Mick Lynch Feature
Lindsay Williams

The Mick Lynch Style: Not Recommended

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Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT, has emerged as one of the most articulate political voices for a generation.

Mick Lynch

His robust interview style and the confidence to respond witheringly to journalists’ questions are winning him fans in the most unlikely places. Perhaps because people are, in general, fed up with the chatter of the chattering classes.

But while I am dead impressed, I would not recommend this interview to style to others.

Before explaining why, I would like to emphasise a key point that I have not read elsewhere.  It is Lynch’s stand-out ability to abstract simple headlines from detail, that is really impressive.

When you hear Lynch speak you think the argument he is making is very simple and straightforward. This is never the case. Behind the scenes Lynch, like every professional, has huge amounts of information, nuance and political – with a small p and a capital P – pressure to navigate. Not to mention lots of numbers to remember: inflation rates, historic pay increases, etc.

His unique talent is to be able to distil everything down to instantly understandable and reasonable-sounding nuggets suitable for the media: ‘This would all be much simpler if the government got round the table’ or ‘We want a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies and then we’ll talk’, etc. It is the simplicity and clarity of his message that is his number one skill.

Second to that, is his ability to come up with a robust response to whatever random or unexpected line the journalist pursues. From ‘Are you a Marxist?’ (Good Morning Britain’s Richard Madeley) to ‘Why do you choose an evil character from Thunderbirds as your Facebook profile picture’ (Piers Morgan). (All the Thunderbirds stuff is 11 minutes into the interview). Or in another interview ‘One doctor says the rail strike is disrupting the treatment of cancer patients, and people will die.’

 

Lynch is always robust in his responses and shows barely disguised irritation.

‘You do come up with some twaddle, Richard.’

‘I can’t believe this line of questioning’

‘We run a picket line. We’ll ask people not to go to work. Do you not know how a picket line works?’

In the Piers Morgan interview there is a great deal of back and forwards about relative pay rates. Morgan asks Lynch – ‘are you a millionaire?’ For example, and then several minutes on comparing Lynch to the aforementioned Thunderbirds character, an evil mastermind wreaking havoc on society. Most comments I saw suggest Lynch came out better in all this.

Mick Lynch

As a media trainer, I would say Lynch enjoys winding up journalists a little too much. And in each interview, there is a lot more of the trading blows with journalists than there is substance about the RMT case.

To date, Lynch’s tactics have played well with his audience, but that is not a guaranteed outcome. If you are tempted to call out a journalist for a stupid question, I would think twice. Most people would not be able to do this as effectively as Lynch and journalists love an on-air fight.  It’s good for the ratings and remember, live on-air in a studio, broadcasters are in their comfort zone, the interviewee rarely is. From a media training point of view, the danger is too much of the airtime and too much of the attention is on the cat and mouse of the interview, rather than the issues to hand.

So, while this strategy is working for Lynch, I will stick with my advice of not getting into a ping-pong with a journalist on-air, however annoying they are. Keep your cool, respond briefly and dismissively and then get to the point you want to make.

Plenty of others have commented on the Lynch Media Style – and other interviews are cited as evidence. Here is a list of a few of them.

Guardian news 23rd June

Guardian Comment 23rd June

New Statesman 22nd June

The Mirror … praise of Lynch from Gary Lineker

And on Twitter, Politics Joe has put together a bunch of Mick Lynch clips that tell you all you need to know in one hit.

 

 

 

In defence of clichés feature
Lindsay Williams

In Defence of Clichés

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Clients often express horror and disgust at the idea of using a cliché in an interview. They feel, as serious professionals, that they should not be using what they see as trite, overused and near meaningless phrases to talk about their important issues.

Well, there are some clichés I hate and would never use but in general, I find clichés very useful.

In defence of clichés

Divided team

This is a subject that divides Media Coach trainers. Some of these professional wordsmiths, whose writing skills were honed at Reuters and the BBC, are reluctant to write anything that might be seen as ‘lazy’. Others, like me, are delighted when technical arguments can be turned into colloquial language that anyone would instantly understand.

Arrogance

A knee-jerk dismissal of clichés is, for me, an arrogance of the chattering classes.  Clichés communicate meaning quickly and in a way that is familiar and inclined to provoke empathy. Clearly, that is not true if it is your pet hate cliché. Mine is ‘at the end of the day’ which I once counted 17 times in one interview on Radio 4.  I gather I am not alone, in a 2009 survey it was named the most annoying cliché ever. But phrases such as:

‘It’s like buses, nothing for an hour then three come all at once’
or
‘Horses for courses’
or
‘There is no one size fits all’
or
‘There’s a time and place for such things’

or

‘It’s a game of two halves’

…all of these are instantly recognised in the UK and communicate meaning very quickly.

