Oh would some power the giftie gie us, To see ourselves as others see us.” ― Scottish poet Robert Burns
My client was a very senior executive who appeared frequently on television, radio and in the media because of her position and authority. She could be relied upon by the international media to comment on the world of finance and development. She generally spoke without notes, ignored the briefing papers prepared by her Media team and always tried to please the journalists, even to the extent of talking about international matters far beyond the scope of her or her organisation’s remit, to the horror of her colleagues. And she was married to a journalist and didn’t think she needed any Media training.
She agreed to the coaching reluctantly but turned up at the appointed hour, leaving her retinue of handlers behind her at the studio door. She said she didn’t need notes, briefing papers, key messages, coaching on how to avoid difficult questions or anything else and made clear she was undergoing training to please her colleagues, not because she needed it.
Fifteen minutes of discussion failed to convince her that she needed to change anything – her preparation, delivery tone, messaging technique, bridging skills or even how to decline to answer questions that were not hers to respond to.
So we sat down in front of a television camera and spoke for 15 minutes. From my side of the camera it looked pretty bad; never-ending sentences in which there appeared to be no key message; unsimplified technical language that assumed everyone in the audience had at least one degree in Economics; one- word answers – “Yes” and “No” – that begged for clarification; eyes that looked everywhere except towards the camera and made her resemble a pickpocket watching out for surveillance in a busy street; long-winded lectures on world politics that had nothing to do with her job, or her organisation’s purpose. During all of this her head rolled slowly from side to side as if it was hard to stay awake.
Then we watched the replay together.
For the first three minutes – silence. Then she said: “Is that how I look? Is that how I sound? Is that what I said?” Over the next five minutes of replay she said only: “Oh no. That’s no good.”
She cut short the replay and returned to the desk. For the next 45 minutes we went over how to prepare messages in language that people will understand and remember; how to avoid questions that trap the interviewee in a dead end of negativity and make the organisation look bad; how to appear engaging, enthusiastic, committed and credible.
Then we repeated the interview with the same series of questions. It lasted exactly nine minutes, six fewer than the previous one. We watched it together. She was a different person; lively, authoritative, interesting, comprehensible and, most of all, succinct. She had taken on board the idea of: One Message, One Idea, One full stop.
“I think that is at least 35-40 percent better” she said. “How much time do we have left? Let’s do it again.”
It wasn’t perfect the third time but the change over three hours was little short of a transformation.
Television is brutally honest and lets us see ourselves as others see us. But the skills TV coaching imparts are useful for any encounter with the media. To make an impact, you need to use the language, delivery and brevity that the media itself employs. It’s all about boiling down ideas to their basics and delivering them in a language people can understand and get interested in.
That’s how MediaTrain can help you make an impact.
Andy Hill, MediaTrain Director