Having worked in the drug policy space for over half a decade - I’ve witnessed unprecedented change. My career transition from drug treatment equipped me with the knowledge and skill set required - but nothing could brace me for some of the unique trials of influencing policy. Here’s my take on how to communicate diligently, delivering the key message that you wish to convey, to the correct audience.
Over the years I have found myself in a diverse range of challenging and highly pressured situations. The sort in which if you don’t communicate clearly, the outcome could be a catastrophe, resulting in either serious physical harm or major reputational damage.
Due to a career that has spanned drug treatment, advocacy, public relations and lobbying, these experiences have been pretty diverse: from having someone shove me up against a wall with a used needle at my throat, to being interviewed live on the BBC (the latter was surprisingly more scary!). Despite this diversity, the skills I learnt have been exceptionally useful and have given me a unique perspective on how to communicate saliently.
Alongside these ‘pressured’ experiences, I have spent my entire career trying to change people’s opinions. For nine years I tried to convince people to stop using drugs problematically, and more recently convincing politicians, policy makers and wider society that we should reform our current drug laws in the UK. I am still not sure which was the harder challenge, but I do know the way in which I sought to do it was exactly the same.
There are a few reasons why this is an important conversation, and one I feel compelled to share. The first is that – in all honesty I will enjoy it: I love sharing ideas and creating debate, especially if others find it useful. The second is that I see a lot of people communicating exceptionally important messages poorly and I would like to offer my opinion on how this can be communicated more effectively. The third is that we do get external requests on how to best prepare for media from a wide range of groups and this series will be a useful tools in that respect.
Short disclaimer: I make a lot of mistakes. In fact many of those ‘pressured’ situations I have been in have been a complete disaster. I have lost entire cabinets of confidential files containing the records of over 300 young people, been asked by a radio interviewer if I was stoned because my answers were so bad, and don’t even get me started on some of my Zoom hiccups in lockdown (one of which still wakes me up in the night).
But each time I have made a mistake I have dusted myself off and gone again - back into the breach a little bit wiser and with a spring in my step. Determined to draw from experience and seek another challenge, even if it's painful to process.
It is through those mistakes that I have learnt the most, and it was one of those examples above that led to me learning a technique which I have named this blog after: The Islands of Safety.
The mistake in question was a BBC Radio 5 interview back in 2017/18, I was stressed, it was late and I was debating a report I had released on cannabis and mental health. In all honesty, it was not a great day for my mental health: I had been trolled online for weeks, was sleeping in the office and knew my family were listening.
This led to me sitting in a radio booth, distracted, worried and frantically trying to fill my head with all the information I needed for the interview. It didn't go well, and it haunted me for a good few years afterwards and was one of the most embarrassing experiences I have ever had (worse than ‘that’ Zoom call with Katya).
Looking back I should have smashed that interview. I knew all the information and could speak for days on the subject, but I was too focused on what I wanted to say rather than what I might be asked. I had no place of safety to go if I was asked a tough question, I was too focused on impressing those listening and absorbed by the pressure.
One incredibly simple tip I learnt later was that whenever you are speaking publicly on a subject have 3-4 key lines written down or memorised which provide you with an opportunity to outline your key points and message. There are a number of ways that these key lines or ‘Islands of Safety’ can be used. The first example I will give is if you are asked a question you really don’t want to answer.
Here is an example of how this could play out:
Interviewer: Paul North joins us now, Director of the UK think-tank Volteface who are campaigning to legalise cannabis. Thanks for joining us Paul, you must really love cannabis to be campaigning for this, do you smoke a lot of it?
I have genuinely been asked this question and to answer it would be a total distraction from my key message. Thankfully with some islands of safety memorised I can divert and take the question to a place where the listener will absorb one of my key points.
Paul: Thanks for having me on Peter. Well one of our key messages to the government is that we need to address the stigma which exists in society around cannabis use. Although cannabis was legalised for medical use in 2018, the open admission of use still carries significant societal judgement and stigma, which has a number of negative impacts.
I could carry on with the example and provide more stats and information but you get the point. By having a clear island of safety on stigma, I avoid the difficult question and instead give a clear message to listeners.
This technique also works if you are completely caught off guard by a question, switch off for a second due to your mind racing or genuinely don’t have an answer or a way out. Just calmly fall back to the well practiced island of safety and make a point which you want an audience to hear.
With a bit of time you can easily develop a bunch of segways which take you to the island if you don’t know the answer to the question or simply don’t want to answer it. Here are a few examples:
‘I appreciate the question, and it is a good one, but we feel the more important issue here is….insert island of safety’
‘Well getting to the bottom of that would take us far more time than I care to think we have, instead I think what we really need to discuss is….insert island of safety’
Ultimately having some ‘islands of safety’ allows you to communicate the message you want to communicate, and means you don’t have to take risks which you are not prepared for or willing to take.
The process of forming that is not that difficult either: just give some thought to the questions below, commit them to memory or have them on hand and get your message out there.
Key Questions which help form ‘Islands of Safety’ (Advocacy examples)
What is the main message I need to convey to my audience?
What is my most important statistic which is both current and interesting?
What is it about this subject which I care about the most?
What do I need government/policy makers to do?
What is it that made us take on this issue?
What do the general public need to know about this issue?
Thanks for reading, feedback and discussion is always welcome.