How to Communicate as a Leader (with Mike Lyons)

Your team isn’t ignoring you, they’re processing. 

When the message affects benefits, pay, staffing, or job security, people don’t just “hear” an update and move on. They replay it, question it, compare notes, and fill in blanks with worry. We talk through why clinic leaders routinely underestimate how much communication it takes to create real clarity, and why you should assume you need to say it at least three times, then more when the stakes climb.

We walk through practical examples from the HR trenches: benefits enrollment that goes sideways when staff don’t understand what’s changing, and the culture damage that follows when people feel surprised or unsupported. We also address the tougher moments like layoffs, reorganizations, and leadership changes where you can’t share every detail but you still have to lead. A key framework guides the whole conversation: heard versus understood versus believed versus remembered. If trust is low, the number of repeats required goes up, so we discuss how to rebuild credibility through consistency and visibility.

You’ll also get a tactical menu for communication in an eye care clinic: email for quick reach, video for tone and trust cues, and simple walk-arounds where you show your face on purpose to answer questions and settle nerves. We add a crucial twist for effective change management: communication is two-way. Anticipate the questions staff will have, invite input, use surveys when needed, and consider small informal councils so you don’t miss what people are afraid to say out loud.

If you want better employee engagement, stronger staff retention, and a healthier clinic culture, this is the leadership skill to master. Subscribe, share this with a fellow practice owner or administrator, and leave a review with the communication challenge you’re facing right now.

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This episode is brought to you by Seasoned Advice HR, where I help eye care clinics to hire, retain, and manage better — helping you get Better Results Through People. Learn more at seasoned-advice.com. 

Contact me directly at mike@seasoned-advice.com 

Get my free HR and leadership downloads here: https://www.seasoned-advice.com/signup-for-free-downloads

Transcript

Triple Your Message

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Whatever you think you have to communicate something, probably at least triple that. Okay. And if the stakes are really high, like benefits or their pay, or whether they're gonna have a job, you know, next month or whatever, you probably need to communicate it even more than that. Greetings

Welcome And Why Communication Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:20

and welcome to iCare Leadership Live. This is the podcast for iCare leaders who want to level up their leadership, create better cultures, and improve the financial results of their clinics. Now let's join the show. This is Mike Lyons. Today's show is another episode of Tales from the Trenches, and the topic is the importance of communication. And I have come to learn in over 20 years of doing HR in various scenarios, various environments, that communication is a huge part of management, huge part of your employee experience.

Benefits Changes Can Break Trust

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Um and just a couple examples here. One is is something that's kind of mundane, which is your employee benefits. Um I've been in situations where we had a change in benefits, and I've seen it when the benefits changed all of a sudden, and people didn't know what to expect, and they didn't understand, and they didn't know what was coming, and so they didn't do an enrollment, and it just wasn't successful. And that actually hurts your culture and it hurts your engagement, hurts your retention, distracts people from doing their job. And then the money that you're spending on those benefits is I wouldn't say entirely wasted, but it's not as effective as it could be because people feel as though they're not getting the plan that they wanted, or the plan that they thought they were getting, or they just don't understand how good this plan is that they are getting. And so communication around benefits transitions is hugely important. I've also seen it where we communicated a ton a ton ahead of time. Hey, enrollment's coming up. This is what's gonna be different, this is what's gonna be the same, this is how this is gonna work, this is what this terminology means. And and this is how to do the enrollment. And yeah, we know we've told you this last year, but guess what? People forget things. So we're gonna tell you again this year, because that was just a year ago, and a lot of you didn't even use your benefits in the last 12 months. So with benefits enrollment, you just have to communicate. You have to communicate a lot, and especially if something is changing, but even if nothing is changing. So communicate a lot around benefits if you want to get the most out of that experience. And sometimes the communication, people will hear something, even if you've had the same plan for years, they'll hear something new and go, Oh, I didn't realize that. I didn't realize that I could do that, or I didn't realize that we had that benefit. And so it's the repetition. Repetition is so important with communication.

