Joseph Feature
David Gridley

Many Colours

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What were the colours of Joseph’s Coat? Well, according to lyricist Tim Rice, in the score of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat  they started “Red and yellow and green and brown, scarlet and black and ochre and peach, ruby and olive and violet and fawn…” I won’t go on as there are 33 in all. Most people probably don’t think too much about the colour or what they and others wear, but as a producer and cameraman I think about it a lot.

I recently caught that song on TV and marvelled at so many different words to describe different shades. Perhaps I could broaden my vocabulary.

When setting a video shot, even with a modern camera, I still have to consider the level of and positioning of lighting depending on a whole host of variables, including what colours my subject is wearing.

Thankfully modern cameras are much better at handling strong colours and generally we can work with just about any colour. However, when we film people for web or corporate videos at Mediacrews, we are always doing our best to make people look good on camera and it’s still true that there are some colours that will enhance your complexion – and some that won’t. And here’s a brief run-through of our quick guide to what colours work best on camera and why.

In the recent past there were certainly colours to avoid simply because video cameras could not cope with them.

Bright red or yellow for example would flare especially in bright sunlight. There was even something called colour-bleed where colours would merge or spread out across the screen. It could all be very distracting.

Firstly, (although they are not strictly colours) try to avoid wearing either all black or all white. Cameras are looking for a balanced exposure so that the thing that is most important in the shot – your face – doesn’t come out either too light or too dark. If the shot contains either too much white or too much black then getting the face exposed correctly can be very tricky.

Joseph

Image supplied by Pickpic

A good camera-person should be able to cope in these situations, especially if they are working with professional lighting, but there is nothing wrong with making their life a bit easier. For example, a bright white shirt will work well provided a darker jacket is worn on top of it. The jacket tones down the shirt and the camera can find the correct exposure more easily. Top Tip: a bright shirt or blouse will also reflect light back up under the neck and chin which will help avoid dark shadows and improve complexion.

Colours? Well, almost any colour will work provided you match it with another colour which provides a contrast. Some combinations that work well include: bright pink and navy blue, white and dark grey or yellow and black. But if you are only wearing a shirt, dress or blouse, then pastel shades will always work well on camera. They also tend to be flattering to both men and women.

Pastels are sightly muted versions of bold colours and so have less risk of flaring in bright lights. Pastel blues and pinks are classic colours that are virtually guaranteed to come across well on camera.

But as I have already said most colours will not pose a problem for modern cameras and that thankfully means we have a broader palette to work with.

Or, as Joseph would have said, “Azure and lemon and russet and grey and purple and white and pink and orange and blue.”

 

PowerPoint presenters
Eric Dixon

What PowerPoint Presenters can Learn from Tour Guides

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PowerPoint presenters

Vic

Let me introduce you to Vic.

He’s a tour guide. And last month I had the good fortune to be part of a group of visitors he was leading around the remarkable Copped Hall in Essex.

It’s an astonishing Georgian mansion in Epping, briefly visible from the M25 as you approach Junction 26 going anticlockwise (shortly after you emerge from the Bell Common tunnel). The house was gutted by fire in 1917, remaining derelict and under threat of development for much of the rest of the 20th century. But in 1995 it was bought by the Copped Hall Trust with the aim of permanently protecting the site and carefully restoring the house and its amazing gardens for educational, cultural and community benefit.

PowerPoint presenters

Copped Hall

Unlike most historic homes which are open for the public to visit, Copped Hall is part country house, part building site. Progress over the last 28 years has been necessarily slow, driven mainly by the funds which have been raised by volunteers, but also by the availability of craftspeople with the traditional skills required. Nevertheless, every time you visit there is something new to see. Another window may have been replaced (at a cost of £5,000) or perhaps an additional tread in the spectacular Portland stone principal staircase (just 17 more to add to the 42 already reinstated, costing a cool £1,850 each).

PowerPoint presenters

Portland stone staircase

Vic is Victor Knope a senior guide and trustee, who has been involved with the Trust for over two decades. Tours aren’t short – ours lasted nearly three hours, including a break for coffee and cake. But what struck me as the tour progressed, was that many of the techniques Vic was using to keep us informed and entertained were the same as those which should be used by PowerPoint presenters for their audiences.

