Last Sunday, Paul Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, published a post to his Running A Hospital blog titled I hate it when I have to give this kind of news (tweeted, too).
A friend recently went to the Emergency Room because of some bad symptoms. After a few tests, the attending physician returned to give the diagnosis. He started out by saying, “I hate it when I have to give this kind of news” and then proceeded to summarize the test results and finally to tell my friend that she likely had a very serious, probably terminal form of cancer.I think what happened here was that the doctor thought that his introductory clause displayed empathy. But what this patient and her spouse heard was that the doctor was more concerned about what he was feeling than what the patient was feeling. Especially after they found out that, no matter how badly he felt, it was the patient who was likely to suffer and die.
Levy is a master at leadership blogging which I define as the art of strategic, near real-time short storytelling.
His blog post begins with a short story of a recent incident which raises the likelihood of grabbing the reader’s attention and that the reader will remember the post. (It’s surprising how many leaders underestimate the power of stories vs. memos and lectures.)
Reading the rest of his post, you realize he’s being strategic: he’s conveying to the 1,000+ physicians who work at his hospital that physician empathy is critically important. He thinks this doctor blew it and he’s looking for input from others via comments attached to the post (currently at 20).
So where’s the leverage?
The obvious:
Levy has thousands of blog readers and Twitter followers, many of whom are hospital stakeholders (staff, board, patients, health care community, etc) who are likely to read this blog post.
The less obvious
Levy knows that in the age of social media, he’s going to reach the audiences of his audience. People are going to blog about his blog post, retweet it, email it, comment on other blogs about it. There’s a likelihood that media professionals who cover the health care industry will mention/link to his post and a percentage of their audience of readers and followers will in turn spread the word.
Do a Google search on the phrase (in quotation marks) “I hate it when I have to give this kind of news” and you’ll see the viral ripple effect of a blog post.
The not-at-all-obvious
It’s likely that over the days and maybe weeks to come, Levy will have staff informally mentioning to him (email, phone, cafeteria, hallways, staff meetings, etc) that they read his post, that they’ve been discussing it with others, that they’ve heard that others have been discussing it.
In the course of any leader’s week, there are literally hundreds of these kinds of interactions with colleagues, constituents, staff, media and other members of one’s community or circle of influence. They comprise the bulk of how leaders exhibit their day-to-day influence.
A phone call from a constituent, a conversation with a staff member at lunch, an email exchange with a colleague, an off-topic discussion at a team meeting – all likely evaporate into thin air, for all intents and purposes, as soon as they’re concluded.
But with a blog, leaders can select from among this never-ending parade of interactions the ones that they deem strategically significant, and give them a longer “shelf-life.” With a posting to their blog (and the additional leverage of Twitter), the story of the interaction gains immediate wider audience while making it significantly easier for that audience to pass the story around to others who they think should know about it.
Leaders are generally reluctant to blog (I have a list of ten common reasons why) but once they understand how a leadership moment captured in a blog post can be leveraged for much greater influence, they’re more than willing to embrace it.
~ Griff Wigley is a guest contributor.
