People

@creativealison: Had a great messaging workshop with @mediawhizz* lots of really smart approaches to pinning down & saying what your company actually does!
*Laura Shields tweets as mediawhizz

I thought the training was professionally run, with a real focus on key skills necessary to make the most of speaking with the media in interviews and on broadcasts. Laura has significant experience of the media industry and uses this knowledge to guide those being trained through the pitfalls of exposure to the media. She is also commercial enough to understand the subject area of the industries worked in by those being trained in order that the interviews are both relevant and also challenging. I have no hesitation recommending The Media Coach and look forward to future training sessions.

Lindsay Williams is a fantastic media trainer who gives us much more than interview training. She is a real catalyst for our teams, helping us to think clearly about shaping our messages so we can put across exactly what we want to say. She has a knack of coming up with fantastic phrases which have the wow factor and can really cut through to journalists and audiences. We can’t recommend her highly enough.

I worked with Liz in launching my first book. Liz helped me think through how I could use my experience and build on it without ever letting me become complacent! She has a great knack of being able to be both immersed in the subject and yet retain a critical distance from it. Her experience is such that we were able to build a bespoke session as we went, and I never felt that I was being put through a process. I would love to work with Liz again and would recommend her highly.

We’ve used Lindsay Williams for media training for the last seven years and I have yet to find anyone better. She has enormous credibility with delegates and is the person we’d choose to train our most senior execs – including CEO and chairman – on the most difficult and contentious subjects. She is very flexible and can coach more junior, inexperienced delegates with kid gloves or adopt a ‘Paxman’ style approach depending on the brief. She has also proved very useful in working with senior management to brainstorm and define key messages. If I moved from the bank I would definitely continue to use Lindsay.

We have worked with Laura Shields on a number of occasions and have been very impressed with the results. She has worked with us on a one-to-one basis and in multilingual groups of mixed abilities… Her extensive media experience and highly professional approach guarantee media training of the highest quality that I have no hesitation in recommending.

The media training day and messaging session that The Media Coach held for me was fantastic. They really helped delegates understand how the media ticks and boosted their confidence, so by the end of the day I had three spokespeople that I would feel happy about putting in front of a journalist. The messaging session was great for different reasons – it really forced delegates to think about what they thought was newsworthy, and brought up all kinds of interesting case studies that can be used for future PR campaigns.

Lindsay Williams gets right to the heart of the world of media. Even people who think they know all there is to know about the media will be surprised at some of the things they learn. She also gives the view of the PR’s role which is often overlooked in these sessions or not discussed enough. The anecdotal style makes the time in a training session fly by and she engages her pupils instantly. At the end of the session our spokespeople left invigorated, knowing what they want to say and how they want to say it. That is exactly what we need from media training and I would thoroughly recommend The Media Coach. I will continue to use them to train our spokespeople.

Laura’s straight-forward, highly practical and smart approach was extremely useful for making the media a comfortable context to work with. She combines sharp journalistic insight with exercises in detailed message building and interview discipline. By the end of the training I felt as though I had been given an excellent toolkit for managing and working with the media.

Before doing the training I wouldn’t have been comfortable doing a broadcast interview. But I found it really helpful, particularly because of Laura’s clear guidelines on how to make an interview interesting and informative at the same time.

This is the best course and the best trainer I have ever had.

I have to say that I was sceptical in the beginning but following the radio debate, I now can’t find the words to describe how extremely worthwhile it was! What proved useful was the fact that we had pre-empted and anticipated all the key issues that were likely to emerge during the radio debate and that we had thought through and rehearsed our positions in advance. And you know what? Every single issue we anticipated came up and I was able to provide clear, articulate and properly thought-through responses!

The most important thing for me though was because of this, I relaxed! Instead of sitting nervously and worrying about what questions would be flung at me, I sat back and enjoyed the debate and I think that this contributed to what I am told was a really good performance (the BBC team wrote to say that I was unanimously the best panellist on the debate and I feel I should share the credit with you!)

I have already given feedback on the training session to others in Actionaid and would very highly recommend you to others for the excellent job you are doing.

I look forward to working with you again!

Thank you for a great course. I was very impressed with the course and enjoyed it making it easy to remember. I think it is very practical and hands on which made all the difference.

I can vouch for Lindsay Williams’ professionalism and her credibility with senior staff. The media and presentation training was highly practical and created an awareness of what makes effective communication, which some staff in the UN programme carry with them and still talk about the impact of years after the training.

For me the skills learnt have been useful for a recent CNN interview and for presentations to the Chinese media – CCTV. The CCTV remarked on my good TV skills after my interview due to the impact of Lindsay Williams’s training.

Lindsay Williams has a clear commitment to developing the skills of her clients and is a pleasure to work with. I highly recommend her training and know that all who participate will take away media lessons and skills which they can use for their whole career and lives. I am most pleased to recommend her work.