Amongst them were these six skills in particular:

Rapport

This is more than just a smile and a few friendly words on arrival (although both of these are welcome too). Rapport is also about good humour, topical references, perhaps spotting something in the crowd and commenting on it. Finding something which connected us all. This made us feel at ease and at home straight away. It was also a relief to discover he was someone who we were happy to spend some time with. People are comfortable in the company of people who are like them.

Pace

Not so fast to prevent you keeping up, and not so slow as to sound tedious. The length of sentences was short and snappy. Nothing too long or convoluted. No sub-clauses up front which you had to try to remember before the subject matter of the sentence was revealed. Coupled with varied intonation – the natural rise and fall of spoken English – it was easy on the ear.

No assumed knowledge

The site of Copped Hall is so vast and varied, visitor interests may be historical, architectural, archaeological, horticultural or all of the above. But you didn’t need to know anything about any of these topics to enjoy what Vic had to say. After all, many of us were just there out of curiosity, wondering what was going on at this massive shell of a property, while whiling away a Sunday morning.

Colloquial language

In a word, he was chatty. No long words used where short ones would do. Vic understood that we wouldn’t treat him less seriously if he spoke more conversationally. In fact – the opposite. As the quote often attributed to Einstein goes “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough…”

Stories

There were plenty of these. From tales of the fire which ripped through the house in 1917, to the deliberate destruction of the stone staircase in the 1950s, and volunteers having to clear the mass of the tangled mass of plants and trees that had invaded by the late ‘90s. Details like this helped us visualise what had happened and put the facts into context.

A clear purpose

Above all, Vic recognised what his tour was for. I walked alongside him as we returned to the car park and complimented him on his approach. “I don’t expect anyone to leave here remembering a dry list of facts and dates,” he said. “I just want them to experience and understand a little more about this remarkable site.” Perfect – and something PowerPoint presenters could take on board too.

There are guided tours around Copped Hall on the third Sunday of every month (except in December), priced at a very reasonable £10 a head (carers / children under 16 are free).

If you go, please send Vic my regards.

 

Moderate Voice
Lindsay Williams

A Moderate Voice on Northern Ireland

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This weekend I greatly enjoyed listening to Jonathan Powell on this New Statesman Vodcast.

It is easy to assume that measured, moderate voices are inevitably boring. And with our Media Coach lens we would particularly expect ‘boring’ in the use of language. Clients constantly reach for bland almost meaningless phrases because they want to avoid controversy and sound considered. But actually, technical language, boring phrasing and bland generalities are not essential parts of an intelligent analysis.

This interview by the New Statesman’s Rachel Wearmouth and Tony Blair’s Chief of Staff, who was one of the main negotiators of the Good Friday Agreement 25 years ago, shows how it is possible to be a voice of calm reason but still be very interesting.

Of course, while I do believe Powell is wise, calm and measured, he is clearly not non-partisan.

But look at his colloquial (and quotable) use of language:

  • He asserts the Good Friday agreement has ‘stood the test of time’.
  • He claims it ‘ended the war” and allowed more normal politics to become established.
  • He believes the agreement ended a period in which he suggested Northern Ireland had been ‘imprisoned by history’.
  • He says that Brexit created weakness in the Good Friday Agreement, in particular it put ‘the poison of identity politics’ back into the debate.
  • Later he speaks about Boris Johnson’s ‘deliberate vandalism of the peace process in Northern Ireland’.

Ok, so perhaps he is not measured or respectful about Boris Johnson (or actually Boris Johnson’s government) but overall this interview feels like a statesman speaking, but in a way that ordinary people can relate to.

That is the trick. Wisdom with a common touch. No jargon. Clarity of argument. And for my taste less shrill than so much of the political debate.

 

Ten Tips for Sounding more Authoritative when Speaking
Lindsay Williams

Ten Tips for Sounding More Authoritative When Speaking

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My views on how people should sound in a media interview or during a presentation are based on 25 years of broadcasting and 20 years of coaching. When I coach, we nearly always use filming and playback, so that the person being coached can decide for themselves if they like the results. I highly recommend this to anyone trying to improve working on their own.

