Leading with the Ask When Communicating Health & Fitness to Policy Makers[Podcast Series]
[:54] Dr. Bantham introduces her guest, Mark Bayer
Mark Bayer is Founder at Bayer Strategic Consulting.
He held a Chief of Staff position in the U.S. Senate and House for years.
[1:09] Tips for constituents visiting policy makers on Capitol Hill
“I would view this as like the opening bell of a relationship, and also sort of thinking about like this, to really have an impact, you do need to build a relationship. It's sort of like exercise, right? If you go to the gym once every year, you're not gonna see results. So if you just drop by your member of Congress's office, once or even, you know, whatever, like once every six months, you're not going to see the benefits.”
[4:46] Leading with the ask in policy maker meetings
“With health and fitness, most people are kind of aware generally of what the issues are, right? So leading with the ask is so important, and making, and personalizing it as well. And even asking questions, you know, so it's not a monologue, right? If you just have your speech, and you're gonna deliver that you're gonna deliver that thing. You know, it's not as engaging as if you're talking, you vary your tone a little bit, maybe you pause, you ask an open ended question, things like that. But leading with the ask is the number one.”
[11:25] Connecting with people before discussing substance
“You know, one thing that I talked about is in communication is we often leave out the, what I consider the foundation of this whole interaction that you're going to have one way or another regardless of the the modality you use, which is this feeling of connection on a personal level, you know, connecting with the person, before you start talking about positions or substance.”
[16:13] Establishing ourselves as similar to our audience
“We need to feel like we're understood. And we're seen. And we're not being preached to, that we're on the same level, and other people have these challenges.”
[18:14] Making information relevant for the audience
“The big question is, why should I care? Why should I devote any cognitive firepower to what you're talking about? And that, once you start to think that way, then you think about, well, how can I make it relevant to their everyday? And how can I talk about results that would really either they would experience or they would see out in the everyday world, and then lead with that instead of the more linear type of thinking that we talked about before.”
[24:13] Balancing data and evidence and emotion
“But you as a leader in the field and your colleagues, thinking about how can we incorporate emotion? We talked a lot about this before, your own personal experiences and struggles, right, along with data and evidence. And then of course, you've got the credentials, I should listen to this person, they're a real expert. They're not just somebody, you know, I only see on YouTube who doesn't seem to have any real background in studies or data or anything that's really, you know, credible.”
