A Lesson From Ben Bernanke
by David Snell

Since I don’t know very much about economics I didn’t expect the 60 Minutes story on FED head Ben Bernanke to increase my understanding of the stock market, the credit church or Derivatives, but I was curious about how Mr. Bernanke would answer his Snell’s Law Questions.  Snell’s Law?  I figure if Murphy can have one so can I, and the Snell’s law of media interviews is this: “The question you most dread will be asked.”

Chairman Bernanke’s Snell’s Law question came from 60 Minutes Correspondent Scott Pelley. “You know, Mr. Chairman, there are so many people across this country who say, you know, ‘to hell with them.  The wages of failure on Wall Street should be failure.’”
           
It my be that Mr. Bernanke came up with his answer on the spot, but my guess is he’d anticipated his Snell’s Law question and prepared this analogy in advance.

“If you have a neighbor who smokes in bed and he’s a risk to everybody.  And suppose he sets fire to his house.  You might say to yourself, ‘I’m not going to call the fire department.  Let his house burn down, it’s fine with me.’  But then, of course, what if your house is made of wood and it’s right next door to his house.  What if the whole town is made of wood?  I think we’d all agree that the right thing to do is put out that fire first and then say, ‘What punishment is appropriate?  How should we change the fire code?  What needs to be done to make sure this doesn’t happen in the future?  How can we fireproof our houses?’ That’s where we are right now.  We have a fire going on…it’s still burning.”

Okay, that’s why the bail-outs, but how about the other Snell’s Law question hanging over the economic meltdown?  60 Minutes showed us the vault in Federal Reserve Bank in New York with pallets of hundred dollar bills, making the point that one of the FED’s most important responsibilities if regulating the nations banks, to be the watchdog. So why didn’t it do a better job?

Chairman Bernanke again:  “We had a regulatory system that was like a sand castle on the beach.  When you had little small waves lapping up against the sand castle, everything looked good.  But when you had a big breaker come in, suddenly the system wasn’t strong enough to deal with it.”

A little weak, perhaps, but, from a communication standpoint, you have to applaud the effort.  It makes the point that, when you expect to be confronted with a Snell’s Law question, it’s worth the time it takes to come up with an analogy or some other way to simplify your complex subject.  A lesson from Ben Bernanke.   

A Lesson From Tiger Woods
By David Snell

With a title like that you would naturally expect this lesson to be about golf, and you’d be partially right.  It is and it isn’t.  It’s about golf, but it’s not about swing thoughts or how to error-proof your putting.  Instead, this Lesson from Tiger Woods is about Welcoming Your Butterflies.

When Tiger was about to return to competitive golf after nearly eight months absence following knee surgery, he talked about the layoff.  Said Tiger: “I miss that rush of playing and competing, I really do.  Getting on that first tee and feeling it.  This is what I do for a living and this is what I’ve wanted to do my entire life. And not being able to do it at the highest level was frustrating at times.” 

It was about then that someone in the press corps had the temerity to ask the greatest golfer of his generation whether he just might be a bit nervous. “The day that I’m not nervous is the day I quit.  To me, nerves are great.  That means you care.  I care about what I do and I take great pride in what I do.  So, of course I’ll be nervous.  That’s the greatest thing about it is to feel that; to feel that rush.” 

 It is Tiger’s ability to channel his nervousness, combined with his skill and work ethic that has made him a World Class athlete, the winner of 14 major tournaments and a seemingly endless string of professional victories.  And, what Tiger understands about the role of nervousness in golf also applies to media interviews and important presentations. 

As communication consultant Tom Antion puts it, “Fear is your friend.  It makes your reflexes sharper.  It heightens your energy, adds a sparkle to your eye, and color to your cheeks.  When you are nervous about speaking you are more conscious of your posture and breathing.  With all those good side effects you will actually look healthier and more physically attractive.”

Sounds good, right.  But just how do you tame your butterflies and get them flying in formation? 

As a long-time golfer (read duffer) myself, I’d experienced that first-tee nervousness that’s always made worse because the foursome behind you seems to be analyzing ever hiccup in my swing.  But I’ve also noticed what most golfers do as they’re preparing for that first swing.

Most of us put our driver behind our necks and rotate back and forth.  In the process, we’re simulating the turn that is the basis for every good golf swing, but the turn does another important thing:  It deals with the tension that we tend to store up across our shoulders and down or spinal column.  Whether or not you have a golf club handy, you should do the same thing before speaking or being interviewed by a reporter.  In the process, you’ll release much of the tension you’ve stored up.  The other thing you should do in preparation for your speech or interview is to breathe deeply. 

A combination of deep breathing and the golfer’s turn can lesson the negatives of nervousness and make way for the positives.  Then, use your imagination.  Think about someone whose opinion you respect coming up to you after your speech or interview and saying, “You did a really good job.”  It sounds a little touchy-feely, but by thinking positively, you make less room for thoughts of failure. 

In essence, you’ll be following the advice of another legendary golfer.  Jack Nicklaus, who owns the record for wins in a major (18) that Tiger hopes to eclipse, equates his phenomenal record of achievement with his ability to visualize success. 
So, embrace your nervousness and visualize success.  A lesson from Tiger Woods, and Jack Nicklaus.