From this experience, I have distilled these ten top tips:

1. Slow down. More than half the people I train, speak way too fast when making presentations or delivering a media interview. It can be hard to slow down, but the best way to learn is to record yourself and playback – focus on ‘how slow can you go’ and then see what it sounds like. Understand it will feel odd, but listen back and then make your judgement. It took me a very long time to learn this myself.

Ten Tips for Sounding more Authoritative when Speaking
2. Learn to pause. This is related to slowing down, but in fact, is much easier than learning to speak slowly. Pausing shows confidence but it also gives you thinking time.

3. Avoid smiling too much. Smiling is good, too much smiling undermines authority. If you sound too cheery, try being deliberately ‘grumpy’.  Again, film and playback, see what you think works best. Often acting as a bit grumpy, doesn’t come across as grumpy, just more certain.

4. Lower your voice. This is more controversial, as I would not recommend anyone go to the lengths that Margaret Thatcher did. However, if your voice is high you may sound like a lightweight. Often the intention to lower is all that is needed. Again, the real learning comes if you record your presentation or mock interview and playback.

5. Use more energy when you speak, and remember to project your voice.  Many people seem to feel uncomfortable treating a presentation or an interview as a performance. Projecting properly can take a bit of training and is partly a matter of muscle in the larynx. Teachers, actors, opera singers and media trainers all have highly developed voice muscles. But even if that is not your background, just using more energy when you speak (without speeding up the delivery) will make you a more interesting speaker.

6. Top tip from my colleague Eric Dixon is, engage with your content. There is a huge difference between parroting it and acting it. Take responsibility for how much of what you’re saying the audience hears and processes…that is down to you the speaker. If you don’t care about the content, this is hard to do.

7. Have evidence for what you are saying. Just adding three numbers to a message can make it sound more authoritative. Evidence can be facts and numbers or anecdote. Bold claims without evidence lack credibility.

8. Make eye contact with the audience or whoever you are speaking to. In a TV interview there are rules about where to look: if the interviewer is with you then look at them not the camera. If the interviewer is elsewhere it is what is called a ‘down-the-line’ interview, and you must look straight down the barrel of the camera. In a presentation you want to make eye contact with everyone in the room equally. If it is a large audience, trace across the audience with a pattern of an M or a W. This helps to address the whole audience and not just the front row.

9. Listen more, say less.  In conversation, the most authoritative person in the room is often the person who says the least. Listening respectfully and attentively will give you power. Asking clear, short, probing follow-up questions gives you more power.

10. Don’t fiddle with anything. If you are doing an interview or a presentation you may be nervous, and nerves can make you fiddle. Again, watching a video of yourself performing will tell you what those habits are. Understand you are pulling your ear, flicking your hair, or fiddling with change in the pocket, to comfort yourself. Once you become aware of it, it should be easy to stop.

What did I miss?

 

Most Common Mistakes in Broadcast Interviews
Lindsay Williams

Most Common Mistakes in Broadcast Interviews

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There are quite a few things to get your head around if you want or need to become a talking head for your company or your cause. Our broadcast media training is designed to help people understand how to prepare ahead of an interview and how to behave during an interview. But in this post, I am just concentrating on a list of common mistakes. The first group of mistakes will ensure you won’t get invited back. The second group of mistakes will likely provoke more negative or even aggressive questioning.

Most Common Mistakes in Broadcast Interviews

Avoid this list of don’ts if you want to be invited back:

  • Don’t use jargon and technical language – we’ve blogged about this elsewhere. It is difficult but crucial to change hats before you go on air. Speak in words a 14-year-old would understand.
  • Don’t constantly plug your company or your product. In fact, we usually advise steering clear of anything that sounds like promotion. Talk about issues. Broadcasters do not want to be seen to allow you to advertise on air.
  • Don’t offer opinions without evidence. A crucial difference in serious media is between someone who has opinions and someone who has opinions backed by proof points, either facts and numbers, or examples. Preferably both. If you can’t back up your argument, you probably won’t be invited back.
  • Don’t speak too fast or too slowly. Broadcasters care about their audience and interviewees must be both interesting and easy to understand.
  • Don’t speak for more than 40-50 seconds in any one answer. In most cases, you will get interrupted if you go beyond this. But next time they may choose someone who is less long-winded. Similarly, don’t answer too short. An interview should sound like an interesting conversation, if you don’t talk they’ll assume you don’t want to be there.

