Catalyze change when you communicate with the C-suite

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During my teenage summers back in 19 (cough, cough), I worked as a short-order cook in a restaurant on the grounds of Ravinia Festival, an outdoor music venue in my hometown of Highland Park, Ill. For more than a century, the Ravinia Festival has hosted musicians of every variety, including legends like Audra McDonald, The Black Crowes, Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin and, most importantly, the Spin Doctors.

For many decades now, Ravinia also has been the summer residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. On many a teenage summer night, after I was done slinging burgers across the serving window, I would catch the last movement of a Mozart symphony, or the final few minutes of a Handel suite. Watching the orchestra and conductor work as a symbiotic unit was a sight of wonder that stays with me all these years later. Each unit of the orchestra played vitally unique roles, transmuting dots and lines on a page into musical notes that floated through the air like fireflies and dandelion seeds.

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Each musician would look to the conductor for guidance on tempo and timbre, indications about which section should increase their volume, which should hold back. While it was important for the other musicians to listen to one another, to hear the cue of the violins or the rumble of the timpani to know when to begin, it was the conductor whose primary focus was bringing all those musical components together in service to the score.

I watched those conductors use every gesture, every limb, to keep that singular unit built from multiple teams heading in the same direction. And on many a night, their effort paid off, as I and hundreds of others found ourselves moved beyond ourselves, all sharing the dream of transcendence through music.

Just like every orchestra needs a conductor, every organization needs executive management. Each member of an executive leadership team [JM1] is a conductor of their function, with the chief executive officer (CEO) serving as a conductor of conductors. All help the organization turn the words and numbers in a plan into value delivered to the customer or the community. In health care settings, executive leadership helps the organization navigate complex regulatory environments, competitive marketplaces with emerging competitors and a mix of labor models. A good heating, ventilating and air-conditioning supervisor knows how much the health care facility can throttle a boiler and when to give it time to rest. A good chief financial officer (CFO) knows how to do the same with a budget. And the same way the string section of an orchestra has its own culture and communication style, executive leadership teams do as well. In order to effectively sound the voice of the health care facilities team, learning how to “speak C-suite" is a power skill that you need to learn.

Know your audience

The first rule of effective communication with any group is to know your audience. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra never plays Beethoven to a Liszt crowd (don’t get them started about those Listztomaniacs). David Grossman, CEO of The Grossman Group, lays out six steps for effectively connecting with any audience in a 2022 blog post.  Grossman reminds us to:

• Determine who your audience is. Study what they have in common and where they differ. Consider what level of knowledge they bring to the conversation.
• Consider what is on their minds. Empathize with what they most want to know about the topic of your communication and how that information relates to their day-to-day activities.
• Think about what you need them to know. Decide what is the core message that you need to get across and reflect on how to package that core message in language that aligns with what the audience most wants to know.
• Define what you need them to do or feel with what you need them to know. Outline in your mind the action your audience needs to take after you’re done communicating with them.
• Decide the best means of communicating this information. Determine if you will achieve your goal best through informal conversation, formal presentation or somewhere in between. Think about what data will help, what human-focused narrative will support your goals .
• Ask yourself how you can best relate to your audience and motivate them to take action. Put together your communication and then review it from the mindset of your audience. Explore what changes you need to make to ensure you are able to better connect with the audience and drive them to action.

You know that the health care facility you work at has deferred maintenance that needs to be done. How do you describe the impact of ignoring that maintenance to your chief nursing officer when compared to your CFO?  What do you need the clinical executive leaders to advocate for when talking about repairs to the autoclaves to their administrative colleagues? What do you need the CFO to say to the CEO about the work on the chiller that hasn’t been approved for the last three budget cycles?   

The language of the boardroom

Every subculture within an orchestra has their unique concerns and conceits. The string section is worried about their hundred-year-old instruments and the market price for resin.    The brass section is always cracking jokes and releasing their spit valves wherever they feel like it. Don’t get me started on the percussion section and their inferiority complex. Just like an orchestra, each component within a health care organization has their unique perspective and proclivities.

The most successful operators within a health care environment understand how to speak in the language of the groups they are collaborating with to accomplish their goals. In his 2019 Forbes article, “Six Ways to Improve Communication With The C-Suite,” Michael DesRochers, founder and managing director of PoliteMail Software, lays out do’s and don’ts when interacting with members of the boardroom at your organization. Here’s his recommendations:

Don’ts

• Don’t ask for anything. Offer to offload some other requests rather than make new ones.
• Don’t complain about a problem or something you believe is wrong unless you've got a solution.
• Don’t simply solve a problem; provide the narrative on why it matters
• Don’t lie, but also realize the truth of a situation is not just facts. It’s also the perception of and perspective on those facts.

Do’s

• Be succinct and prepared to back up every point you make with data.
• Be capable and confident you can deliver or be great at finding the people who can.
• Be authentic and genuinely interested in getting to know them as people, remembering that they are more than their title.
• Be eager to let them know, through words and deeds, that you are confident in what you do, respectful of what they do, and are not intimidated by them and are truly interested in their success and that of the business.

In his 2022 Fast Company article, “5 mistakes people make when talking with executives,” Jim Frawley, CEO and founder of Bellwether, provides practical advice on how to strategize your formal communication with members of the executive leadership team when advocating on behalf of your department’s goals. Frawley advises us to:

• Avoid providing too much detail. Remain high level and strategic in what you share.
• Have a clear opinion on what needs to happen with the information being communicated, including any and all appropriate follow up. Executives will immediately sense a lack of conviction in the narrative, which automatically costs you any hope of validity.
• Be prepared for questions and challenges. Anticipate their questions to demonstrate thorough preparation, and have answers ready to build trust and indicate your ability to view a situation from a holistic and solutions-oriented perspective
• Respect the time, thought and focus you will need to put into preparing your communication with the executive leadership team around the issue about which you are speaking to them. Understand the value of the time you have with these decision-makers and make sure to take advantage of every second you have of their attention.
• Focus on need versus want. Members of the executive leadership team need to know the facts (typically never more than three primary points). Consider what your wants for the communication are beyond the surface request. Make sure what you communicate nonverbally are messages like, “I know what I am talking about is in the best interest of the organization.”

Remember, it’s about the symphony, not the orchestra

When any group of humans comes together, the opportunity for the people "peopling" is always there. The conductor and her insistence on moving the salt and pepper shakers in the lunchroom. How annoyed the flautists get when the bassoon players bellow down the hall. And don’t get them started about Bianca talking incessantly about her homemade pappardelle. But gathered together on the Ravinia Festival stage on a peaceful July evening, all that pettiness melts away. As “Rhapsody in Blue” or the “Jupiter Symphony” envelops both the players and the people listening, a profound shared desire for beautiful harmony connects everyone together.

The same interplay of the petty and profound is true within health care facilities. So, when you get the chance to communicate with your organization’s executive leadership, remember to sound your note strongly. Because the music in a health care facility is different, but no less profound than the music of a symphony. The sound of a mother crying tears of joy when her child is saved from a life-threating accident. Laughter of the absurdity of life amongst patients getting chemo treatments at the same time. An audible gasp of responsibility when a father holds their newborn child for the first time. Music that sounds best when the people that make up the health care facility play their instruments together, with the turn of a wrench, the prick of a vein, the reading of a scan coming together supported by, and under the direction of executive management. A score we all play notes upon. The symphony of life and death.

Adam Bazer, MPD, senior director of thought product development, ASHE.