But Aren’t Reporters Anti-Business?
by David Snell

The chairman of a major bank holding company captured the feeling when he said that the relationship between business and the media was adversarial and that CEOs “sense the news media have a more liberal perspective than CEOs do – and an initial bias against business.”  On the other hand, David Broder, who is generally regarded as the “dean” of the Washington press corps says, “There just isn’t enough ideology in the average reporter to fill a thimble.”

Broder writes his columns for The Washington Post which many regard as part of the “liberal media,” but you might be surprised to know that Peggy Noonan agrees.  A former White House speech writer (for the first President Bush) and author of What I Saw At the Revolution, her whimsical take on the Reagan presidency,Peggy is one of the Wall Street Journal’s most conservative columnist. Most reporters, she says, have one overriding prejudice.  “They like anyone who’s good copy, who’s bright and witty and who, above all, will tell them the truth.”  Yes, there are exceptions.  And, yes, there are reporters who attempt to make their reputations by savaging their interviewees, but they are the exceptions.  The report from men and women in the trenches of American business (the public relations people who represent those businesses to media) tell me their companies have been treated fairly by most reporters.

On the other hand, it is true that skilled reporters ask tough, probing questions of conservatives, liberals and everyone else.  Lesley Stahl, who cut her reporting teeth at CBS covering Watergate, says the idea that reporters were out to get President Nixon is ridiculous.  Stahl, in her book Reporting Live, put it this way:

            “We were portrayed as working in cahoots with the liberal
Democrats, out to get him for political reasons, which was nonsense.  Reporters are equal opportunity stalkers when an open would is exposed.”
 
Even if you don’t have an open wound, the fact is your appearance on television can still end up being a disaster unless you understand the medium and how to prepare yourself to use it effectively.
 
“I know everything about my company,” says the CEO, flinging caution raffishly over his shoulder like the dog-faced flying ace in a Charles Schultz cartoon.  “What can possibly go wrong?”  If you don’t know, the chances are you’ll find out, and that the learning process will not be enjoyable.  As all too many people have discovered to their sorrow, the answer is “plenty.”

It ain’t rocket science, but there are some things you need to know if you’re going to be interviewed by either print or television reporters.  This is the first in a series of articles that will help you go beyond coping to a real understanding of how to succeed in media interviews.  Stay tuned.

Television’s “Not Live Options”
by David Snell
A psychologist friend called one afternoon for a quick-fix.  “I know you do media training,” he said.  “Channel Eleven is on its way over here to interview me about ‘the mind of the terrorist.’  Give me your five-minute course.”  I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I do know he was surprised by what he got.  “Repeat yourself,” I said.

“Say what?”

“You know the question (the reporter had asked it on the phone) and you know your answer.  So repeat yourself.”
 
Later, when I happened to bump into the reporter, I asked how the interview had gone.  “Great,” he said.  “He gave me the same answer three times; one 24 seconds, one 20 seconds and one 17 seconds.”

“And which one did you use?” I asked.
                “You know the answer to that one.”

Of course I did.  One of the primary reasons why reporters are happy when you repeat yourself is that there’s a very good chance that, in the process, you’ll say it more succinctly than you did on take-one.

Fact:  Ninety-nine percent of television interviews are “not live.”  And, since they’re recorded for playback later, “Repeat Yourself” is one of your two “Not Live Options.”

The Repeat-Yourself option is especially useful when a reporter calls asking for a quick quote for a story she’s working on.  She tells you the subject, probably even the question she wants you to answer.  But, guess what.  Once she arrives with her camera crew — once the interview begins — she’ll ask you several other questions that are tangential to the first.  In this case, she has no thought to trip you up, but the simple fact that she’s come all the way to your office with her heavy equipment makes a one-answer interview highly unlikely.  You deliver yourself of the perfect answer — vivid, brief and colloquial — and she’ll ask another question, guaranteed.

What to do?  If you can think of a better way to say essentially the same thing, go for it.  If you don’t, Not-Live-Option # 1 will work wonders.

Not Live Option # 2:   PAUSE
Stop…Pause…Think

Okay, so the camera and the reporter are staring at you and the tape is rolling.  Still, you don’t have to answer one millisecond after the question is asked.  You can stop, take a deep breath, and actually think before you answer.  As a reporter, I’ve interviewed people who paused for so long I thought they hadn’t heard the question and asked it again.  Have you ever seen a pause of five, ten or twenty seconds on television?  Probably not, but it’s not because they don’t happen.  Television stations/networks just won’t take the time for that kind of a pause unless you’re rolling your eyes or crying or both.

If you use your not-live options – if you repeat yourself and if you pause – you’ll find it removes a lot of the tension that often surrounds a television interview.

PR: A New Definition
by David Snell

An executive of an electric utility (let’s call him Miles) appearing on television to talk about a rate increase his company had just requested from the state Public Service Commission.  His Communication goal:  To justify the increase.

Miles:                    When you go into a super market one week and you see three cans of peas for a dollar.  The next week you see three cans for a dollar ten.  The store has had a rate increase.  The only difference is, they didn’t have to go to the Public Service Commission  to get it.

Reporter:              But we don’t have one switch on the wall for your
company and one for your competition.  You do have a monopoly.

Miles:                    Well, that’s true, but because of the nature of the business it’s been found
that monopolies are the best way of providing the lowest cost electricity to
the people.  We are closely regulated, or course, and that regulation keeps
prices down.