Most Common Mistakes in Broadcast Interviews

The second list of don’ts is all about avoiding behaviour that will provoke negative questions or aggression.

  • Don’t be overly positive – no one will believe you and you will sound like a salesperson, this will prompt much tougher questions. Most broadcast journalists want serious debate, not hype. If you sound too positive the presenter will feel duty-bound to ask negative questions.
  • Don’t ‘open a negative ‘ by which I mean, unnecessarily remind the audience of some previous misdemeanour or some hole in your argument. It is surprisingly common for people to refer to problems or issues that loomed large internally but have either long been forgotten externally, or were never widely reported. Don’t assume the journalist has remembered the slump in profits two years ago or the high-profile departure of a member of the senior leadership team. Have a line ready if it is mentioned, but steer clear of reminding the journalist of a negative. If you do mention it, the journalist will be duty to bound to ask you more about it.
  • Don’t get personal with a journalist, even if they are being aggressive in their questioning. The broadcast journalist sees themselves as representing the audience…plus they enjoy the theatre of a bust-up on air. If you start saying ‘where did you get that information from’ or ‘the trouble with the BBC is it’s full pinko leftist dreamers’ you will ensure the questions get tougher and more pointed.

RMT leader Mick Lynch is known for having a go at journalists. He is perhaps more comfortable than most people with the aggression that inevitably follows.

  • Finally, don’t completely ignore questions. Nothing is more annoying to an audience and journalists cannot afford to let it slide. If you are not clear how to both answer questions and get your messages heard, read this previous post from us.

If you would like to be media trained, or want help preparing for a television or radio interview just get in touch: either +44 (0)20 7099 2212 or enquiries@themediacoach.co.uk

Images:
Photo Credit: BBC
Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) Flickr

Isabel Oakeshott Feature
Lindsay Williams

Isabel Oakeshott, a Divisive but Impressive Interviewee

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The publication in The Telegraph last week, of a series of stories based on Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages, is a very addictive and divisive subject for those of us that consider ourselves journalists.

 

Isabel Oakeshott

On the one hand it is an enormous scoop. Whatever you think about how the information came into the public domain, the content is dynamite for people who lost loved ones during the pandemic, or had to say goodbye to mothers, fathers, brothers, etc. on Facetime. Or indeed, for people who were running care homes in impossible circumstances, or those that worked in care homes without PPE, because none was available.

On the other hand, journalists feel disgusted by the idea that one of their own, Isabel Oakeshott, has broken an NDA and not only failed to protect her source but turned on him and generally behaved in a way that appears unethical and self-serving.

Isabel Oakeshott

One interesting piece by Julia Hartley-Brewer in The Telegraph tackles the question of why journalists have turned on Oakeshott. After suggesting the journalists got it wrong campaigning for more restriction and more lockdowns Hartley-Brewer concludes:

Perhaps if, instead of sitting smugly at home for months on end enjoying their freshly baked sourdough while the country’s finances, physical and mental health were all systematically destroyed, those journalists had done their job properly, then Isabel Oakeshott wouldn’t have to do it for them now.

For me, as an interviewee, Oakeshott is impressive. Her arguments are incredibly consistent. Her prepared lines on why she did what she did, on the financial incentive, on the betrayal of News International (for whom she worked but gave the scoop to The Telegraph) are all logical and well-constructed.

What’s more, she is prepared to take the flak

 

Asked if she broke a legal agreement to respect confidentiality which she signed … her answer was ‘yes’.

Asked why, she says because ‘it is in the public interest’.

Asked why she wrote the book with Hancock – Pandemic Diaries: The Inside Story of Britain’s Battle Against Covid  – which appears to exonerate Hancock –  and then a few months later work with The Telegraph to deliver a completely different story … she says she did not have time to read all the WhatsApp messages before the publication date. And the book was based on Hancock’s diaries and his version of events. It was only later that she realised that the WhatsApp messages told a very different story.

Oakeshott has repeatedly refused to speak excessively against Matt Hancock, saying the issue is bigger than just his actions.

