Supervisor, Mentor or Sponsor?

So often, supervisors become mentors or mentors become sponsors, but it’s worthwhile to be intentional when building this aspect of your network.

By definition, a supervisor observes and directs the execution of tasks.

So, what does a good manager look like to you? Regardless of what level you’re at, are you actually seeking someone to literally direct your work, or do you want a mentor, or maybe a sponsor?

A mentor is an advisor who can offer advice and help you work toward your goals. It makes sense that many of us seek a supervisor who’s also a mentor.

Most think of a mentor as someone more senior to them, but there’s also peer mentoring and reverse mentoring.

To paraphrase a recent HBR article, the difference between a mentor and a sponsor is that a sponsor actively advocates for someone and uses their connections to open doors.

This article spotlights new research actually derived from following pharma companies for 25 years and goes on to say that women in particular often benefit from having a sponsor. “Third-party ties allow women to be seen through the prism of their strengths and competencies rather than through a lens clouded by societal preconceptions.”

Whether you have a great boss who’s also your mentor or you work for yourself, our profession as communicators is built on a foundation of relationships.

It takes time for such relationships to blossom, but our aim is for Ticket to Biotech to be a place to reconnect with each other as well as to jumpstart new connections, including for mentors and sponsors. What do you seek in these types of relationships?

Social Impact as an Employee Engagement Strategy

We heard from Sarah MacDonald last week that part of the value of community impact initiatives lies in the opportunity to connect employees with our companies’ and clients’ mission in another way.

We’ve all seen stats similar to this one published in Forbes last year: Three-quarters of US survey respondents indicated they want to work for a company that is trying to have a positive impact on the world.

Even in our industry, as we’ve discussed here at T2B, making medicines is only a piece of that purpose-driven work we so often speak about.

Whether you’re supporting team outings centered around community service, clothing and food drives, or care kit assemblies for patients at local hospitals, as communicators, we have a responsibility to also incorporate this work into our companies’ and clients’ narratives:

It’s not enough to have C-suite support for your initiative. Work with the executive assistants to have all your leaders actively participate.

Regardless if your org has a formal corporate social responsibility program, don’t leave impact initiatives only to your HR and corporate affairs teams. Internal promotion starts at the top, but as Sarah reminded us, it needs to be in line with the leadership team’s expectations and priorities.

Assign your org’s leaders responsibilities, even if that means simply showing up and being engaged. Be clear about their role in the context of any planned activities.

Capture and celebrate with your org the impact your initiatives have, and talk with employees about how you’re going to continue building on that moving forward.

Incorporate the work you’re doing in your communities into your actual communications materials, whether that’s social media, corporate website, intranet or digital signage.

Take advantage of the long shelf life of this work by partnering with your People & Culture and HR teams on how to weave it into talent branding and onboarding resources.

Tell us how you’ve successfully engaged your companies and clients at all levels of the org to engender even greater commitment to living our values and working toward our mission.

Extending Industry Impact

Everyone we know in the life sciences is here because they want to make a difference, improve people’s health, improve lives.

Although most orgs’ missions focus on that, there are plenty of other complementary opportunities to extend our impact.

Look at how to elevate corporate values beyond the nice posters in the hallway. Assess which causes can help you walk the talk and meet stakeholder priorities.

Whether you’re an office of 5 or 50,000, your org is operating in at least one location. In all likelihood, each location was carefully selected for the support it offers the business. Think about how your org can embed itself in the local ecosystem and what you uniquely can contribute to ensure its long-term sustainability.

Consider your current talent pool and what the gaps are. Determine how you can support preparedness for a robust talent pipeline well into the future.

Diversity is critical, full-stop, but research also shows that diversity is good for business. Although many companies are making strides in the right direction, very few, if any, can say that they’ve achieved gender parity. Keep taking that hard look in the mirror and challenging yourself to build infrastructure that facilitates all kinds of diversity and at all levels, from the boardroom to the bench.

There’s much to be said about DEI and broader impact issues like health equity, but we’ll leave you with another actionable nugget that’s applicable, regardless if you’re just entering the clinic or are an industry behemoth: Be proactive about running diverse clinical trials that as closely as possible reflect the actual target patient population makeup.

This list here comprises only a few of the many ways we can amplify the good work we in biopharma do every day.

What are you doing to seize the opportunity to achieve greater good, and as communicators, how can we support these efforts?

Explaining the Science to Lay Audiences

It’s true that many of the corporate materials–like earnings announcements and medical meeting posters–we put out into the world are consumed by a lay audience, including patients, even though they may not be the primary intended target.

However, this should not preclude efforts to explain our science and technology in more accessible ways for patient communities.

These are a few of the opportunities we invite life science comms peers to evaluate.