Owned by the people

A former colleague and BBC Newsnight Arts Correspondent, Madeleine Holt, says clichés are bad news unless they ‘owned by the people and rooted in our history and common parlance’. She cites ‘don’t rob Peter to pay Paul’ as being a good example. She avoids, in messaging, anything that echoes known ‘spun’ phrases. So ‘Education, Education, Education’ she sees as having strong echoes of the Blair era of spin and therefore to be avoided at all costs. Similarly, we would probably all agree that ‘green shoots of recovery’ should not be used because when Norman Lamont used it he was lying, or perhaps misguided. Either way, the folk memory has negative connotations.

Another former colleague, Laura Shields, who now runs her own training consultancy in Brussels, wrote a whole blog for us on how ‘game-changer’ was a grossly overused and now a meaningless phrase. I happen to completely disagree with her!

Oliver Wates, once a senior editorial figure in Reuters and our go-to person on written style, is inclined to wield the red pen when it comes to clichés. He likes to challenge my use of clichés, particularly in written work.

Despite the prejudices of these very clever people, I will continue to advocate the judicious use of clichés, and why – because I am always seeing my carefully chosen and suggested phrases in the write-up of my clients interviews. Journalists are actually very predictable and rarely turn down a good cliché.

This article is a rewrite of a post on my blog in 2014.

 

 

 

Easy to misspeak feature
Lindsay Williams

It’s So Easy to Misspeak

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As a media trainer, one of my roles is to warn people that it is all too easy to misspeak in public life – with very significant consequences.

I have recently been working with a couple of senior leaders from very different backgrounds who both, in my view, greatly underestimated the danger of misspeaking.

One said: ‘I would be very disappointed is someone took something I said out of context’

Easy to misspeak

As I had to explain: the reality is journalists always take things out of context. A journalist’s job is to sift vast amounts of information and find the nugget that is new, significant or interesting. They never report the full context, if they did no one would ever read what was written or listen to what was broadcast.

Many journalists are very careful and ethical about how they do this, and some are less so. Either way, the risk is significant.

As I was under pressure to evidence this risk, I was prompted to pull together a list of misspeaks that had long-lasting consequences for the person who said them. It is far from a comprehensive list. I would love to hear from people who remember other examples of people casually saying something by accident that hit the headlines and caused a storm.

I was a financial journalist and as a trainer, I am often called on by people in the City of London, so top of my list of famous misspeaks is the one made by former Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO, Lloyd Blankfein.  In 2009 Blankfein famously said to a Sunday Times journalist during an interview in his office, ‘We do God’s work here’. The comment was a joke or irony, but that didn’t stop worldwide portrayal of Blankfein as ‘God’s banker’ and someone who thought he had a divine right to make vast amounts of money.

The Daily Mail article from the time can be read here, but there are hundreds if not thousands of references to this online, many of them dated much more recently.  And that illustrates the danger, once said never forgotten.

easy to misspeak

Lloyd Blankfein, Chairman and CEO, The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit

More recently, Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey was persuaded, in a BBC interview, to agree that people should moderate their wage demands to help limit inflation. His remarks showed him totally out of touch and immediately prompted journalists to point out that the Governor earns half a million a year. The government was pretty cross with him and swiftly distanced themselves from his comments.

You can read the BBC News article here.

I have previously mentioned in a blog (linked here) the case of HSBC’s Stuart Kirk who last month was unnecessarily highly quotable in a presentation about the increasing pressure being put on investment houses by ESG regulation. One phrase that got particular widespread attention was ‘who cares if Miami is under water in 100 years time’. He also said ‘nut jobs’ were always predicting the end of the world, and always wrong. He was, and I think is, suspended from his job as global head of responsible investing.

You can read the BBC News article here.

Sexism is another area where it is easy to misspeak. Many years ago I did a TV profile on Kevin Roberts, an amazing CEO at Saatchi and Saatchi. A few years later he was asked to leave by the board of the parent company Publicis, over sexist remarks he made in an interview with Business Insider. He suggested women in advertising lacked ambition and were happy to just do great creative work.

I blogged about this here and you can read the Guardian article here.

Then there was the Nobel laureate and honorary professor at University College London, Tim Hunt, who made some bad taste joke about women in science. He was at an academic conference in South Korea when he said:

“Three things happen when they are in the lab: you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry.”

Business Insider reported this here.

For me, this was much more offensive than Kevin Robert’s comments. Hunt was 72 at the time and those remarks almost finished his career. Wikipedia tells me he did eventually make a come back to the lecturing circuit but his public humiliation despite an apology was intense.

easy to misspeak

Heather Wheeler MP, Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

And finally, be careful about speaking negatively about towns or cities. Just this week we had a junior cabinet minister, Heather Wheeler, forced to apologise for describing Birmingham and Blackpool as ‘godawful places’. This one probably won’t affect her career but it did give her the sort of headlines no one wants.

You can read the FT article here.

