Intro: The following SHSMD Podcast is a production of Dr. Podcasting.com.

Bill Klaproth (host): On this edition of the SHSMD podcast, whether it's a national conference or a presentation to the board of directors, it's really important that your organization's leaders communicate with confidence and impact. So we're going to talk about a session coming up at SHSMD Connections, 2023, Building a Thought Leadership Program, Preparing Your Leaders For the Big Stage with Jamie Williams and Sharon Delaney McCloud. So if you're wondering, how can I be better? Or how can I get my top leadership to be better when presenting their ideas? This is the session for you. So let's get to it right now!

 This is the SHSMD podcast, rapid insights for healthcare strategy professionals in planning, business development, marketing, communications, and public relations. I'm your host Bill Klaproth.

In this episode, we talk with Jamie Williams, Director of Executive Communications and Sharon Delaney, McLeod, Director of Corporate Communications, both from UNC Health. Jamie and Sharon are presenting during this year's 2023 SHSMD Connections annual conference in Chicago. And they will present their topic, Building a Thought Leadership Program, Preparing Your Leaders for the Big Stage on September 11th. You can register for SHSMD Connections, 2023, at SHSMD.Org. That's S-H-S-M-D.org/education/annualconference. Jamie and Sharon, thanks for being here.

Jamie Williams: Thanks, Bill. It's great to be with you.

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Hey, Bill, so glad to be here. Thank you.

Bill Klaproth (host): Yeah, this is going to be a great topic. So interesting. Building a Thought Leadership Program, Preparing Your Leaders for the Big Stage. So Jamie tell us why is developing executive presence and learning the skills to communicate with confidence and impact so important?

Jamie Williams: Thanks, Bill. I, I think as we work together with our leadership at UNC Health, I think one thing we try to emphasize is that really, every stage is a big stage. And so whether that is a keynote at a conference or a panel discussion or meeting with an internal audience or, or board of directors, preparing our leadership to deliver messages clearly, concisely, and especially over the last several years with empathy and compassion for the people that we work with, has been something that Sharon and I have strived to do as we work together with each other. And also with with our leaders within UNC Health.

Bill Klaproth (host): Sharon, it sounds like for these executives, these people leading hospitals and health systems, it's not given that they're really great at giving presentations. Is that fair?

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Bill, I think that's very fair to say. And if you look at the resumes and CVs of a lot of hospital leadership, especially if they came up as clinicians or as healthcare providers themselves, at no point during medical school do they take a public speaking or presentation class. I mean, that is one huge gap in I believe everyone's background, unless you are a communications major. I think that the ability to speak with confidence is an absolute priority. And you know, you oftentimes hear, oh, that's a soft skill. No, it is not. It is a power skill, and I think that leaders who start to realize how impactful they can be with the way they speak and how they speak, to change hearts and minds of the people they're working with; once they dial into that and realize it, they are all in. I, I think Jamie would agree. We have tremendous support from our executives because they know just how important it is.

Jamie Williams: I definitely agree with, with Sharon, and I think honestly where we saw this was 2020, in that spring and summer, as, as COVID was interrupting all of our work lives. And, and the venues that we had to speak with our teammates were, were gone really. And there was so much information to share that was so rapidly changing.

Probably like a lot of places, we launched weekly videos with our executives, with our CEO especially. We were doing weekly videos to update our teammates on changing policies as it pertained to safety within the workplace, messages of support and other things. And honestly, we hadn't done such regular video communication or anything like that with, with our CEO up to that point. And we saw such response from our teammates, and I think our leadership began to appreciate just how valuable of a medium that was to communicate messages with our teammates, which are spread all across the state of North Carolina. We have 15 hospitals across the state, 40,000 teammates that are spending hours and hours on, on the highway.

But to be able to connect with them quickly over video with such a valuable tool that we have really springboarded that into the work that we have done since then. But I do think that was a moment where the value of this really, really became clear to our leadership.

Bill Klaproth (host): So I know the title of the presentation is, Preparing Our Leaders for the Big Stage. So it sounds like this is great for presentations if you're on a panel discussion, at conferences or major meetings with, board members. It sounds like just in regular communication with the staff as well, having these communication skills is a benefit. Would that be right Sharon?

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Absolutely. And when we say big stage in the title of our talk that we're going to be doing, big stage does include many things and every opportunity is essentially a stage. And I like to say now to add another layer to that Bill, is that every single one of our teammates, and especially our leadership, are now television broadcasters because everyone is doing some version of on camera meetings, presentations, interviews, whatever it is, we're all working in this hybrid virtual world, and the pandemic taught us that we can actually find a lot of efficiencies by doing some of our meetings virtually. And so, therefore you are now a broadcaster. We're all living in this screen. And that's my background Bill.