The television audience heard a pleasant, articulate man give a logical defense of a necessary rate increase.  What they did not hear was the fact that the utility’s customers had the lowest cost electricity in the country.  Miles had a broad communications goal—to justify the rate increase—but no specific agenda. He had the what, but not the how.

PR:  A New Definition

Before talking about how Miles should have prepared for his interview, let me give you a new definition of PR.  The old one, of course, is Public Relations.  The new one is Prepared Response.
 
                Begin preparing for an interview by making a list of the questions you expect to be asked. Then, when your list is complete, think through your response to each, making notes of your most important points.  Your next step is to talk your answers into a tape recorder and play them back.  As you listen, ask yourself:

-Did I say what I intended to say?
-Would the words I used be understandable to
a non-expert in my field?
-Was each answer brief and to the point?

If your answer to each question is “yes,” you have come up with your PR’s, Prepared Responses. If our utility man – Miles – had a PR, his answer might have gone something like this.
 
Miles:    If you had a switch on the wall for Etna Power and a wall full of switches
for every other electric utility in the country, you’d choose Etna Power
 every time.  Even with the rate increase, we will still be providing
our customers with some of the lowest priced electricity in the country.

Both answers were responsive to the reporter’s question, but the second answer avoided the word monopoly (who has a warm spot in their heart for monopolies?), and replaced passive/defensive with positive.
Miles had his prepared response, and because he had it he was ready to be flexible; to play of the reporter’s question that included the idea of switches on the wall by adding some switches of his own.

Churchill, Demosthenes and You
by David Snell  
Most people have decided before they graduate from high school whether or not they are cut out to be A Speaker.  If your early experience in front of audience was successful, odds are you continued to seek out opportunities to speak, continued to get positive feedback, continued to improve.  On the other hand, if your early experiences were negative, you’ve probably been avoiding speaking situations like the plague.  “I’m just not cut out to be a speaker,” you said to yourself, and that was that
. 
If you’re among those who decided early on that you like to speak, you already know, the more you speak the better you get.  On the other hand, if you’d rather confront an angry pit bull in a fenced in yard than an audience of any size, I’ve got good news for you:  Speakers are made, not born.  Whether or not you become an excellent speaker will depend on a range of things from motivation to opportunity, but you can become a whole lot better than you are if you are determined enough.
 
If you think you can’t make dramatic improvement, consider Demosthenes.  He’s the guy who put pebbles in his mouth (some three hundred years BC).to improve his diction and then spent hours shouting into the winds off the Aegean Sea to strengthen his voice.  Then, of course there is Winston Churchill.
 
Churchill is a case study in determination.  As a boy, he suffered from a severe lisp that took years of therapy and countless hours of hard work to overcome.  By the time he took his seat in the British Parliament he thought of himself as an accomplished speaker until his maiden speech before the House of Commons. By all accounts, the reception he got was disastrous.  Not only did his speech go badly, but he was totally unprepared for the questioning that followed.
 
A less determined man might have decided to throw in the sponge (or whatever proper British gentlemen do when confronted with impossible situations).  What Churchill did was practice, practice, practice.  Before facing the House of Commons a second time, he polished his arguments and spent hours in front of the mirror practicing his delivery.  Then, remembering his embarrassment during the Q & A session that followed that first speech, Churchill started what was to become a life-long practice.  He sat down and made a list of every conceivable question that might be asked and carefully crafted his responses. In the process, Sir Winston transformed himself into a speaker known for his rapier whit; a master of the comeback.
 
The army has a slogan:  “Be all that you can be.”  To be all that you can be as a speaker, you need to work at it.  For what to work on, check out my Ebook, Big Speeches to Small Audiences at Snellcom.com. You provide the pebbles, and Big Speeches will  help you do the rest.

The KISS-Plus Formula for Dynamite Presentations
By David Snell 

Whenever you’re talking or writing to people who don’t share your  expertees, it’s best to follow the advice of the country politician who always “put the grass down where the goats can get at it.”
 
Sounds simple enough, but while we all know the KISS Principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), knowing it and putting it into practice are very different things. That is especially true when you need to communicate technical information to non-technical audiences.  In my twenty-plus years of consulting with speakers from business, government and the professions, I’ve found that the best way to “keep it simple” is by using analogies.
 
If you’re an engineer needing to make the point that, due to attenutation rates your company needs to establish a network of antennas to ensure quality cellular telephone service, you’ll make your point better if you compare the antenna system to sprinkling the lawn.  You want to set your sprinklers in a pattern that gets the grass uniformly wet, without either gaps or saturation.
 
If regulations put your company at a competitive disadvantage, you might put Lance Armstrong on the starting line for the Tour de France. The other bicycle riders have a clear road in front of them.  Lance is in a separate lane festooned with potholes and other obsticles.  Fair?  Of course not.

The FAA can provide endless statistics on the subject, but when they want to tell us how safe it is to fly we’ll get the point better if they quote the MIT professor who says you can take a flight every day for nineteen thousand years before you would be statistically likely to be in a fatal accident.  Now, that’s safe.
  
