VGZ: " Together we empathized with our interlocutors."

What remains of your story outside your own bubble?

In recent months we trained the VGZ healthcare buyers to create urgency and goodwill for their 'Zinnige Zorg' strategy. VGZ wants to keep healthcare accessible and affordable by facilitating healthcare institutions to come up with smart solutions. A beautiful and sincere ambition shared by the other players in healthcare. But each institution also has its own interests, initiatives, beliefs and ways of working. If you ignore these, you harvest resistance instead of understanding or cooperation.

How do you put yourself in the shoes of your audience? The training provided the answer.

VGZ communication strategist Jaap de Bruijn about our collaboration:

"There are now many good examples of hospitals that are succeeding in controlling costs and improving care. In the negotiations we would like to entice other hospitals to look at healthcare in the same way. But how do you do that if you are mainly seen as the man or woman who comes to 'talk about the money'? We wanted to help our healthcare buyers bring together the world of the healthcare provider and that of the insurer.So we developed a training with Speak to Inspire."

Our training program included an exercise to test the effect of your words. The assignment was to tell your story in such a way that your "audience" literally steps up to you. Purchasing colleagues acted as a touchstone by empathizing with the healthcare facility in question. The results varied widely. For some, the audience remained stock-still and even a compliment could fall on wrong soil. Others were able to build a mental bridge with two or three well-placed sentences, leading to a rapprochement.

Acknowledging the other person by naming their sentiment proved important. But word usage was also influential. At VGZ, for example, they talk about policyholders and insureds, while healthcare parties speak of patients or clients. Just the word policyholder could put the audience at a distance. Also "we, from VGZ," used, got their audience moving a lot harder than buyers who spoke from the I-person. It proved once again: it is difficult to establish a bond with an abstract entity.
Recognition is found in people, not in organizations.

"Together we lived through our story and empathized with our interlocutors. In this way we discovered in a playful way how to get out of our own bubble and look for what binds us.After all, both care institutions and health insurers are ultimately working towards the same goal: ensuring that patients receive the care they need."

For more information, please contact Janneke Boumans at janneke@speaktoinspire.nl