Is the government’s communication strategy on the state of emergency and pandemic effective?

Over the past year, there have been some in the country who have obediently followed the public health ordinances, and mask and sanitation guidelines, and there have been those who have not, with some people wear their masks on their chin, indiscriminately liming and refusing to take the vaccine because they are afraid it was unsafe.

Dennise Demming, lead consultant of Demming Communications told Newsday on Wednesday the country has older leaders who have colonial and patriarchal belief systems of commanding and controlling a population to behave rather than using more empathetic and loving methods of communicating to people.

“What is required is an upskilling so you do not take on the communication behaviours of that combination...It is understandable, and when you are a 70-year-old, mind you, I am 65, and you have not upgraded your strategies and methods of communication. Then you would treat with people how 70-year-olds deal with people – as command and control.”

She said to communicate effectively with people, one must love people, and to love them, they must be vulnerable.

“We are not seeing vulnerability in the news, and you’re not going to see it because there is no diversity in leadership.”

She said the more diverse a leadership team is, the more effective the outcomes will be. At the press conferences, she said there are four male politicians who are presented as the main faces of the “pandemic behaviour change team.” They are the Prime Minister, the Ministers of Health and National Security and the Attorney General.

“Do we not have any women who can bring a different approach to it? Had we had a more diverse leadership, and I’m not just talking about women, but diversity in all its aspects, we would have had approaches that were more diverse, and the outcomes would have been more different. But when you have a monolithic approach to your leadership, this is what you are going to get.”

Usually, the population would be “buffed” at the government’s press conference and condemned for the bad behaviour of some in the population. Demming said the government should be mindful of the audience who is watching the press conference, because they most likely are the people who are behaving, and the buffs are misdirected.

“We continue to speak to our population as if they are inhuman, as if it is a dog you are training, and even a dog behaves when you treat them well, the more you love your dog the more the dog complies to what you want, but we have moved away from that to this crudeness that is disconcerting. It is a kind of aggression and absolutely unnecessary.”

Instead of holding each other to a higher value, she said the leaders are just trying to buff people into good behaviour. She said the intent of the leaders matter, and if the leaders want to be aggressive and hostile to people then their intent is to buff, but if they choose a more cari