The best single example of the impact of analogies on the communication process happened with the announcement that scientists had been able to map ninety-seven precent of the nearly 3.2 billion bits of chemical information found in every human cell.  Most of us would have been only vaguely interested except for one amazing occurance.  It tuned out that the same scientists who had conducted the Human Genome Project were actually able to talk about it in nonscientific terms the rest of us could understand.  It was  a breakthrough almost as astounding as the sceintific achievement itself. Dr. Francis Collins, who headed the project said:

                “The genome is sort of like the United States and each cromosome is a different state.  What
we’ve been able to do is to lay out where, in fact, are the major landmarks, the mountain
ranges, the major cities and a few of the smaller towns.”

The only biology I can remember from my high school days involved disecting a frog, so I wasn’t ready for a scientific explanation, but once the map analogy was in place, I got it.  The grass was down where this goat could get at it.

Finding the best analogy to explain your point may not be easy, but if you want your listeners or readers to really understand, it will certainly be worth the effort.

Your “Not Live” Options

A psychologist friend called one afternoon for a quick-fix.  “I know you do media training,” he said.  “Channel Eleven is on its way over here to interview me about ‘the mind of the terrorist.’  Give me your five-minute course.”  I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I do know he was surprised by what he got.  “Repeat yourself,” I said.

“Say what?”

“You know the question (the reporter had asked it on the phone) and you know your answer.  So repeat yourself.”
 
Later, when I happened to bump into the reporter, I asked how the interview had gone.  “Great,” he said.  “He gave me the same answer three times; one 24 seconds, one 20 seconds and one 17 seconds.”

“And which one did you use?” I asked.

            “You know the answer to that one.”

            Of course I did.  One of the primary reasons why reporters are happy when you repeat yourself is that there’s a very good chance that, in the process, you’ll say it more succinctly than you did on take-one.

If you’re going to be interviewed for a television news program the chances are overwhelming that it will not be live.  It will be recorded.  It will be taken back to the station and edited.  And then it will go on the news program.  And, since your interview isn’t going to be “live” you have two “not live” options.

            Your first “not live” option is that you can repeat yourself.  It works when the reporter’s questions are similar, but it also works if,  in the process of giving your answer, you discover that you’ve left out an important part or you felt like you really could have done a better job on the answer than you did.  You can say to the reporter right then, “Let me have another go at that because I think I can give you a better answer.”  He will ask the question again and you can give your answer.  So, your first “not live” option is that you can repeat yourself.

            Your second “not live” option is….you can pause.  Five seconds, ten seconds, twenty seconds, whatever.   In my reporting days, I had interviewees pause for so long that I thought they didn’t hear the question, and I asked it again.  When was the last time you saw a pause of that length on a television news program?  Answer:  You never have.  If you aren’t crying or rolling your eyes, television stations and networks won’t use a pause of even a few seconds

  With the camera or the recorder rolling, an interview with a reporter won’t feel exactly like a conversation with a friend.  On the other hand, pausing gives you time to think before you answer (usually a good idea).  And repeating yourself gives you an opportunity to improve on something you said.  The reporter will use one or the other, never both.  And, chances are she’ll end up using the improved version.

So, you have two “not live” options.  You can repeat yourself and you can pause.  Use them and you’ll be surprised at how liberated you’ll feel.

Three Keys to Making Dynamite Presentations
By David Snell

          Every day all across the country people make business   presentations and many of them are less than wonderful. Some are downright awful.  To put your presentations on a positive track, you need to follow four basic keys.
           
1--Think of your speech or presentation from your audience’s  perspective.

Whether you’re talking to your boss, a business colleague, an audience or a reporter, you’re prospects of success are always greater if you think of your remarks from their perspective.  Ask yourself:  What do they know about your subject?  What do they need to know?  And, how can I tell them in a way that they’ll understand?
  
Supplementing the KISS Principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid), it is often helpful – especially when the subject is technical – to find an analogy to help make the point. If regulations put your company at a competitive disadvantage, you might put Lance Armstrong on the starting line for the Tour de France. The other bicycle riders have a clear road in front of them.  Lance is in a separate lane festooned with potholes and other obsticles.  Fair?  Of course not.

If you’re an engineer needing to make the point that, due to attenutation rates your company needs to establish a network of antennas to ensure quality cellular telephone service, you’ll make your point better if you compare the antenna system to sprinkling the lawn.  You want to set your sprinklers in a pattern that gets the grass uniformly wet, without either gaps or saturation.
 
Finding the best analogy to explain your point may not be easy, but if you want your listeners or readers to really understand, it will certainly be worth the effort.
 
2—Look Them In The Eye.

          Eye contact plays an important role in connecting you with your audience. People are much more likely to pay attention when you make regular eye contact with them.  If you’re looking just over their heads, you won’t see the nods of agreement that signal approval or the smiles of appreciation for a joke well told.
 
3—Tame Your Butterflies.

Every person I have ever talked to on the subject — from the first-timer to the experienced professional — feels some nervousness whenever they “go public”   Here’s my 4-step process for taming your butterflies

 

.

Step One: Stretch ‘Em Out

Since we store up most of our tension in the shoulders and in the spinal column, begin by standing up straight with your feet spread comfortably apart.  Now, pretend you are holding an imaginary golf club across your shoulders behind your neck.  Rotate your shoulders as far as you can one way and then back the other, letting your head follow along.  By doing this three or four times, you will experience an immediate reduction in tension.
Step Two: Blow It Out
           
Now, breathe.  Take in a lung full of air, hold it a few seconds, and breathe out forcefully, completely draining your lungs of all air.  Repeat the inhale/exhale cycle several times and feel the release of tension.