She also repeatedly says that if we rely on the public enquiry …the best way to look at these things…we will wait a decade or more, and there could be another pandemic tomorrow.

So, the messaging is good, and her consistent toughness is remarkable

But she behaved in a very bitchy way on Times Radio in an interview with Cathy Newman and then terminated the call… And she was clearly rattled and not at her best in an interview with Nick Robinson on BBC Radio 4‘s Today Programme.

Initially, I was disgusted by Oakeshott, my prejudice is you should never break an NDA because there are times when people need to speak freely, explore different ideas, etc. She looked like a self-publicist, someone on the make.

But having listened to ten-plus interviews on the WhatsApp messages I feel differently.

I have a grudging respect for a woman prepared to walk into the lion’s den of a divisive political issue, with a clear argument, some clear red lines and the guts to face down the critics.

The Media Coach provides media and presentation training sessions and can also help with messaging, podcasting training and speechwriting. Get in touch via enquires@themediacoach.co,uk. More information on our website: themediacoach.co.uk

 

answer the question
Lindsay Williams

Please Do Answer the Question in a Media Interview

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We are all used to politicians refusing to answer questions but it was quite shocking last Monday on Channel 4 News, to see a spokesperson for junior doctors simply parrot prepared lines without any attempts to answer a question.

 

Why you should answer the question before using prepared lines.

  • You retain your credibility
  • You do not give the journalist the incentive to be aggressive
  • You do not look as if you have something to hide

Media trainers always get blamed for this sort of interview but very few media trainers train people to completely ignore the questions.

We believe a spokesperson should have a prepared argument for an interview.

We believe that argument should be in normal English, not policy or specialist language, and sometimes that takes some preparation to get right.

We believe it should include some hard evidence (think numbers) and some soft evidence (think people’s experience).

But we also think a spokesperson should answer questions first, and then introduce information that has been pre-planned.

This performance from the deputy co-chair of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee is shocking. She is clear, she is articulate, she explains her case very well and she has her facts and numbers to hand, but she totally ignores almost every question and makes a prepared statement to each one without even pretending to engage.

She is very lucky that Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy took pity on her and decided not to get tough.

Voice Privilege feature
Lindsay Williams

Is There Such a Thing as Voice Privilege?

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I was rather taken aback to read an article in the FT this week about ‘voice privilege’.  It really annoyed me. Read the article here but as it’s behind a paywall, here is a quick summary.

The author argues that having a nice voice is a huge advantage in life, and Boris Johnson is a prime example of someone who has been successful because of his voice. Janan Ganesh writes:

His voice is beautiful. I don’t mean his accent. I don’t mean his choice of words or his arrangement of them: what is called “eloquence”. I mean his voice. Deep and textured, raspy without crossing into sibilance, I can see (or hear) why people want to be around it. And why those cursed with a squeak or a murmur go through life hamstrung?

Why is this annoying?  Because, as is so often the case, there is an element of truth in this, but it is grossly exaggerated.

Voice Privilege

And as a presentation trainer, worrying about the beauty of someone’s voice is not top of my list of things to work on.

Some people, it is true, naturally have lovely voices. For a variety of reasons that boil down to luck: social class, school, parents, ethnicity, etc. And as you would expect, some have voices that lack authority, are too squeaky, or too quiet to be instantly attractive.

But this is true surely about everything in life. Some have lovely hair, some bad teeth, some are born into money while others have a natural ability to connect with people. All of us have a share of both positive and negative.

As someone who coaches public speakers, I would say, use what you are lucky to have and work to improve that which you don’t like. But don’t get too hung up on it because, actually your audience will judge you on many things, not just something as superficial as your voice.

As humans, we do make snap judgements and have unconscious biases as Ganesh argues, but we also do a very good job at overcoming those biases, once we have more exposure to someone or their ideas.

There isn’t one hidden trait that will make you a great speaker against all the odds just as there isn’t one advantage in life that will ensure you get to the top, whatever that means.

