Cuomo’s COVID-19 public updates are assertive and reassuring, calming and urgent. It’s a difficult balance to pull off, but Cuomo is receiving high praise for his leadership and communication style.
Here’s how Cuomo provides a sense of calm in the chaos.
1. Use familiar metaphors.
“We’re fighting the same war and we’re in the same trench,” Cuomo said in Wednesday’s press conference when asked about his coordination with the president and other national leaders.
The war analogy works well as we fight an invisible enemy. It should bring us comfort to know that the world’s countries, leaders, and scientists are all setting aside their differences and aiming their guns at the same target.
One of Cuomo’s rhetorical skills is his ability to substitute familiar metaphors in place of scientific jargon.
In epidemiology, ‘flattening the curve’ refers to slowing the spread of a virus so fewer people seek treatment. It’s scientific shorthand, but not the type of phrase that we use in everyday language.
Cuomo turned the phrase into a more understandable metaphor. In a press conference on Monday, he likened the curve to an ocean wave that, based on current data, will peak in 45 days.
“Everyone’s talking about the curve. That curve is going to turn into a wave and the wave is going to crash into the hospital system.”
While he explained the coming wave, Cuomo displayed a slide with a simple graphic. It showed an ocean wave approaching a hospital. The wave represented the infection curve and the hospital represented the statewide hospital system, including all the hospital and intensive care beds.
2. Simplify data.
What happens when the wave reaches the hospitals? “The numbers are daunting,” Cuomo acknowledged. It’s here that Cuomo plays explainer-in-chief.
“The expected peak is around 45 days. They [the state’s hospitals] are expecting that 110,000 hospital beds could be needed. Compare that to our current capacity of 53,000 beds and you understand the challenge. 37,000 people might need ICU beds (equipped with ventilators). Compare that to our current capacity of 3,000 ventilators. That, my friends, is the problem.”
Dumping a barrage of statistics doesn’t serve the public’s best interest. Effective educators select only those numbers that serve the purpose at hand. Cuomo’s purpose is help his audience understand the scope of the problem and to steel themselves for what comes next—a “plan of action” that includes reducing the spread of the virus, increasing hospital capacity, and identifying new hospital beds.
3. Empathize with personal stories.
People don’t care about a leader’s instructions until they know how much a leader cares about them. Telling personal stories is the most effective tool to show empathy with another person’s situation.
“I haven’t seen my daughter in over two weeks,” Cuomo said.
“It breaks my heart. It breaks my heart. There is a distance between me and my daughter because of this virus. It saddens me to the core, and it frightens me to the core…It’s a hard time. It is a hard time on every level.”
4. Add perspective.
“Again, perspective, perspective, perspective,” Cuomo said on Wednesday.
“I understand the anxiety and the fear. You look at the pictures on television of empty grocery shelves. It’s easy to get caught up in the emotion. But you also have to remember to look at the facts of the situation. And the facts are very clear. We know what this virus does. We know who it is. We know where it lives. We know what it does to people.”
To calm fears, Cuomo reminded his audience that the majority of people who test positive for COVID-19 fully recover. He told the story of the first case in New York, a healthcare worker who had tested positive.
“She never went into a hospital. She was quarantined at home…She has taken a second coronavirus test and tested negative. A 39-year old female was on quarantine, recovered and two weeks later tests negative. Which means she has resolved the virus in her body. For 80 percent of the people, that’s what will happen. That is what people need to keep in mind.”
“Worse than the virus is the fear we are dealing with,” Cuomo added.
Perspective is very difficult to offer in the middle of a full-blown crisis. For people who haven’t lived through anything like this, it’s easy to think that it will never end. Leaders who are students of history and who have lived through catastrophic events are in the best position to quell anxiety.
“This is an extraordinary time in this nation’s history,” Cuomo said near the end of Monday’s press conference.
“It will go down in the history books as one of those moments of true crisis and confusion and chaos. I lived through 9/11. I remember the fear and the panic that existed in 9/11. Everybody’s afraid. Everybody’s nervous. This is a character test for all of us individually. It’s a character test for us collectively as a society.”
Stretching his hands a few inches apart, Cuomo concluded:
“It’s a hard time. It is a hard time on every level. It is a frightening time on every level. At the same time. It is this much time. It is this much time. Is it three months? Is it six months? Is it nine months? I don’t know. But it’s this much time. We will get through this much time.”
5. Take the heat.
A Hall-of-Fame NFL quarterback once told me he earned the respect of his team the day he took responsibility for the game’s outcome. On Monday, Cuomo took responsibility for the ‘drastic measures’ he put in place.
“If you are upset by what we have done, be upset at me… My judgment is to do whatever is necessary to contain this virus. The buck stops on my desk. Your local mayor did not close your restaurants, your bars, your gyms, or your schools. I did. I assume full responsibility.”
Effective leaders step up in times of crisis and make decisions in the best interest of the team. People may agree with some of the decisions, and dislike others. But they appreciate a decisive leader who takes responsibility for the outcome.
6. Remind people of who they are.
Cuomo challenges all of us to be our best in times of crisis.
“Be a little bit more sensitive, understand the stress, understand the fear, be a little bit more loving, a little bit more compassionate, a little bit more comforting, a little bit more cooperative. And we will get through this time.”
Cuomo quoted the poet, Rudyard Kipling: “Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.” It’s good advice in times of crisis—any crisis. And it’s advice that Cuomo is taking to heart.