Step Three: Preview Success

            Now that you are perfectly relaxed, breathe deeply and visualize success.  Imagine someone who’s opinion you respect coming up to you after your interview and saying, I think you did a great job.

            The Three Step Process, which takes less than two minutes to complete, can make a world of difference in your success at Taming Your Butterflies.

            So there you have it.  If you think of your speech or presentation from the audience’s perspective, look them in the eye, and Tame your butterflies and you’ll be well on your way to giving dynamite presentations.

 Geekification
by David Snell

“Geekification:”  The chances are you’ve never heard that word.  It isn’t in any dictionary, but I guarantee you have experienced it.  You’re listening to someone speak or you’re listening to an interview and you realize that, while they’re speaking English, you don’t understand what they’re saying.  They’re using acronyms and arcane jargon that you just don’t get.  Geekification.

A friend of mine explained it this way:  When you go to work for a company, at first you don’t understand their nomenclature, you don’t understand the acronyms, you feel like an outsider.  But little by little and lot by lot you get so you understand what they’re saying.  In fact, after a while, it gets so that all seems to you like the King’s English.

The problem is when you go into an interview or into a speech and you’re still using that “geekified” language that has become so familiar to you.  When an accountant with an electric utility was asked how he arrived at the cost of service between residential, commercial and industrial customers, he answered:

“We bring the lamda value down to the average energy cost make a correction to the following day or in the hourly  period where the values are positive.  Where we have the System Lamda for the capacity cost allocation process, we set it equal to zero and distribute those negative credits to the other hours of the day when the lamda minus alpha values are positive.”

A colleague in the back of the room said, “Yes!  Nailed it!”  Well, maybe he nailed it as far as other experts on cost of service were concerned.  For the rest of us, not so much.

An extreme example?  Perhaps, but only by degree.  Consider the news conference announcing the merger of communication giants AT&T and Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI).  A reporter asked the obvious question: “What kind of service will you be able to provide over your new network?”   The answer, from John Malone, Chairman and CEO of TCI.

“On the video side, all the things that we have started to do will be more broadly applied.  We’re now up-linking north of 340 services out of our facility in Denver…so those will be available to all our ‘foot-print’
customers and the vast bulk of our affiliated customers at an increasing pace. It’s already started to happen.
Our vender GI is also sitting on 16 million set-top box orders…so, on the video side it’s happening and happening fast.”

Nailed it?  Not quite.   The news conference was broadcast live on CNN and chances are most viewers had turned away by the time another reporter asked substantially the same question.  “If I’m a home owner, how would that actually work?”

“Mrs. Jones, I’m here to install your new digital converter,” said Malone, taking on the persona of the installer.  He went on to explain that, with a new converter the Jones family would "be able to order Viagra while watching their favorite entertainment show – point and click.”

Better?  You think?

What you need to do in an interview or a speech is have a second language wardrobe.  That’s a language wardrobe you use outside the company or outside your area of expertise.  Then, you won’t talk “geek talk” and you’ll be understood. 
So, the problem is “geekification.”  And the solution is a different language wardrobe.

How to Handle the Hostile Reporter
By David Snell

Truth to tell, there aren’t many hostile reporters out there, but there are a few, and if you’re confronted with one it’s a pretty good idea to have specific tools in mind about how you will respond to their questions.

You're expecting a nice straightforward interview and in walks Geraldo Rivera.  What to do?  First of all, if you have anticipated what questions will be asked, have prepared your answers and rehearsed, you're two-thirds of the way home.  The other third is attitude. 

When the reporter does turn out to be hostile, your job is to keep your cool.  Some hostility can be defused in a broadcast interview by a friendly demeanor and the liberal use of the reporter's first name. 

“I’m glad you asked that question, Geraldo, because there's been a good deal of misinformation on the subject..." If he interrupts, or asks several questions at one time without giving you time to answer, ask for the time, but don't badger back.  "Don't get mad, get even," is a nice phrase, but bad advice in an interview.  You won’t control the editing and it’s guaranteed that your Geraldo won’t make himself look bad.

On the other hand, there are other ways to neutralize Geraldo that give you the opportunity to get your message across on your own terms. The first one is Reframe The Question. 

Supposed you are asked a question like, “How do you respond to your critics who say you’re handling this crisis like a bunch of Keystone Kops?”  Your natural inclination will be to say, “We’re not bhaving like Keystone Kops” and go on to explain what you are doing.

            A better way to answer is to say, “You’re question goes to how we are dealing with this situation, and the answer is I think we’re handling it very well.”  And then go on to make your point.  You have reframed the question, and got away from the pejorative the reporter’s question. 

            The other way to answer a hostile question is called “Give-to-get.”  Suppose you’re asked a question like, “How can you say it’s safe to fly in the United States when two of your major control centers have had power outages in the last few months?”

            You can say, “It’s true that we’ve had power outages.  It is also true that neither of those outages put the safety of the flying public in jeopardy because of redundancies in the system that provided a back-up.  You then go on to explain how back-up generators and computers insure that the traffic control system is always there to direct air traffic safely across the country.