Voice Privilege

Demosthenes

The crucial thing that will make you a successful speaker is working on it. The evidence is that all successful orators worked on their communication skills. Churchill famously battled with public speaking and a natural lisp. We recently learnt that Joe Biden has always battled with his stutter.  A Greek statesman, Demosthenes famously overcame his speech impediment by speaking with pebbles in his mouth. Warren Buffet was terrified of public speaking. The list goes on.

The biggest handicap you can have in this area is to think nothing can be changed. If you believe that you are the way you are and that’s your lot, you will probably be proved right.

In my experience as a professional coach, most of us underestimate our ability to adapt and change. Neural plasticity is the scientific term. We all have the ability to adapt and modify our voice, amongst all the other things we can modify if we decide to.

And as presentation coaches (as well as media trainers) we see this every day. Coaching helps a client to focus on what matters to them. Working with a video camera, recording and playing back presentations or interviews, we can make people aware of the unconscious behaviours that can then be tackled. People can lower their voices, they can slow down, they can become more animated, they can learn to articulate more clearly.

The second handicap is to believe your fellow human beings, your audience, will never be able to see past your less-than-perfect pitch. They won’t make allowances for your nerves, they won’t take you seriously because you are short, or bald or overweight or you have a light voice.  But it is just not true.

If you have interesting things to say, and you care about communicating them clearly, audiences will listen. It just takes a bit of effort.

Further reading:

Analysis of Oprah Winfrey’s speech

Learn to be Quotable
Lindsay Williams

Learn to be Quotable and You Will Control the Headlines

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As a media trainer, I am constantly urging people to be a little more creative or adventurous with their language…for the simple reason that it will ensure journalists report the things they say.

In recent days I have been looking for some new examples to prove this point and I offer five here. I am deliberately looking in the serious media and trade press because so many believe being quotable is only relevant for the red-tops (popular press).

So, I start in Japan where the appointment of an unexpected candidate as Governor of the Bank of Japan has made headlines in the business news. A political advisor, asked to comment on the race before the result, urged people not to jump to conclusions and said ‘there is still the possibility of a dark-horse candidate’. The use of the English idiom was repeated in a subsequent headline in the FT. We will never know but perhaps the advisor would not have made it into the piece if had been more cautious in his use of language. If he was a named independent consultant the quote in the FT would have been good for business.

Learn to be Quotable

In politics coming up with a good metaphor cannot just get you the quote but hi-jack the public debate, or as PR people like to say ‘change the conversation’. One labour commentator talking about the recent reshuffle said Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Grove had ‘had his piggy bank stolen’: just a more interesting way of saying ‘lost control of his budget’. But such interesting phrases are currency in public debate. And they make quotes and headlines.

Learn to be Quotable

A couple of weeks ago our own Central Bank Governor Andrew Bailey wanted to announce some cautious good news on the economy. My guess is he wanted to make sure people got the message but he did not want to be too optimistic. Picking the right phrase was crucial. He said ‘the corner has been turned on inflation’. As you’d expect, this phrase has been repeated many times by journalists and pundits since then. Job done.

Learn to be Quotable

In motortrader.com, a trade news website, Matthew Davock, director of Manheim Commercial Vehicles, Cox Automotive stepped out behind is metaphorical desk when he said to a reporter:  “The wholesale LCV market is off to a flying start at Manheim…” It was enough to ensure he was quoted, and his company’s success was a headline.

Learn to be Quotable

Mark Caddle, partner and trademark attorney at IP firm Withers & Rogers promoted himself and his work in Grocer magazine, whilst commenting on an important High Court ruling on ‘copycatting’…where cheaper brands deliberately make a product look like a more expensive competitor.

His quote as reported was:

“With the memory of the battle of Colin and Cuthbert the caterpillar cakes still fresh, this should send a warning that a line in the sand is forming”.  And the headline:

Learn to be Quotable

Day in, day out, we spot these examples. Some are pedestrian ‘storms approaching’, ‘gamechanger’, ‘out of the woods’ for example and some are fun and creative and memorable such as Boris’ ‘I’d rather be dead in a ditch than delay Brexit’.

There may well be push back from colleagues worried about ‘tone of voice’ but they should be reminded of the clear benefit of using interesting language, the currency of the scribbling classes.