I spent 25 years as a television journalist anchor and reporter for years. So I bring some of those skill sets straight into our practice arena when we're getting folks ready to do higher stakes kinds of videos where we want them to look and feel confident because if they can feel confident going into these presentations, if they're on camera, they're going to connect to our teammates better or to our perspective patients or to our board members.

Jamie Williams: I was just going to add to that Bill, because I think it's important to sort of expand upon what Sharon was saying and think about the ways that her and I do work together. She mentioned her background in, in television. My background is more, more on the writing side. I, I would consider myself more of a, more of a writer and having worked with our executives to help them with talks and help them with sort of internal emails and messages, I think what I appreciate the most about working with someone like Sharon and, and the appreciation that I've gained for her over our time together is really, I can spend the time working with our, our leadership to craft great messages and beautiful words that, that, that are fitting the purpose that we need.

But I think what I've come to appreciate is that that's really only half the battle and, and the delivery, and especially, you know, when it's virtual or when it's on video. The delivery makes all the difference. We could have those messages, but if it's not delivered in a compelling way, that's going to grab people's attention, it, it's, it's kind of all for naught.

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Bill, I don't know if you've ever seen the pie chart about how people perceive you when you are communicating, and this is based on the work of Dr. Albert Mehrabian , who's a researcher out at UCLA and he says, and this builds upon what Jamie was just saying, you could have the most beautiful words in the world that Jamie has helped craft, but if you can't deliver it well, you might as well send it as an email.

And so, apparently, according to Dr. Albert Mehrabian's research is 55% of your communication is actually your body language and what your face looks like, what your hands are doing. 38% is what your voice sounds like, the actual delivery of your, of your vocal, of what you're saying. And then only 7% are the actual words.

And so, essentially what we're doing with our leaders is we're trying to make sure that all of it is working congruently, the beautiful words, the impactful messaging, married up well with good, strong, confident body language, and then a tone of the voice that's delivered in a way that that's necessary to influence or have your audience make the decision to move from A to B or whatever the ask is.

Bill Klaproth (host): Yeah, I think. That is such a good point. You have to have the material, the content of course. But if the delivery is lacking, the presentation is going to fall short. So having those delivery skills, is really what makes it. So really good point. And I know in your session, you're going to talk about knowing your audience, who you're delivering it to. So can you talk about that a little bit?

And explain what that means, Jamie.

Jamie Williams: Well, I think it goes back to just this idea of empathy and understanding kind of where people are and what they, what they need, and understanding that the messages that our leaders are delivering, hopefully it's the same message. I really strive, we want to talk to people in a way that is respectful and we want to, I, I don't want to have separate messages for different levels of the organization.

I want people to understand the important work that needs to be done. But also where we need to be empathetic as communicators and as leaders, is understanding how people are going to perceive this information, the background that they have, what questions that they might have. That's something that our CEO, Dr. Wesley Burks often sort of challenges me on as we work together. Thinking about, okay, why does this person care? What do they want to hear? What's going to move them? Where are their biases? Where are their perceptions? What questions are they going to ask? A lot of times we're, we're dealing with audiences that may be skeptical.

And so understanding that skepticism or understanding the things that might make them ask questions so that we can address that on the front end is, is a really effective way to build out communication.

Bill Klaproth (host): Yeah, I think those are really good questions to ask and you will go over this in the session. So let's talk a little bit more about the session. Sharon, tell us what can we expect and what are you going to be teaching us? Can you share some of the strategies and techniques?

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Absolutely. Jamie and I really work lockstep when we're preparing one of our leaders. Maybe it's for a town hall or for our organization, or maybe it's an external conference that he's representing UNC health. And so we're working together early on. We come in, we, we try to understand very clearly A, who is the audience?

What problem are we solving for them? Then Jamie starts crafting the message in alignment with, with our leader, with what they're hoping to achieve. And then I'm working to, to put the performance element to really polish it up. And some of that includes like we're putting people on camera, playing it back and dissecting it.

All right, what are your hands doing here? Why do you, why do you look uncomfortable? What can we do to make you feel more comfortable and, and what can we do? You know, are we looking at sometimes the way they're standing and, and giving tips and tricks on, cause one of the top questions I get is I don't know what to do with my hands, which is, from Talladega nights.

But there's just some of the most simple things like that, that you don't think about until all of a sudden you're on a stage somewhere. And everyone's looking at you and you start to have this negative self-talk. And so I try to arm people with confident techniques. Alright, here's what I'm going to do when I get center stage.

Here's how I'm going to use my hands to make me, in a very authentic way. I don't want to make robots or actors out of people. It has to be their true selves coming forward. But then really what it comes down to Bill is by putting people on camera and then playing it back so they can see how others see them in action; boom, that's where so much of the learning takes place and the changes or improvements happen almost immediately. And, and so we get into a, a cadence of that kind of practice, and then on top of that we'll talk about some of the things we're doing. For example, we put together for our C-Suite, what are called Speaker One Sheets, which are ways that we showcase our leaders to put them out in front of national audiences, to be a keynote speaker or a featured speaker at conferences, and what does that look like and how do we work with meeting planners to best position our leaders for the various conferences?