            So, there you have it.  Two defuse techniques.  You can reframe the question and you can use give-to-get.

A Lesson From Sarah Palin
by David Snell

As you may recall, during the 2008 presidential and vice presidential campaigns, Governor Sarah Palin didn’t do many interviews and some of the ones she did didn’t turn out very well.  I’m thinking specifically of the one she did with CBS News anchor person Katie Couric.

If you recall that interview, it’s very strange what happened, because there were no “gotcha” questions.  None.  The Governor was asked to explain how Alaska’s proximity to Russia

I’ve reviewed it several times and you can on CBSNews.com or on Youtube, no “gotcha” questions at all.  And yet, Governor Palin was very defensive.

What happened?  After the campaign she said, “I wasn’t allowed to do many interviews and the ones I did were not necessarily the ones I would have chosen.”

They’re not the ones I would have chosen for her.  Before Katie, there was an interview with Charlie Gibson on ABC that is remembered for Governor Palin’s non-answer to Gibson’s question about the Bush Doctrine.  I actually thought she handle that one all right by saying, “In regard to what, Charlie?”  Wikipedia describes an evolving definition that initially was used to justify our invasion of Afghanistan and came to be used in justifying a so-called “preventive war” against Iraq.  But why was she being interviewed by Charlie and Katie?

If I had been advising the McCain campaign, and I certainly wasn’t, I would have said, “Have Governor Palin do as many interviews as possible at the local level, and little by little work up.  Once she’s got her legs under her as a national spokesperson, then give her the opportunity to be interviewed by network correspondents. If that had happened, it’s my view the Katie Couric interview would have turned out very differently.

I’m not passing judgment on whether Sarah Palin was qualified to be Vice President, but if she’d had the opportunity to become comfortable in her new role there is no way she would have refused to answer Ms. Couric’s innocuous question about what newspapers and magazines she read.  When the campaign was over, Governor Palin said, ”To me the question was more along the lines of ‘do you read? What do you guys do up there?  What is it that you read, and Perhaps I was just too flippant in my answer back to her…”

The Lesson for you in all of that is that, if you’re going to be interviewed on television, make sure that you have lots of practice.  Within your office and then, if possible, at little local stations.  And then work up little by little until you really feel comfortable with what you have to say and how you have to say it.  A lesson from Sarah Palin.

A Lesson from Caroline Kennedy
by David Snell

When Caroline Kennedy first expressed her interest in being appointed to the senate seat that would be vacated when Hillary Clinton became Barack Obama’s Secretary of State, there were the inevitable media interviews.  And the interviews went like this.  “You know I can tell you that, you know, in our family and in my family in particular, I think, you know, there was a sense that, you know, we had to work twice as hard.”

A verbal tick to be sure, and not exactly the kind of thing you expect from a Harvard educated lawyer and best selling author.  You know?  New York Daily News political reporter Michael Saul reported it this way.  “Caroline Kennedy, you know, might need, you know, a speech coach, um,  if she, you know, um, wants, um, to be a senator.  Um, you know?”

Saul reported that in a 30 minute interview with The News, Ms. Kennedy used the phrase “you know” more than 200 times and one Internet blog used a buzzer to mark the 43 “you knows” she used in one two minute and forty-five second interview.  Ouch!

You didn’t have to be a Kennedy critic to note that all those “you knows” and “ums” made the would-be senator seem like one of those Valley Girls who tend to say like, like ever other word.  A Kennedy spokesman said “Caroline acknowledges that she hasn’t mastered the art of the political sound bite.”  You think?

I had some sympathy for Ms. Kennedy when I heard this because I had had a similar experience myself.  In California on a story for ABC News, I was invited to appear on a radio talk show at our San Francisco affiliate, KGO.  Fortunately for me, it was a recorded program that was broadcast on a Sunday night.  Fortunate, not because the listening audience was less than it normally was during the week, but because I was one of the listeners.  Driving back to San Francisco after a weekend in the wine country, I happened across the program quite by accident.  What I heard was me telling my stories with enough “you knows” to stock Caroline Kennedy for a week.  I was devastated.    

I’d been working in television for several years by that time, but I’d been doing the interviews.  I hadn’t been the person being interviewed, and it was quite shocking. 

The process I used to get rid of the “you knows” was very simple.  A got my tape recorder.  I had my wife do interviews with me.  And I concentrated on not saying “you know.”  I really concentrated on allowing silence to take place along the way.  Because, when you say “you know” or “ah” or whatever your verbal tick is, it’s because you’re filling in.  And if you are willing to accept the silences – they will seem gigantic at first – but little by little and then lot by lot you’ll get so you’re quite willing to be talking along without “you know,” you know?

Backgrounding the Reporter
by David Snell

There’s an old saw that says “Assume makes an ass out of you and me (Ass-U-Me).”  To assume the reporter knows the background of the story you are to be interviewed about is a dangerous thing.  And it could very well make an ass out of you and the reporter.

Obviously, you can’t select your reporter, but you can (and should) spend the time it takes to be sure she knows the context of the story and any historical (or other) facts that are important to understanding the new development.  “Back-grounding” the reporter reduces the risk that facts will be distorted because of misinterpretation.