How to tell a story feature
Lindsay Williams

Robert Caro: 20th Century Journalism and How to Tell a Story

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All my serious reading is organised by my son, who is way more intellectual than me. I am currently enjoying Working by Robert A. Caro and have found lessons and examples that can inform our very different work in a very different century.

How to tell a story

Caro was a journalist in the late fifties and sixties working mostly in regional media but with a six year spell as an investigative journalist on Newsday (Long Island and New York). However, he is best known for his exhaustive biographies of two men: Robert Moses, an American urban planner who shaped New York and Lyndon B Johnson. These have won him many awards and considerable fame in political circles. (My son is reading the LBJ biographies, but he rightly judged these are likely too weighty for me.) The awards include winning the Pulitzer Price for Biography twice. Caro is now 87 and is still working on the fifth and final volume of the LBJ biography. The existing four volumes took him 40 years.

There is much to say about Caro’s short book about his work, and the insight it gives into investigative journalism before the internet.  Working describes the hours, days, the years, of going through the papers generated by these two men and the people they worked or butted heads with. Endless writing and rewriting: starting a manuscript longhand, and then typing it on a typewriter. This is not the sort of journalism I was ever involved with, and may no longer exist. And while Caro learnt his craft in a newsroom, he is really a writer and a biographer rather than being a journalist in the modern sense of the word.

Working tells the story of one man’s obsession with getting to the bottom of things and understanding how political power really works in a democracy. It is also about the thought process behind incisive, factual but beautiful writing.

For further insight, here is Rachel Cooke’s write up about her fairly recent interview with Caro for The Guardian.

I am going to pull out just one example from this little book that made me want to sing and laugh out loud.

Daily I harangue corporate spokespeople to use stories and examples. To illustrate their ideas with human experience, not just conceptual language. Built into my Message House formula, as all my students will know, is space for the story or anecdote or example. I want to force speakers to find the story that will make it all real. I all too often fail. I worry that I do not really communicate the power of this element of messaging. And then in this little book from a writer dealing with a former age, I find the perfect example.  Storytelling that burns an idea into your subconscious.

Caro heard from a former colleague of LBJ that when first in Washington, the future president walked to work from his rather shabby digs to the House Office Building on the other side of Capitol Hill. But he always arrived breathless and could often be seen running the last stretch.  A young, driven, hugely determined man who was newly in Washington after growing up in rural poverty in the Hill Country of Texas, he still got up with the sun.  Apparently every morning, he would start running at a certain point on the journey to work, and sprint towards the office. Researching these early years, Caro many times retraced the steps of that walk. He wanted to know why the young Johnson broke into a run. Finally, he decided to do that walk at 5.30am as Johnson would have done. And suddenly, he understood.

“Veering along a path to the left he (LBJ) would come up Capitol Hill and around the corner of the Capitol, and the marble of the eastern façade, already caught by the early morning sun would be a gleaming brilliant almost dazzling white. A new line of columns – towering columns, marble for magnificent and Corinthian for grace, stretch ahead of him…. And columns loomed not just before him but above him – columns atop columns ….and the huge dome that rose above the capital was circled by columns.”

How to tell a story

And he would run.

“Well of course he was running”, writes Caro in Working: “from the land of dog-run cabins to this. Everything he had ever wanted, everything he had ever hoped for was there. And that gigantic stage lit up by the brilliant sun, that façade of the Capitol – that place – showed him that. Showed him that, and if I could write it right, (I) would show the reader as well.”

It took Caro weeks if not months to get that story, to find the right imagery. But once he got it, he wrote it and brought to life the raw determination of LBJ to move away from poverty and towards power and majesty. How the morning light on the marble columns made him sprint towards his future.

Since I have read those words, I have pictured that run again and again. I even dreamt about it. I have never seen the Capitol building except on TV. But the power of that story, the image of the sun on the marble, the desperation to escape poverty, is likely to be the most insightful thing I will ever know about LBJ.

Understanding the power of a story, one that you can picture, is essential to influence. I have been at his game over 20 years now and I hope that there are today people out there who say, “I had a great media/presentation trainer, she taught me to tell stories”.

Other blogs I have written on the power of stories.

The Most Powerful Element of any Message

The Stories Leaders Tell

The Power of The Specific

 

Capitol Building Images: Credit  Louis Velazquez

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