The Difference’s Andrew Thomas has worked with many senior leaders in healthcare, supporting them with strategy and tactics to make their communications land effectively and meaningfully, to achieve the desired organisational and commercial impact.
We’ve been reflecting with Andrew on key characteristics of the best leaders in communications, distilling them down to four persistent attributes that recur again and again. Incorporating these four pillars of great leadership communication helps us to stay sharp as we advise on communication strategy and to deliver content that really hits the spot with audiences, stimulating engagement and action.
Much of the most important communication in healthcare relates to change – either for organisations and employees in the way they work and focus, or for patients and stakeholders in the way they think and behave. People often talk about resistance to change as if it’s inevitable, but in our experience, communication from leaders and advocates that audiences trust and believe in can help overcome this resistance.
That means there’s both a challenge and an opportunity for healthcare leaders to communicate in a way that’s truly credible and inspiring. We think that the four attributes we’ve identified are fundamental to high-performing communication projects.
As a leader in communications, how highly do you value these qualities? Are you achieving the right balance in your organisation’s communications?
1. Self-awareness
Before stepping onto any platform, planning or issuing any communication, leaders need to have real personal clarity about underlying values, priorities and preferences. These define and shape relationships with their teams and audiences and are key to reinforcing a shared vision. If you’re not 100% clear about the fundamental reasons and drivers for sharing information or initiating action, flaws in your thinking will be exposed and you risk being derailed by inconsistencies or challenges.
That doesn’t mean you have to know all the answers or reject questioning or debate. As long as you are truly confident in what you’re saying and why you’re saying it, you will be able to handle these in a constructive way.
2. Sincerity
People talk so much about authenticity these days that it’s almost become an empty word. We prefer to say sincerity because it feels more personal and individual. We typically consider that leaders need to be strong and certain, but there’s an important role for modesty and humility in leading communications. This empowers you to share both highs and lows with team members and celebrate shared successes in a way that doesn’t feel hubristic or self-serving.
Leaders in communication must strike a balance between confidence and reflection. Acknowledging what’s working well and what is not, adjusting your course as you go, shows adaptability and resilience and that you are in touch with the real and evolving world where your audiences live and work.
3. Ethics
Being ethical in communications doesn’t only mean complying with your organisation’s policies. There’s a personal aspect to it that’s about showing your commitment to doing the right thing. Effective leaders show how and why principles matter to them, illustrating that they’ve thought about the consequences of the actions they’re advocating in content that they create and broadcast.
There needs to be a tangible and credible connection between an organisation’s ethics, the personal ethics of the leader who is communicating, and the ethics and value systems of the audience. The sweet spot is when these three elements overlap – the organisation is one we all respect and want to be part of, the leader is credible, and colleagues are keen to listen and take positive actions towards shared goals. This is particularly important for Gen Z: surveys* have shown that this generation of colleagues (and by extension, stakeholders) need to see something of themselves in the organisation they work for or transact with.
Empathy is important here: making an active effort to identify and understand different perspectives among colleagues and employees, rather than assuming that they will share your standpoint. An ethical approach fosters inclusion and helps to avoid assumptions about audience knowledge and priorities that could make your communications miss the mark.
* Including this one cited in Personnel Today in January 2025
4. Results focus
The connection to over-arching aims and objectives is always in the successful communication leader’s mind, from the organisation’s mission to project and commercial goals and targets. But reiterating these at every opportunity isn’t enough. In fact, it can be counter-productive, as people become inured to repetitive corporate statements that pop up everywhere.
Smart leaders know the value of using communication to bring goals into focus, by relating them to immediate and near future attainments and milestones. In healthcare, there may be massive long-term gains in patients making changes to their lifestyle and choices, but the motivation to work towards such a distant prospect is difficult to encourage. Inspiring internal or external audiences with short-term wins and staged achievements is most likely to keep them engaged.
Summary
Leading communications in healthcare is a challenging remit, whatever the content and audience. From internal and employee programmes and corporate comms to patient and HCP engagement, saying and doing the right things and engaging the right people is not as easy as it sounds. Centring on these four core values can help to maintain focus and increase impact in a personal way.
At The Difference Collective, our team of experienced consultants can help leaders with communications and content strategy, planning and delivery for any programme, function or role, drawing on deep experience of working with healthcare organisations. Please get in touch if we can support you.
About The Difference Collective
We build bespoke, full-service teams to meet your healthcare consultancy, content and communications needs, delivering exceptional results for our clients’ strategic priorities and projects. We work for the best and most ambitious organisations in pharma and healthcare. We’re Different from traditional healthcare communications agencies because we have more experience, we offer better value and – most importantly – we achieve exceptional results.