When reporters already know, they won’t mind hearing it again.  If they don’t know, or are fuzzy about the details (chronology, etc.), your “back-grounding” will set them on the right path.  Since back-grounding sessions are conducted before the TV interview, they tend to be far less formal than when the camera is actually rolling.  And because they are informal, they give you an opportunity to develop a rapport with the reporter that can go a long way toward reducing whatever tension you may feel.  In the process, you’re likely to come to understand just how much the reporter knows about your subject and perhaps direct her to a line of questions that will result in a better interview than would otherwise have be the case.  After that happened to me early in my journalistic career, I took to initiating the back-ground session myself to make sure I was covering the most interesting and important aspects of a story.
 
Another use of the “back-grounding” session is to position yourself with the reporter.  If you are prepared to discuss the product but not the marketing strategy, say so.  If your lawyers have said not to comment on a subject that is (or may be) in litigation, say that.
You are far better off to explain things before the camera rolls than to seem evasive by declining to answer during the interview or uttering those toxic words, “No Comment.”    Since Watergate, “no comment” smacks of cover-up whether there is one or not.

 If you are straight with the reporter, chances are she’ll be straight with you.  It is still possible the question you put “off limits” will be asked.  But if it is you’ll be able to answer by saying, “as I told you earlier, I can’t talk about that because (give your reason).”  If the interview is “live,” the reporter will look foolish if she doesn’t drop the subject immediately.  If it’s not live (and ninety-nine percent of TV news interviews aren’t), the question and your answer will never survive the cut.

As Carole Howard and Wilma Mathews write in their book, On Deadline, “The more you communicate with and provide background to reporters before the interview, the more they are likely to get the facts straight.” 

Clearly, if the reporter understands the context of what you’re going to be talking about, there’s a lot better chance the interview will be a good one from her standpoint and also from yours.  What you don’t assume can’t hurt.

Television’s “Not Live Options”
by David Snell
A psychologist friend called one afternoon for a quick-fix.  “I know you do media training,” he said.  “Channel Eleven is on its way over here to interview me about ‘the mind of the terrorist.’  Give me your five-minute course.”  I’m not sure what he was expecting, but I do know he was surprised by what he got.  “Repeat yourself,” I said.

“Say what?”

“You know the question (the reporter had asked it on the phone) and you know your answer.  So repeat yourself.”
 
Later, when I happened to bump into the reporter, I asked how the interview had gone.  “Great,” he said.  “He gave me the same answer three times; one 24 seconds, one 20 seconds and one 17 seconds.”

“And which one did you use?” I asked.
                “You know the answer to that one.”

Of course I did.  One of the primary reasons why reporters are happy when you repeat yourself is that there’s a very good chance that, in the process, you’ll say it more succinctly than you did on take-one.

Fact:  Ninety-nine percent of television interviews are “not live.”  And, since they’re recorded for playback later, “Repeat Yourself” is one of your two “Not Live Options.”

The Repeat-Yourself option is especially useful when a reporter calls asking for a quick quote for a story she’s working on.  She tells you the subject, probably even the question she wants you to answer.  But, guess what.  Once she arrives with her camera crew — once the interview begins — she’ll ask you several other questions that are tangential to the first.  In this case, she has no thought to trip you up, but the simple fact that she’s come all the way to your office with her heavy equipment makes a one-answer interview highly unlikely.  You deliver yourself of the perfect answer — vivid, brief and colloquial — and she’ll ask another question, guaranteed.

What to do?  If you can think of a better way to say essentially the same thing, go for it.  If you don’t, Not-Live-Option # 1 will work wonders.

Not Live Option # 2:   PAUSE
Stop…Pause…Think

Okay, so the camera and the reporter are staring at you and the tape is rolling.  Still, you don’t have to answer one millisecond after the question is asked.  You can stop, take a deep breath, and actually think before you answer.  As a reporter, I’ve interviewed people who paused for so long I thought they hadn’t heard the question and asked it again.  Have you ever seen a pause of five, ten or twenty seconds on television?  Probably not, but it’s not because they don’t happen.  Television stations/networks just won’t take the time for that kind of a pause unless you’re rolling your eyes or crying or both.

If you use your not-live options – if you repeat yourself and if you pause – you’ll find it removes a lot of the tension that often surrounds a television interview.

Snell’s Law
By David Snell

Probably you have never heard of “Snell’s Law,” but I figure if Murphy can have one so can I, and “Snell’s Law” about media interviews goes this way:  The question you most dread will be asked.”

If there’s one question you’re hoping against hope will not be asked, you’re wasting your time.  You might as well turn your hoping time into positive action and plan a PR; a Prepared Response.  Is it true that your company plans to lay off a thousand employees?  Will there be a rate increase?  What’s your reaction to Councilman Smitherman’s characterization of you as an incompetent boob?  If you’ve decided how to answer, chances are you will handle the question well.  If not, there’s a very good chance you’ll blow it.

What if that dread question isn’t asked?  That doesn’t mean you’ve wasted your time coming up with an answer you really didn’t need.  Even if the question isn’t asked, the fact that you have your answer at the ready means you won’t be going through the interview with your mind divided between the question you are answering and the dread question you hope won’t be asked.
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And here’s the other thing:  If the question is out there enough so that you’re spending time dreading it, there’s a pretty good chance it will be worth the time you spend coming up with a prepared response.  That’s happened to a number of people I’ve worked with.  We’ve finished working with the questions on their list plus a few that I had come up with, when I ask:  “Is there another question that might be asked that you really don’t want to deal with?”

