" by Lisa Wentz (LID Publishing, $19.95). There are three sections to the book: 1. "What holds us back" deals with identifying and quelling pre-speech jitters. 2. "Vocal Training" speaks to how voice and de- meanor can make or break your point. 3. "Delivery" involves structuring for effective communication. They're interrelated; fail in one and you'll fail in all. Here are highlights: "What holds you back" — Trying to emulate someone else doesn't work. Authentic- ity sells the audience. Your voice and manner are uniquely yours. Example: I've watched Willie Nelson and Lucia- no Pavarotti sing "Ave Maria." Totally different sound and delivery, yet they wowed their audiences singing it their way. Imagine the audience response if Nelson tried to sing it like Pavarotti and vice versa. When preparing to go on-stage, I recite these song lyrics: "I gotta be me, I gotta be me. The dream that I see makes me what I am." "Vocal training" — Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated: "Speak clearly, if you speak at all; carve every word before you let it fall." When you listen to many rock and hip- hop songs, you miss the meaning of their lyrics because it's difficult to decipher them. The same holds true for presenters who speak like they're racing to be done. Those who take their time to clearly articulate every word "communi- cate clear thinking and confidence." The audience actively listens because they understand the importance of the message. "Delivery" — "Stories are powerful tools for sharing information." Every speech should tell a story to explain what was, what is and what could be. Stories add context to content. Make- a-point stories within the presenta- tion allows an audience to connect the dots to the speaker, shared expe- riences and what they must do. • • • "What's Your Problem? To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve" by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg (Harvard Business Review Press, $35). As management guru Peter Drucker ob- served, "There's nothing more dangerous than the right answer to the wrong question." When you answer the wrong ques- tion, the "faux solution" exac- erbates the real problem and wastes effort, time and money. Part of the "wrong questions" syndrome stems from the fact that problems demand immediate, straight-line action based upon the obvious. Wedell-Wedellsborg believes that "finding a new problem to solve" identifies "aha" alternatives, which leads to better solutions. "Reframe is where you challenge your initial understanding of the problem." Think of it as an access ramp on an expressway — you can get off to explore points of interest and get back on the expressway easily. Reframing seeks answers to some ba- sic questions: "What are we missing?" "Where is the problem not?" "Is there a better objective to pursue?" "What is my/our role in creating the problem?" Example: BarkBox helped solve the problem of too few dogs being adopted because animal shelters don't have funds to advertise adoptable dogs in their care. BarkBox reframed the problem from "no advertising money" to "how to raise awareness." For $8,000, it created BarkBuddy, a free "Find fluffy singles in your area" app, profil- ing dogs from shelters nationwide. It's been downloaded over 250,000 times. Awareness problem solved — if shel- ters upload and update profiles. Jim Pawlak Andrea Obston

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