Lifting people's gaze, a communications formula and concrete language
Avoid focusing on individual choices and behaviours
As we cover in the guide, focusing on individuals and their behaviours during COVID-19 surfaces unhelpful thinking and actions. It amplifies and dramatises the unhelpful behaviour, and tears at the connections between us, as we blame individuals for spreading the virus. It encourages anger at neighbours, friends, people we don't know (or even health ministers!), and takes our focus and energy away from how we support each other to stay at home and all the good work being done.
During COVID-19 we want to enhance the interconnections we have with each other. We also need people to think about how those with the most influence can support us. People in government and employers have a significant role in helping us cope with staying at home and being mentally well. Our communications should focus there.
We call this lifting people's gaze away from individual behaviour and choice and up to the systems and structures that have a much more powerful influence on shaping our lives and those behaviours. It is a kinder, more effective way to encourage the actions we want during times of fear and anxiety.
How do we lift people’s gaze?
“We can lift people’s gaze by using values of responsibility and wisdom, frames of connection as strength, team and acting metaphors, and explanatory chains about how physical distancing works.”
Instead of
“Look at those people breaking the rules, who will ruin it for us all”
Try
“The quiet in our streets is the sound of an incredible joint effort to keep our physical distance. We're playing our part in something bigger, stopping the spread of the virus”
Highlight the urgency and impacts using vision, values, barrier, solution formula
It is important to lead our communications with shared values and a vision of the better world we want. This can slow down people’s default reactions and open a side door into their thinking. Once that door is open, people are more willing to hear about the problems and solutions you need to present.
We call this the vision, values, barriers, solutions formula. We use it A LOT.
How would this look when you are talking about staying at home during COVID-19?
Step 1. Describe the better world (your vision) and lead with values.
We New Zealanders are caring and pragmatic types. By staying at home now we can break the chain of the COVID-19 virus early. It gives us all the best opportunity to stay well and be together again. Staying at home for a month means less physical contact with each other and less opportunity for the virus to pass between us through touching, coughing, sneezing.
Step 2. Describe the barriers and problems (name the systems level agents).
However, people in government have not provided the equipment needed to ensure that those people who do need to touch or be around other people don’t catch or spread COVID-19. People caring for people with a disability, for example, need to have gloves, face masks and other equipment to protect them while they carry out important caring work. They need support from people who control access to the equipment to help break the chain too.
Step 3. Present the Solution.
People in the Ministry of Health and our District Health Boards can prioritise getting personal protective equipment to community carers. This will ensure while everyone else stays at home to help break the chain, those who need care can get it. While those people who provide care will be able to give it, all while stopping the virus from spreading. It's how people in our government can support everyone to break the chain of COVID-19.
Using concrete language to help people stay at home
In our last email we talked about metaphors to help explain ‘how’ staying at home works to break the chain. Metaphors are useful where concrete language is impossible. But wherever possible, use the simplest, clearest and most concrete language you can.
One way to tell if you are using concrete language is to ask yourself if you could draw what you are describing. For example, ‘cat’ is more concrete than ‘animal’ and if you asked people to draw one you’d be more likely to get similar pictures. Likewise, concrete language is more likely to create a shared understanding in your audience.
We’ve noticed tense conversations in outdoor groups about what ‘local’ means if going for a run, ride or walk. Local is not a concrete term, and as such leaves people to fill the gaps with thinking and actions you may not want. For example, a person riding 100km around Auckland, risked bursting many people’s bubbles, because that was their understanding of ‘local’.
Abstract language also creates divisions between us, as people focus on the “rule breakers” instead of our collective and systems level responses. In the first newsletter and our guide we covered why we want to avoid thinking that positions individual responsibility as the focus of a good COVID-19 response.
Here are some examples of how to make your language about COVID-19 more concrete
Try staying at home instead of self-isolating.
Try stay within two kilometres of home instead of stay local.
Try contact tracing officers, researchers, and analysts instead of public health workers (most people don't know about public health workers and think healthcare starts and ends with doctors and nurses).
Try keeping two metres between us instead of physical distance or bubble.
A great example of being very concrete on physical distance:
Further resources
There is more guidance on communicating about COVID-19 in our message guide.
You can get a copy of our guide, and emails with practical communications advice like this post by signing up using the form on this page.
Jess had a lunchtime chat with Bernard Hickey and Kiwibank economist Mary Jo Vergara about how the economic and caring impacts of COVID-19 are hitting women very hard. You can watch here.
Get in touch with Rachel@theworkshop.org.nz if you would like to talk to us about how we can help you with specific advice
Finally, we think this delightful cartoon does a great job of surfacing human innovation and care values, and talking about how a virus spreads.