During my blogging slump earlier this year, one of the blogs I missed reading was PR Buzzsaw from Sawmill Marketing Public Relations - they’ve got a great series of media training tips going, plus lots on PR in general, all done with a fun easy style.
Well, I’m back reading and their Tip #30 is about counting down your points - if you’ve got three points to make, physically count them out on your fingers. Now here’s the nice little twist they give to this advice: “[counting down] signals your agenda to the reporter.” I hadn’t thought of it that way before, but it is a perfect bit of body language to communicate your intentions to the interviewer. Thanks Buzz!
One of the myths of media and presentation coaching is the notion that how you say something is far more important than what you’re saying. The idea got its primary boost from the studies of Arthur Mehrabian back in the 1970’s. Only problem is, that wasn’t exactly what he was saying. Jim Bergman and Sue Johnston discuss The Mehrabian Myth in a recent edition of their entertaining podcast Media Relations Matters.
I’m going to be looking at Mehrabian’s conclusions in more depth down the road. The main point I would want to make is that his studies concerned the communication of likes and dislikes, of emotional states, and within that context, he concluded that body language, vocal qualities, etc. were more important to that communication, WHEN there was a disconnect between what you’re saying and how you’re saying it.
The example I always like to use in my seminars is this: You offer me some pie, I take a bite, and my face looks like I’ve eaten a lemon, while I say to you “I love this pie”… that’s disconnect, and my face tells you how I really feel!
Caught a bit of VH-1’s I Know My Kid’s A Star the other night and apart from learning how NOT to speak to or deal with your children (some of these parents are committing verbal abuse in my books), there’s a common thread coming from the judges and host Danny Bonaduce:
It’s all about being in the moment and being committed to what you’re doing.
An excellent example was when the contestants auditioned for a dance sequence. Most of the kids weren’t dancers, but instead of throwing themselves into whatever moves they were doing, they’d stop and apologize or look to their moms or pause and try to start again… The boy who won was not the best dancer, but he was ON, he was focused, and he never wavered. The judges know they can work with someone like that - the dance training can come later. It was his attitude they liked.
When you’re in your interview - commit to the moment and don’t lose your focus.
Larry King gave a good demonstration last night of what not to do as a guest. He was on Anderson Cooper 360, being interviewed by John King about Dr. Jan Adams walking off the Larry King Live show.
Larry King was constantly looking away from his interviewer and at the camera. Breaking eye contact in order to look at the camera creates a bad impression; suddenly you’re no longer in a conversation - you’re playing to the lens and it feels disingenuous. Perhaps King was still in “host mode” and forgot that he’s the interviewee talking with someone in a studio (as opposed to via satellite). Whatever the case, I’m sure he doesn’t like it when his guests do such a thing.
The first few seconds of a media interview, like a job interview, are important for creating the right impression. I was reminded of that while reading this post about body language in a job interview by Erik Folgate:
You can show great self-confidence to the interviewer(s) in the first 10 seconds of the interview. Make strong eye contact and give a firm hand shake. It doesn’t matter if you are a girl or a guy, you need to have a firm hand shake. Don’t shake their arm off and hurt their hand, but just give a positive, firm shake for a two mississippi count. Look them in the eye while you shake and give a pleasant smile. Don’t grin like an idiot and don’t give a blank stare. This is so crucial, I can’t stress the importance of the first 10 seconds of an interview.
Radio and TV interviews have their equivalents to ’strong eye contact and a firm hand shake’ - through your voice, through the clarity of your first few thoughts, and much more. And don’t forget an equally strong ending.
A lot of people fall victim to this problem in their media interviews - thanks to Griselda for voicing it:
The word absolutely drives me nuts! Everyone seems to be using this word for every answer instead of yes.
Absolutely, Griselda!
Save words like ‘absolutely’ for the moments when you strongly agree with a point the interviewer or another interviewee has made - if not, then everything takes on the same level of urgency or importance (which of course means, nothing is more important).
If you do well in a media interview, and you have a wide niche that you can talk about, you might be called on by the media outlet to become a regular guest expert. How does that happen? Well for author Brenda Nixon it went like this:
In my hometown of Kansas City, I do a regular TV segment on Wednesdays. During our noon news, I speak on a parenting issue.
This assignment came on the heels of an interview with the station’s news anchor. She did a feature on my toilet teaching audiotape. Then while on maternity leave, she encountered the desperate lack of practical parenting on the news. Upon her return to work she called to propose I do this weekly segment.
Ok, so I stretched things a little to get a catchy headline. The point is, that Brenda did so well in her initial interview that she was uppermost in that producer’s mind when the idea struck.
A public relations firm out of Florida recently offered to media coach President George Bush, for free. An article in the South Florida Daily Business News says that O’Connell & Goldberg Public Relations made the offer back in August. According to the article, the firm feels
there’s plenty that could be done to help polish the president’s presentations, from his vocabulary, tenor of speech, inflection and pace of delivery to posture, facial expressions and overall body language. The agency would work with President Bush to enhance his vocal dexterity and help him project a positive image. In addition to reviewing the keys to a winning interview style, agency professionals would place the president before a camera during simulated scenarios and critique his performance to reinforce proper interview techniques.
No word on whether Bush took them up on the offer. And isn’t a bit late to be offering up what I agree was needed years ago?
Thing is, you know the President gets media coaching; you cannot be in high-level politics these days without getting it in some form. So why are there still many weaknesses in his delivery?
Readers of this blog know that I’m no fan of what I call “the will to fill” - the habit of filling in pauses in speech with words such as like, ummm, ahhh, etc. Turns out there’s a website devoted to this very problem: www.ummlike.com and they have a top ten list of offenders. Go have a look and vote for your favourite filler.
I heard a headline on CNN the other day that made me curious. New York Rep. Peter King allegedly said there were too many mosques in the United States, but he claimed he was being taken out of context. The remarks were said to be in an interview with Politico.com, so I immediately brought it up on screen, and bless the internet’s heart if the whole thing wasn’t laid out nicely for me: Politico’s original headline and story, an update about the Representative’s denials, and then a decent length of the actual interview posted on YouTube for everyone to check for themselves. Now that’s transparency.
Have a look for yourself and see what you think. Did Rep. King actually say “there are too many mosques in the United States”? And based on what he actually said, was it reasonable to extract that headline?
Here’s the relevant section transcribed:
Rep. Peter King: If there’s any doubt I want the doubt resolved in favour of us going out and getting the job done. We have, unfortunately, we have a… ah… too many… ah mosques in this country there’s too many people who are… ah.. sympathetic to radical islam. We should be looking at them more carefully, we should be finding out how we can infiltrate. Ah… we should be more much more agressive in law enforcement.
I’ll leave issues of the quality of journalism to others. The issue for this blogger is: what lesson can interviewees learn from what happened here? I think the answer is: be as clear you possibly can with your thoughts. Not that mistakes aren’t going to happen (and then you can only hope the journalist doesn’t run with it out of context), but the better prepared you are, the more rested you are, the more focussed you are during the interview, the less likely it will be that you’ll slip up, even on a word or two.
I have an in-depth analysis of this incident in my latest newsletter. If you don’t have a subscription (it’s free) just fill in the form over on the side.