Bill Klaproth (host): So, Sharon, will you have examples then on screen of how they should not use their hands and how they should use their hands? Will you have slides and, which would be great to see. And the Speaker One Sheets, you'll have examples of those as well.

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Absolutely. It's, something that most people will realize, the most of the members in attendance, they say, oh, we already have all that information. We just haven't put it together in this particular format.

Bill Klaproth (host): Right. And Jamie, what are the key takeaways you hope people will walk away with after your session?

Jamie Williams: Sure. So I'd like to go back to something Sharon just mentioned, and, and that's the idea of authenticity. you know, with a lot of humility, I, I really just understand as much as I work to craft these messages and Sharon is working on this, this training, and it's, it's really helpful for folks. The reality is that when we are preparing our executives to go out and speak, people are coming to see them.

They're not coming to see Jamie, they're not coming to see Sharon. They're coming to see these leaders. And so we have to work closely with them to tailor the work that we do in a way that is authentic to them, that acknowledges their strengths, their weaknesses, and positions them to to be their best.

And that's really what I'm always striving. And so some of the ways that we have done that is having conversations over time, listening, learning different stories. Sharon has this wonderful resource that we've used with our leaders. It's a Story Bank Exercise where people can kind of catalog their experiences over their professional career, help share some of those personal stories so that when we are working on a talk, when we're going to a particular audience, I can kind of look through those files and say, Hey, this is a great personal story that might, that might work well for this group.

And honestly, one of the most effective things that I've done over the years is as I'm working on a talk, as I'm working on talking points, just sitting in the audience and listening to our leaders and, and, and honestly, listening into the things that they say that, that I didn't write, the things that weren't in the talking points, cause those are the things that they're ad-libbing that, that often trigger something in my mind to say, oh, well gosh, that must be a really important thing.

And so a lot of times I'm taking notes on that and I can assure you, Bill, the next time that anecdote's going to be, going to be in there.

Bill Klaproth (host): Well, this has really been a lot of fun. This is going to be a great session. I appreciate your time today, Jamie and Sharon. As we wrap up, I'd like to ask you each the same question. Sharon, let's start with you. What else would you like to add when we're talking about becoming a more confident speaker and having executive presence, what would you like to add?

Sharon Delaney McCloud: I think it's important to recognize that everybody has a story and everybody has something important to share, and when you can build confidence around bringing those messages to the world; there's really no limit with what you can do with that. And one of my favorite Ted speakers said words are powerful. You can either say I love you or start a war. And I mean, if you let that sit for a minute, it's just extraordinary. And so I think that once people understand just how important and impactful their communication can be and how they can help their team members lean into that as well; there's really no limit with, with what can be done.

Bill Klaproth (host): Very well said, everybody has a story to tell and words have power. And Jamie, if we could wrap up with you then anything else you'd like to add?

Jamie Williams: Yeah, I think, I think what you bring to the table here as a communicator and as a speaker really has to be that sense of curiosity. To learn those stories, to share those stories that, that Sharon was just mentioning. But then also as we look for inspiration, I know that, that when I'm doing my work and when I'm working with our executives, you know, we're constantly passing articles back and forth, and they can be from a range of sources on a range of subjects, but the idea is to find those little pieces of connection that can work for you and work for others. And sometimes those come from, from different sources than you might expect.

And so what I hope to encourage of, of those who attend the talk and those who do work that's similar to, to what Sharon and I do, is to just try to build those connections with the people that you work with. Build those personal connections to sort of understand what's going to inspire, inspire, and motivate them, and then bring that, that in.

Bring that in to the work that you're doing.

Bill Klaproth (host): Yeah. Good point. Well, I think this is going to be a great session. I want to thank you both for your time today, and we're looking forward to seeing you at SHSMD 2023. Jamie and Sharon, thank you so much for your time.

Sharon Delaney McCloud: Thanks, Bill.

Jamie Williams: Thank you.

Bill Klaproth (host): And once again, that's Jamie Williams and Sharon Delaney McLeod. They are presenting at this year's 2023 SHSMD connections in Chicago. Their topic, Building a Thought Leadership Program, Preparing Your Leaders for the Big Stage. They will present that on Monday, September 11th. You can register for SHSMD connections, 2023 at SHSMD.org. S-H-S-M-D.org/education/annualconference. And if you've found this podcast helpful, and of course, how could you not, please share it on all of your social channels. And please hit the subscribe or follow button to get every episode. This has been a production of Dr. Podcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth.

See ya.