TJ’s Insights

Many of my media training clients are very good at speaking in sound bites when we are rehearsing newspaper interviews conducted over the telephone. Why? Because my clients have all of their sound bites and quotes written down on a piece of paper in front of them. All they have to do is read—it’s pretty simple.
 
But once we practice live TV interviews, everything changes. Executives usually still deliver message points, but they can’t seem to remember their sound bites. (Sound bites are a way of packaging message points with analogies, bold action words, emotions, examples, clichés and a few other speech patterns that are irresistible to journalists).
 
It’s hard enough to remember how to look good on TV, worry about bright lights, get your makeup on, and deliver a message when you are doing a television interview. Something usually gets forgotten and that something is usually the sound bites.
 
So how can you increase the chances that you will remember and use your prepared sound bites? Here are a few tips:
 
1.    Don’t try to memorize them. It’s too hard and will likely freeze your brain even more.
2.    Read your sound bites out loud several times before you go on air. By saying them out loud you will create grooves in your brain and make it easier to repeat them during the actual interview.
3.    At the risk of sounding like I am punishing Bart Simpson, I recommend that you write out your sound bites (even if you have them printed on paper from your computer). Writing also clarifies the idea for your brain.
Come up with your own system. The bottom line is you need to do whatever it takes to get your sound bites to come out during your interview. If it works for you, then you’ve come up with a good system. But whatever you do, don’t try to read notes while you are doing a TV interview—that will look horrible and you will destroy your credibility.

 
Live satellite TV interviews represent unique challenges for guests who are being probed by television hosts. One of my clients recently asked me, “TJ, what do you do during a live satellite TV interview and you are thrown for a loop because of the couple-of-seconds sound delay? Specifically, what do you do if you are in the middle of giving one answer and the host thinks you have finished and interrupts you with another question?”
 
These are tough situations. Both you and the host are at a disadvantage because you likely can’t see the other person’s body language to detect if they are through speaking. So you must make up for it in other ways. Here are some guidelines for handling live satellite TV interviews:
 
1.    Make your answers briefer than usual. Focus on making your points in just a few sentences. (This makes it less likely that you will be interrupted.)
2.    Do not engage in cross-talk. That means if you hear the host talking
while you are still answering, you should stop immediately and let the host continue to speak. (Don’t talk over the host)
3.    Make a judgment call if you have been interrupted. If you have
finished your main thought and you think it will make sense to the audience, then resist the urge to revisit the previous question in your next answer.
4.    If you feel that your answer would not be understandable to your
audience because you were interrupted, and now the host has asked you another question on a separate topic, then say something like this, “Sam, let me first finish your question on our growth plans..” and then finish your previous answer. Then quickly segue into “And now let me answer your question on earnings…” This way you are being responsive to the host and thorough to the audience.
 
Live Satellite TV interviews can be a great way of being in two places at once, but they can be disorienting if you don’t know what to expect. Plan for the changes in your audio environment and you can ace these interviews as easily as any other format.

If you are like me, you probably spend a lot of time reading magazines, articles and books on your chosen area of expertise. The more you read, the more you can analyze, assimilate and then use for clients, colleagues and even speeches. Unless your profession involves some aspect of entertainment or sports, you likely don’t listen to a lot of radio or audio regarding issues in your field (unless you listen to audio books). However, there is a new way of learning more about your subject matter AND learning about how to speak more persuasively about your subject matter.
 
Podcasts: I’m not going to encourage you to start your own podcast—yet. But I would urge you to subscribe to as many podcasts that relate to your field as possible. Here’s why: by listening to other experts in your field, you can get a sense of how people in your profession actually talk about subjects (it is often different from how they write about the subject). Podcasts are much less refined and produced that are audio books—you will get a different feel for how people in your industry think and talk. Listening to podcasts in your field can be especially helpful if you don’t have the time or resources to travel to all of the relevant trade association conventions in your field.
 
How else can you benefit from listening to podcasts? Well, if you believe that the best writers tend to be the biggest readers of other people’s books (I do) then it only follows that the best speakers are often the biggest listeners to other people speaking. By paying attention to not only what people say, but how they say it, you can improve your own speaking abilities.
 
Where do you start? If you don’t have an Ipod, I’d recommend getting one. Then you download Itunes, from there go to the music store and click on “podcasts.” From there you can search by category or topic. If you click on “business” you are likely to find some podcast audio or video that is relevant to you. (Note: all of these podcasts are free to download and listen to, unlike music or movies)
 
For example, if I were to scan every talk radio station or network in the US, it is unlikely that I could find any talk show devoted solely to public speaking or media training, my chosen areas of expertise. However, when I plug in “public speaking” and “media training” into the search button on Itunes, I end up find more than a half a dozen podcast shows devoted to these topics (in addition to my own daily SpeakCast audio and video podcasts).
 
Some of the podcasts I listened to were amateurish. Some produced by English PR firms were slick and had game-show entertainment style production values. There was great variety in style and scope.
 