Heard Versus Understood Versus Believed

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Side note here is you know what I've what I've experienced in in in the world of HR is you say it once and a lot of people don't even hear it. You say it again and more people hear it, and then you say it again, and probably everyone has heard it, but now not everyone understands it. So then you have to say it again to get more people to understand it. And then maybe you say it again and people kind of understand, but then you have to say it again because people didn't believe it. They didn't really believe that, you know, ah, they've said that before, I don't really believe that. So have they have they heard it? Have they understood it? Have they believed it? You know, do they trust it? And so do they rem and do they remember? Right? So how many times do you have to say things for people to understand, comprehend, remember, believe? A lot. You have to say it a lot of times. I'm sure there's been studies about this. I've heard people say seven times. I don't know that there's a magic number, but when it comes to communication on this little sidebar right here, you've got to communicate more times than you think. Okay. So communicate a lot. Uh anyway, back to the topic of examples.

Layoffs Create Questions You Must Answer

SPEAKER_00 4:49

Another example, this is a big one, uh, one that's fairly recent in my experience, is a company that had to had to let some people go. It happens. Um, not sure I would, you know, may it may be a layoff, or it may just be a reorganization, or or it may, maybe there was just a disciplinary thing and some people got let go, and but no one knew why, of course, because we don't tell people, you know, why people are getting let go. And or maybe just a leader was one person was let go, but it was a leader, and it kind of left people wondering well, people have questions. Hey, why were six people let go last month? Or I've noticed we've let go of a few, or we've lost a bunch of people over the last few months. Are we gonna replace them? Is this company on solid footing? Where are we headed? Are we gonna backfill? Um who's my boss now? Uh who's gonna do their work? All those are questions that come up. And and believe me, if people feel like the company's not doing well, or maybe there was a layoff that you had to do, or maybe, you know, whatever, that is something you cannot just communicate about one time. Not gonna be good enough. Because they're not gonna believe you, they're not gonna believe that that this is um that that that we just had to do some corrective action, right? And by the way, the worse relationship you have with your employees, the more times you're gonna have to repeat it to be believed. Because if you have a bad, a low trust relationship, uh, maybe because you haven't been visible or you've been just so busy for the last year that you haven't really been out there communicating with your staff, or I don't know, for whatever, maybe you just don't have a good reputation. You're not the you know, you're not you're not a touchy-feely leader, and that's okay, that happens. Maybe you're a practice owner and you're just focused on the medicine and and and management's not your thing. That's fine. That's okay. You don't have to be perfect. But but if that's you, if you've been absorbed in stuff, like you're gonna have to communicate more, and you're gonna have to pay more time and more attention to really get people to believe that you know all these layoffs were just the right thing to do, and everything's gonna be okay, we're not gonna do any more layoffs, right? Just as one example, and you're gonna have to repeat that more, okay? And

Your Job Is To Calm Fear

SPEAKER_00 7:25

so if you're the higher the stakes of the thing you're communicating about, the more you've got to repeat it, and the more people worry, you know, people are fearful, people are fearful creatures. We're designed to be worried, to look out for danger that's in our programming. So your one of your main jobs as a physician owner or practice administrator or manager is to soothe, soothe your team, make them feel comfortable, not manipulating, but but to bring them back down from DEF CON 5. You know, hey, okay, everything's gonna be okay. I I want to let you know that we're we're just gonna get back on track here, we're gonna take care of patients, and don't worry. And you know, you want to be honest, but one of your things is to you've got to bring people down from their worry and their fear, and they don't always vocalize that. In fact, most of the time they don't vocalize their fears and concerns at all. Um, working with a company right now where we surveyed staff, and there had been a bunch of turnover, and it was pretty much known that some of this turnover was by design, and a lot of people are bringing it up in their survey, and so that tells me that this is an issue, this is an issue that needs communication. So you've got to do that, you've gotta do that. How

