Hi, I’m Sanjula Jain, an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Health Services researcher based in the Washington DC area.

Communicating effectively, whether it be in a professional or personal setting, is no easy feat. I’ll preface this conversation by saying that I am by no means a communication expert. In fact, it’s a skill I practice daily because in my opinion, being a strong communicator requires continuous reflection and learning.

As I reflect on many of my own experiences, ranging from presenting data, and advising clients, to mentoring students and teaching executives, I found that being able to contextualize and shape your message to the audience is essential. As someone who spends a lot of time leveraging healthcare data to tell stories and influence decisions, I have learned that effective communication is not about how impressive my graphs look, but about knowing the right amount of information to share, in what way and to the right audience.

Every individual or group that you communicate with has a unique learning style. Some prefer to receive information visually, whereas others might gravitate towards listening or hands on experiences. Some of us process information in bite sized chunks, while others need as many details as possible.

For example, when I present healthcare landscape trends, I often speak about the growing role of the federal government in paying for medical services. The first time I presented this trend to a group of C suite hospital executives, I showed a simple graph visualizing the significant increase in hospital revenues from Medicare and Medicaid over the last 10 years. This was a trend that had not been widely published, and had important implications for how these executives thought about their go-forward strategy. But the response was not what I was expecting. My very colorful, well labeled simple graph was greeted with blank stares. Finally, one executive raised their hand and asked how this was relevant to their hospital. When I answered I got a few head nods, but by that point it was too late. I had already lost their interest and my message was lost in translation. I then realized that my approach was more suitable for how I would present a concept to my intro to health policy students, but not exactly for an executive decision maker. I had failed to shape my data message in the context of what a hospital executive valued information that was relevant to the hospital’s clinical and financial performance. The next time that I presented the same trend to a group of C suite executives, I employed an entirely different approach. This time, I called on each executive in the room to share aloud what percent of their hospital revenue came from Medicare and Medicaid. Then I asked them what the number was 10 years ago. I wrote all the numbers up on the whiteboard and drew a line in real time showing the change in revenue over that 10-year period. But I didn’t just stop there. I then began asking the executives how government payments were currently affecting their hospitals bottom line. Almost immediately, the executives began asking questions and furiously taking notes. So why did the same trend presented to the same audience get two different reactions? Well, in my interactive white-boarding session, I was able to make the data relevant to each executive by applying the trend to their specific business objectives. In other words, I was finally speaking their language.

So if I were to leave you with one tidbit, it is that the same piece of information can relay different messages depending on what language you use. Being an effective communicator means always carefully considering what different audiences need to hear and how they want to hear it. Whenever your audience changes, so should the language you use.

Thank you, Sanjula, for sharing such amazing insights from your career path.

I think that during the pandemic, we all got to feel the importance of effective communication since a lot changed in our lives. Since March, I can really see the difference of how we have to interact depending on situations and audience. It is really important to be able to carry the right message not only for individuals, but also for companies and industries. And even though many things have gone back to the old, there are still some measures taken right now. One of them I got to follow was the Paris Fashion Week to be held virtually and for some even pre-recorded. So many designers have to come up with a unique way to present their new collection, and most importantly, in the way they wanted their audience to receive the story and mission of their brand. After all, fashion shows goal is to reach a global community and understand what their needs are, and how they’d like to present themselves and give the designers the opportunity to communicate with their audience. This offers a life experience for interested people to see a designer’s point of view before their eyes. So the seasonal fashion weeks are the essential form of communication for designers’ successful storytelling. Lastly, I want to talk about one of my personal favorite solutions for the streaming of the show, which was a virtual reality option, making the whole experience more lifelike and portraying the message and atmosphere in the best way as possible.