One time when I posed that question, the executive rolled his eyes.  “Boy, is there ever.”  In fact, he dreaded it so much he was reluctant to even talk about it.  When he finally explained it to me, I could see why he didn’t want to deal with it but I also thought there was a pretty good chance it would come up.  He thought so too, so we spent the next couple of hours working on it.

The question never got asked during the interview, but the executive liked the answer we’d worked out so well that he raised it himself, giving the reporter his lead on the story and putting the company’s position on a controversial subject in the best possible light. 

The moral of the story:  If you’re worried about a Snell’s Law question, it’s worth spending the time it will take to come up with a Prepared Response.   Once you have it, you can use it or not, that’s up to you.  But, if you have it, you don’t have to worry about that once dread question.

A Lesson From Bobby Jindal
By David Snell
Given his reputation within the party, it wasn’t surprising to see Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal selected to give his party’s response to President Obama’s first appearance before a joint session of Congress.  What was surprising was Jindal’s delivery which came across as totally disconnected from his content. 

Whether he was telling a story or repeating his “Americans can do anything” mantra, Governor Jindal sounded for all the world like Mr. Rogers talking to pre-schoolers on his long-running television program.   In trying to project “warm and friendly,” the 38-year-old former Rhodes Scholar managed to come across as merely patronizing.

“He walked out like an earnest dork,” said one Internet pundit, and media critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post said “he too often sounded like a guy trying to calm down an aggravated parrot.”  While I don’t know just how that might sound, I get the message.  Stylistically, it was pretty bad.  But, I would maintain, his problem was less style than approach.   
 
Too paraphrase Shakespeare’s Mark Anthony, I come not to praise Jindal nor to bury him, but to draw one important lesson from his performance. Although it’s axiomatic in business, government and the professions that the more important the speech the more likely it is to be read, the lesson from Governor Jindal’s performance is that Speaking Isn’t Reading. 
                       
Now, to be sure, it’s hard to look good in comparison with any president, let alone one of the most impressive orators to come along since Ronald Reagan.  One minute we were watching a grand display of America’s political, judicial and military elite assembled in the historic chamber of the House of Representatives, and the next minute we are watching a solitary person walking toward us.

After watching Jindal’s “response,” I went on line to check out his interview the previous Sunday on Meet the Press and his morning-after interview on the Today show.  In both appearances, Jindal came across as the bright, articulate person he apparently is.  As a reader, he was bad.  As a talker, he displayed a sense of humor and there wasn’t even a hint of the sing-songy voice on display as his party’s spokesman.
 
When Ronald Reagan read his speeches, he sounded spontaneous and unrehearsed, whether it was from a manuscript or on a Teleprompter.  Barack Obama can do the same.  Most of the rest of us?  Not so much.

So, if your speech or presentation is really important, you need to use a notes and rehearsal technique that will let you speak in an extemporaneous stile and not the stilted phrasing of the reader.  A lesson from Bobby Jindal.

A Lesson From Arnold Schwarzenegger
By David Snell
Watching Arnold Schwarzenegger on ABC’s This Week, I was reminded of the New Yorker cartoon that’s been on the wall of my office for the past fifteen years.  It shows a bearded professor talking to a middle age couple at a garden party. The caption on the cartoon reads, “I can’t put it into layman’s language for you.  I don’t know any layman’s language.” 

We may laugh at professors with their academic language, but I’ve seen the same kind of thing in my coaching of executives from business, government and the professions.  People become so used to talking to their peers who understand their jargon and nomenclature that they use the same arcane language when they speak to a non-expert audience or are interviewed by a reporter.

A friend of mine who has been an accountant, auditor and controller on his way to becoming the Chief Financial Officer of an electric utility, describes the process. “When you go to work for a company,” he says, “you take on their communication terms or you don’t survive.  The people around you talk ‘geek’ and you talk ‘geek’ right back at them.”  The problem comes when geek talkers attempt to communicate with the rest of us.  They know the “geek” language of there profession, but not how to explain it to non-techies.  That’s where Arnold comes in.
 
On ABC’s This Week, the California Governor might have gone into an involved philosophical argument about why he thinks Republicans should work with Democrats to solve the economic crisis, but instead, he used an analogy.

“I see that as kind of like, you go to a doctor.  The doctor examines you and says “you have cancer.’ What you want to do at that point, you want to see this team of doctors around you have their act together and are very clear and say ‘this is what we need to do,’ rather than to see a bunch of doctors fighting in front of you, arguing about the treatment.  That is the worst thing.  It creates insecurity in the patient.  The same is with the people in America.  It creates insecurity when you have the two parties always arguing and attacking each other rather than coming together and saying to the American people, ‘here’s the recipe.  It’s going to be tough, but here’s what we need to do for the next two years and we both believe in it.  That will bring calmness to the market.”
 

            Whether or not you accept the Governor’s analysis, I think you’ll agree that his analogy helped him communicate it effectively.   Whenever you’re interviewed by a reporter or making a presentation to people outside of your area of expertise, you should do the same.  If you take the time to come up with a simple analogy to explain your complicated subject, there’s a much better chance that people will understand what your saying and accept your recommendations. A lesson from Arnold Schwarzenegger.