No one should rely on podcasts for all of their research into their own field, but it can be a nice way to supplement your knowledge base, plus break upon the flow of top 40 music or whatever else you might listen to when you are commuting or going for a jog.

While I primarily consider myself with how people can help themselves with what they say to the media and to live audiences, often words in text can send an even more powerful message—especially to the news media. On March 23, 2006 TheSmokingGun.com posted a memo from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office specifying his requirements from hotels when he is traveling. Nothing wrong so far—it is good to have policies written down.
 
But several of the items jumped out to the news media and provided “hooks” for ridiculing and making fun of the Vice President. One item stated that the Vice President required that every TV be turned on to the Fox News Channel. This request struck many observers as interesting. Cheney has, fairly or unfairly depending on your politics, been depicted as someone who has insulated himself from criticism and new ideas. So when an official memo from his office says that he demands to see only a news network that has the reputation of being most supportive of his policies and least critical of the Administration, it gives reporters the hook they are looking for to criticize and mock Cheney for an alleged weakness previously examined. Everyone from The New York Times to the Drudge Report to the Daily Show had a field day with this one.
 
Similarly, Cheney’s written demand that all lights be turned on in advance of his arrival gives ammunition to reporters who want to portray Cheney as someone who wants to burn oil and use up as much energy as possible in a promiscuous manner. (It may have simply been a reasonable request for the VP not to fall down in the dark.)
 
We all have our own quirks, and I’m sure if I ever get to be Vice President or President  I’ll come up with my own list of eccentric demands (perhaps I’ll be like a rock star and demand bowls full of M&Ms in only the green color). But the one thing I’d recommend to anyone in these situations is this: “Don’t put any requests in writing that easily allow your detractors in the media or elsewhere to make fun of your greatest supposed weaknesses.” Having people criticize you is part of being a leader, but you don’t have to give your critics extra ammunition.

A St. Louis talk show host, Dave Lenihan, was fired from his position on March 22, 2006 for calling Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a “coon” on the air.
 
According to the St. Louis Dispatch, David Lenihan said the following while ostensibly supporting her candidacy to be the NFL Commissioner:
 
“She’s just got a patent resume, of somebody that’s got such serious skill,” Lenihan said on the air. “She loves football, she’s African-American, which would kind of be a big coon, a big coon – oh my God, I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that, OK? I didn’t mean that. That was just a slip of the tongue.”
 
According to the Dispatch, Lenihan later said he meant to use the word “coup.”
 
According to the Dispatch, Lenihan also said, “I was trying to say ‘quite a coup’ but it came out ‘coon,”‘ he said. “I caught myself and apologized. It wasn’t anything I was meaning to say. I never use that word.”
 
Lenihan went so far as to say he would campaign to get Rice elected President of the United States. The talk show host did everything he could to paint a picture that he was not a radical, right-wing reactionary talk show host who was trafficking in racist appeals to an audience.  But for Lenihan, the apology wasn’t enough. He was sacked.
 
What is the lesson here? You have to be very careful what you say when you are in front of a microphone. Apologies alone will not solve your problems. If you are an elected politician, you might be able to ride out the storm until people forget what you said (such as when Rep. Dick Army called Rep. Barney Frank “Barney Fag!”). But if you have a boss or an employer of any kind, chances are you will be fired.
 
So watch what you say and make sure wildly offensive terms are not a part of your natural conversation and you will be even less likely to use them during media opportunities. You should try to do as much media as you can and apologize as often as you but. But know that it is not going to save your job or our career and might follow you for a long time to come.

According to the New York Times (March 19, 2006) competitive collegiate debaters now speak 350-400 words per minute. Not only are normal human beings incapable of speaking at that pace, few people can even understand anyone speaking at that speed. Competitive collegiate debate has morphed into its own bizarre and arcane little world where the only people who can judge debaters are coaches and insiders who listen to that sort of high speed prattle on a regular basis.
 
Something is wrong here. Kids who have a thirst for talking, debating, and convincing other people have been pushed into such a narrow specialized little world that actually teaches them how to be incomprehensible! Debaters are taught to worship speed at the expense of all other values, such as balance, memorability, emotion, and persuasiveness.
 
The result? The more a kid advances in the collegiate debate world, the less he or she might make a good lawyer, CEO, sales manager or communicator at any level.
 
But if you aren’t in college anymore, don’t think you are off the hook when it comes to getting pushed into a narrow niche where your communication skills can mutate into something esoteric. Every industry or trade has its own lingo, acronyms, abbreviations, and buzz words. The powerful communicator tries to learn all of them, but use them only sparingly.
 
The surest way to keep yourself from falling into bad habits is to force yourself to occasionally speak to audiences outside your immediate clique, trade group, or debate team buddies. When you speak to outsiders, the looks on their face will tell you that they have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. That’s when you should step back and figure out if you have lapsed into the bad habits of speaking in jargon, talking to quickly, or committing some outer communications blunder.