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5 Communication Lessons for Healthcare Leaders | Axis

October 06, 2026

Everyone Got the Email. Somehow, Nobody Got the Message. 

Healthcare organizations have more ways than ever to keep people informed. New research suggests the harder part is turning communication into alignment. 

By JIRAH MICKLE | October 06, 2026 

The email was sent. 

It was probably followed by a Teams message. Maybe it came up again in a meeting. Somewhere along the way, someone even said, “Just making sure everyone saw this.” 

And still, two weeks later, half the room seems to be working from a different version of the plan.  

It’s an almost painfully familiar workplace problem. But in healthcare, where information has to move between leadership, administrative teams, clinicians, frontline staff, and external partners, a message getting lost somewhere between sent and understood can become much more than an annoyance. 

New research co-authored by Caitlin Byrd (Wells) and Dr. Rushell Bryce, DBA suggests the difference may come down to how healthcare leaders think about communication in the first place.  

Their qualitative study asked 11 experienced healthcare leaders what strategies they use to improve organizational performance. Every participant identified strategic communication and stakeholder engagement as relevant to leadership practice, making it the most dominant and consistently reinforced theme in the research. 

Among the findings were lessons for some of the harder situations leaders face: getting employees on board with change, making sure problems on the front lines reach the people who can act on them, figuring out why an initiative failed, keeping employees engaged, and preventing information from getting stuck somewhere in the organizational chart.  

Here are five findings from the publication worth paying attention to:  

1. Resistance to change may be telling you something

When leadership introduces a new system, process, or policy, resistance can easily be written off as an inevitable part of change. Employees may seem reluctant to get on board even after the reasoning has been explained and the expectations have been communicated.  

The leaders interviewed in the study took a more active approach to that resistance. One participant used training and ongoing dialogue to gradually work through it, while another combined WhatsApp groups with formal meetings to build buy-in over time. 

Their experiences suggest there may be valuable information hiding inside employee pushback. Continuing the conversation during implementation gives leaders an opportunity to understand why people are struggling with a change and whether something about the plan needs more attention.  

That could mean discovering that employees don't fully understand how a new process is supposed to work, that the reasoning behind a decision hasn't reached everyone, or that putting the plan into practice has exposed a problem leadership couldn't see beforehand.  

2. The higher information travels, the more chances it has to get lost

In a large healthcare organization, the people who recognize an operational problem first may be several layers removed from the people who have the authority to address it. Someone working directly inside a process can see where it repeatedly breaks down, but getting that information from the front line to senior leadership can require it to move through multiple people, departments, and reporting structures along the way. 

That distance matters because the study found that fragmented reporting structures and unclear communication pathways can interfere with the flow of information and weaken decision-making. One participant described persistent, multi-channel communication as particularly important for making sure data and concerns from frontline employees actually reached senior decision-makers.  

Byrd and Bryce recommend creating more formal routes for that information to travel by involving frontline staff, clinical teams, patients, and external partners directly in decision-making. Rather than relying entirely on information to work its way up an organizational hierarchy, they point to structures such as advisory committees, technical working groups, and participatory forums that can bring those perspectives into planning, implementation, and evaluation.  

3. A failed initiative can become useful data

When an initiative doesn’t produce the result leadership expected, there is often pressure to figure out the next move quickly. That can mean an unsuccessful intervention gets acknowledged, perhaps discussed briefly, and then left behind as attention shifts toward whatever the organization plans to try next.  

One leader interviewed in the study approached those moments differently by conducting post-implementation debriefs after unsuccessful interventions to reassess the original goals and identify performance gaps. Other participants described using peer and managerial reviews or regular team meetings to reflect on performance and identify opportunities for improvement.  

Byrd and Bryce recommend making those kinds of feedback loops a routine part of organizational practice through performance reviews, debriefing sessions, and peer evaluation processes. Building reflection into the process gives teams an opportunity to understand why an intervention fell short before deciding what should replace it, allowing an unsuccessful initiative to become a source of information rather than simply a result the organization would rather move past.  

4. “Great job, team” only tells people so much

Most organizations understand the importance of recognizing employees, but recognition can become so broad that the person receiving it is left with little understanding of what they actually did well. A general thank-you acknowledges effort, while more specific recognition can help an employee connect their individual work to the larger goals of the organization.  

That distinction appeared in the study when one participant described using appreciation alongside specific communication about individual contributions to help sustain employee motivation. In practice, this meant employees were not only being recognized; they were being shown how their work contributed to the organization. 

The publication places that practice within a broader transformational leadership approach that emphasizes shared purpose, employee empowerment, professional development, and continuous learning. Byrd and Bryce recommend that leadership development programs place greater emphasis on emotional intelligence, communication effectiveness, and change management so leaders are better equipped to motivate employees and help them understand how their work contributes to organizational goals.  

5. Information can travel down an organization much easier than it travels back up

Most organizations already have established ways for information to move from leadership to employees. Decisions can be communicated through managers, meetings, email, digital platforms, and other internal channels. The weakness in that system may become more apparent when information needs to travel in the opposite direction, particularly when employees need to raise a concern, ask for clarification, or share something happening in practice that leadership needs to know.  

The study found examples of leaders creating that return path through peer and managerial reviews, weekly meetings, debriefing sessions, face-to-face conversations, and digital communication. One participant also described persistent communication across multiple channels as important for ensuring that data and concerns from the front line made their way to senior decision-makers.  

Byrd and Bryce recommend building communication systems that deliberately support two-way interaction, giving people opportunities to provide feedback, seek clarification, and participate in real-time problem-solving. They also call for those systems to connect different organizational levels and improve the flow of information between clinical and administrative functions. 

Read the full study 

The full publication takes these ideas further by examining how strategic communication works alongside stakeholder engagement and transformational leadership to influence organizational performance and service quality. Byrd and Bryce also offer recommendations for putting those ideas into practice, including formal stakeholder engagement structures, stronger performance monitoring and feedback systems, leadership development, and more intentional communication across organizational levels.  

For healthcare leaders dealing with resistance to change, information gaps, employee engagement, or decisions that don’t always reflect what is happening on the front line, the publication offers a much deeper examination of how other healthcare leaders are approaching those challenges.  

Read the full publication: Enhancing Healthcare Organizational Performance through Strategic Communication, Stakeholder Engagement, and Transformational Leadership: A Qualitative Study