Email Video And Walking Around

SPEAKER_00 8:59

do you do that? There's a lot of different ways you can do that. Um, email is one way. Um video. I know of a of a of a practice owner right now that has dabbled and dipped their toe into the world of video, and I think it's awesome because people like video, they want to watch a video. And so, and it allows people to see your face, hear your voice, hear the tone, hear you know how you communicate something. Does it seem credible? Does it seem trustworthy? Um, and so I think video can be powerful if you're if you're an effective communicator on video. Um, just walking around. Another way to communicate, just walk around, talk to people. Hey, you know, uh, just I know there's been a lot of questions, want to let you know that uh this stuff that stuff is behind us now, right? Or you know what, I know that big change that we just did was really difficult, and we sincerely apologize for the challenges, and and we're going to get to a better place. Walking around and showing your face for the express purpose of communicating is powerful, very powerful. Uh, I have never seen someone do this, but a podcast. Actually, I do know of one CEO that said that they they had tried a podcast to their staff. I think that's awesome. You know, you can just you could talk to your staff, you can have a guest talk about something, and just it's for the people in the company, in the clinic. And what a cool, what a cool concept if that's your if that's your bag of tea. One

Anticipate Questions And Listen Back

SPEAKER_00 10:46

thing I would suggest if you're gonna do an email or or maybe this is better for in writing, but anticipate the questions that people are gonna have. Like if it's a benefits change, what are the questions they're gonna have? If we're going to a new EMR, anticipate their questions and how you know what are the questions that they're gonna have, and try to anticipate each of them. It's a good exercise to go through and it makes people feel calmer, safer to know that you've already thought through the questions that they're gonna have and you've started to answer them. I love that technique. Uh, I think it's important also with communication, is it's not just you sending data out to people, but it you it's listening. What are the questions that they're having? Can we do a survey? Uh again, being walking around and being visible. How can I gather information about the questions and concerns that the team is having right now? So remember to consume information and solicit it as much as you're sending it out and before you send it out. Uh, there were times, you know, when I made a policy change that I got some input from employees. And I said, Hey, what do you think about this? Like, what how what would your reaction be? And you have some trusted people that you can ask and they'll tell you, they'll they'll point out things that you didn't notice. And uh actually, we don't do that enough. We really don't do that enough um because we're trying to be quick about something, or or we just think we know what's right. And honestly, you know, we've all I've I've been I've been in situations where I've skipped that step or probably would have benefited from doing that. Um so think about getting it the input from your team. Maybe you have like an unofficial employee council that you can tap into their knowledge. Um yeah, actually I love that idea, and I probably need to implement that in a couple of uh clients that I'm working with, honestly.

Leadership Takeaways And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 12:57

Anyway, so that's communication. Those are my thoughts on that today. It is, you know, I probably say this about a lot of different things, but communication is huge. I would say it is 50 per it's 75% of management. I mean, honestly, it's probably 90% of management. Um, and it's a huge part of just having employees in general, you know, hire the higher grade employees and communicate really well. And if you do those two things well, then you're you're you're doing really well, you know. And I would say just maybe technically be compliant and do things right and all that good stuff. That's important too. Um, but communication is key. Hope you enjoyed that. If you have questions about that, or if you would like to chat about communication, or get get some of my thoughts on that, or run a situation by me, I'd love to hear about what you're dealing with when it comes to communication challenges. And maybe there's a change that's that you're going through in your clinic, or you think you need to go through, or something that maybe you've gone through it, but you feel like gosh, we we could do more to communicate about that. I'd love to hear about it. Uh, I'll put my contact info in the show notes and we'll talk to you next time on iCare Leadership Live. Well, that brings this episode of iCare Leadership Live to a conclusion. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app and share it with someone who would value the content. I promise to bring you more guests and content to help make you a better eye care clinical leader. I also invite you to subscribe to my HR newsletter for iCare leaders. You can find information about that at seasoned advice.com. Now go out there and lead with confidence.