Launch a dedicated patients and families section on your corporate website. Include content like community profiles and patient advocacy organization resources. Don’t forget to use lay language, and avoid jargon and acronyms.

When meeting with patient groups or welcoming community guest speakers onsite, think twice before whipping out the corporate deck. Take the time to develop a tailored presentation.

Create a version of your mechanism-of-action video that’s not overly technical and appropriate for a patient audience.

Partner with trusted HCPs and KOLs who already have established relationships with the community on a campaign or webinar series. You may also explore unbranded disease awareness campaigns, which sometimes can run in conjunction with a patient registry, but not always.

It’s never too early to attend PAO family summits and other community events, even if you’re not sponsoring. Establishing a consistent presence is key to building long-term relationships.

And, perhaps needless to say, work very closely with your medical, legal and regulatory colleagues to ensure compliance.

What strategies have you successfully employed to educate patient and caregiver communities and other lay audiences on your company’s or clients’ science?

Including the Patient Perspective When Working With Media

Reporters are always looking to humanize stories coming out of our industry that can otherwise be dry and technical. It’s quite common to be asked by a journalist to speak with a clinical trial participant, for example.

This presents a dilemma for us communicators on many, many fronts, one of which being that sponsors should not know, much less be connected to, who’s in their trials.

How can we ethically and proactively identify sources who can speak from this perspective?

Patient advocacy organizations can sometimes provide the patient perspective itself or help identify an appropriate person.

And, be sure to maintain relationships with individual patients and caregivers from the community that may have been previously established when hosting guest speakers or for materials like community profiles.

Not to be overlooked are the trial sites, starting with a strong med affairs or clin ops relationship with the investigator and study coordinator. Meet early with the institution’s comms team. Ensure they know about the trial and science behind it. Brief them on the sponsor’s comms and media engagement plans. That way, you can refer reporters to your contact onsite and maybe even give them a head’s up about an imminent inquiry.

It’s a good idea to align in advance with all of these parties on when and how you might work with them to incorporate a patient perspective into your broader comms strategy for any given investigational therapy, particularly for the media engagement piece.

What’s been your experience working with media to capture the patient perspective?

Why Include the Patient Perspective in Corporate Messaging?

For this week’s video, I’m going to riff on one of the excellent points that Jen Helfer shared in last week’s Comm Convo: Misconceptions around downsides of including patient perspective in corporate materials.

You’ve probably heard it before: This is an earnings press release. Or, this is a slide deck for an important business development meeting. Besides the photo of patients on the cover of our corporate deck, the patient voice isn’t appropriate for this setting.

Here are five counter-arguments that you can slip into your back pocket for the next time this comes up with your company or client:

Including the patient perspective …Humanizes the messaging. Let’s face it; investors aren’t the only ones who see your corporate deck nowadays.

Emphasizes the unmet need and provides validation for your value proposition.

Engenders confidence that the company understands the market.

Supports commercial projections by being able to say “We’re hearing that…”– there’s nothing like first-hand anecdotes to support hard numbers.

Inherently demonstrates strong relationships with the patient and care partner communities.

Remember, being in a position to truly reflect this perspective results from a patient-centric culture and operating model.

What are other benefits of incorporating the patient voice in corporate messaging?

Best Practices for Patient Advocacy Communications

Oftentimes, a company’s early patient advocacy efforts stem from the thought that patients are another stakeholder group to communicate to. This might sound obvious, but it’s critical to CONTINUE prioritizing this audience as therapies advance.

Whether you’re just beginning comms efforts in this area, partnering with an established patient advocacy function, or already have great patient community relationships, here are our top five must-dos:

  1. Understand the environment: Are there several big patient advocacy organizations or a single foundation? Is the treatment landscape crowded or is your company developing the first new medicine in this space in a long time? Also, what are the dynamics like between patients, their caregivers and major KOLs?
  2. Be aware of precedents you’re setting. For example, the timing of your first email or meeting with a PAO sets expectations for when you’ll engage with other communities related to future disease areas of focus. Are you initially engaging when your company declares a new program’s research efforts or not until there’s a development candidate?
  3. Be transparent but intentionally. Although PAOs may not always agree to a confidentiality agreement, being up-front with your main contacts about a program’s status can earn trust and credibility.
  4. Share consistent updates. Frequency and format will depend as much on your company stage as your PAO relationships, and can therefore take a variety of shapes. Maybe you’re having regular Zoom meetings, monthly email updates, or using quarterly earnings as a springboard.
  5. Finally, consider how complicated your news is. Are there new terms or MOAs that need to be explained in a sensitive way? Assess whether regular corporate messaging is appropriate for this audience.

What else should we keep in mind when communicating with patient and caregiver communities?