Transform Even Reluctant Speakers Into Stars: Proven Strategies and Tactics to Use with Hospital Leaders
How UNC Health’s communications team prepares hospital executives for thought leadership.
// By Wendy Margolin //
Among the most important currencies in health care is trust. Meanwhile, trust in leadership today is at an all-time low.
According to PwC’s 2022 Consumer Intelligence Series on Trust, 87 percent of executives think customers highly trust their companies. In reality, it’s roughly 30 percent.
That makes thought leadership from hospital executives a key method of cultivating stakeholder trust. The more leaders are accessible and knowable, the more employees and patients can trust the institutions they guide.
Sharon Delaney McCloud, director of corporate communications at UNC Health
At UNC Health, a major academic health system in North Carolina, the communications team recognizes that its leaders are called upon to be exceptionally visible. But that doesn’t mean they have the skills to be effective communicators.
“Our leaders have multiple advanced degrees. But we find that many of them, even 30 years into their career and with advanced degrees, have never taken a simple communications class because it doesn’t exist in many curricula,” says Sharon Delaney McCloud, director of corporate communications.
This knowledge led her, with Jamie Williams, director of executive communications, to develop a strategy to help the hospital’s leadership stand out as experts. Together, they poured their energy into developing content in their leaders’ voices and training those leaders to become outstanding communicators.