In all cases, these comments came either during an interview or when journalists were known to be present. Despite agreeing that many of these comments were indicative of attitudes I find distasteful, I have a great deal of sympathy for most of these speakers.  The truth is, unless you are trained and experienced in dealing with journalists, it is very easy to misspeak.

 

 

 

Go figure
Eric Dixon

Go Figure: The Art of Not Revealing a Number When You Don’t Want To

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Here’s a little secret.

There’s a technique that journalists sometimes use called ‘kite-flying’.

It’s a method of extracting a number out of an interviewee who is reluctant to reveal it.

Go figure

In journalism, kite-flying is suggesting a fact or story to provoke a reaction. Image from Unsplash

Here’s how it works:

After asking the initial question ‘how much?’ and being told by the interviewee that it’s not something they wish to reveal, the journalist then offers a wildly inflated version of what they think the number might be, which prompts the interviewee to respond with words akin to ‘no, no, not that much!’ The journalist then immediately comes back with a lower figure which is likely to be closer to the one they are trying to extract. Having already engaged in discussion about the number, it’s now much harder for the interviewee to say that they can’t reveal it, and they often reply with something like ‘yes – that’s more like it’ or ‘yes, that’s closer to the truth.’

Voila! From the journalist’s perspective, a reluctant interviewee has been tempted to reveal a number (or a ballpark figure, at least) that they were originally trying to withhold.

The bad news: this technique is so powerful it almost always works.

The good news: now you know the secret, it doesn’t have to work with you!

The method to avoid falling into this trap was exhibited by an interviewee in a Louis Theroux documentary ‘Shooting Joe Exotic’ on BBC2 last week. One of his guests was lawyer Francisco Hernandez, lead counsel for the legal team behind Joe Exotic, the subject of the American true crime series ‘Tiger King’, who is now behind bars (if you need a briefing on the content of the programme, Wikipedia does a good job of summarising it here).

Go figure

Louis Theroux

In a space of just 20 seconds, Theroux asks Hernandez three times for the amount Joe Exotic is making from the proceeds of ‘Tiger King’, despite being a convicted criminal:

Link to BBC iPlayer: Louis Theroux – Shooting Joe Exotic 

(from 1:07:04 to 1:07:24)

His first question goes as follows:

LT: Do you know how much Joe is making on all of this?

FH: Er… I have an idea; I’m not at liberty to disclose it.

An excellent response. He’s telling the truth about what he knows, but also states he’s not going to reveal it. (Note: for Hernandez to claim he “didn’t know” in order to close the question down would be lying – something we never recommend and could have got him into even deeper water!)

Nevertheless, this is immediately followed by Louis’ second question, designed to pin his interviewee down to a ballpark amount:

LT: Six figures? Seven figures?

FH: I can’t, I can’t, I can’t disclose anything related to that.

It would be tempting for his guest to ‘give’ a little by acknowledging one of those two options (namely “six” or “seven” figures) or perhaps to come up with a ballpark of his own (e.g. “well – five figures, maybe”). But this would have been a ‘win’ for Theroux, who would have immediately started drilling down further. Instead, Hernandez resolutely states not only that he “won’t” reveal the number, but for an undisclosed reason he “can’t” (which suggests that even if he wanted to, such a response would not be possible).

Finally, Louis makes one more attempt, with a classic ‘kite-flying’ question:

LT: In theory it could be more than a million?

FH: I, I, I, I, can’t even… I can’t comment… I can’t comment even higher or lower, or even warm… I cannot.

Again, it would have been tempting for Hernandez to agree to the “in theory” part of the question. But to do so would have signalled to Theroux that he was willing to discuss the amount after all, which would have allowed him to push for an answer again. Instead, when Hernandez states explicitly that he is not going to reveal whether the suggestion is even close to the true answer, Theroux is forced to give up on this line of approach.

Ultimately, however tempting it is to do so, don’t even engage in a discussion about the number you are determined to withhold, and simply state that it’s not something you can reveal. If you have a genuine explanation for why you can’t reveal it (e.g. ‘for reasons of commercial confidentiality…’), even better.

In short, the journalist may choose to fly a kite; you don’t have to join them.

Avoiding journalist tricks and traps is just one part of our regular media training sessions.

So, if you’d like to stay safe during your next interaction with the media, we can help.

media trainer's notes feature
Lindsay Williams

Media Trainer’s Notes

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Rather than focus on one story this week, here is a brief comment on several: the PMs statement on the Sue Gray report, the Temporary Targeted Energy Profits Levy, Jacinda Ardern’s Harvard speech and Woke Capitalism.

Tone Matters in a Public Apology

If you are going to apologise and ‘take full responsibility’ our advice would be that the audience, whoever that is, need to believe you are sincere, otherwise you will do more harm than good. Teenage children are good at apologising without meaning it, it’s not quite what most people expect from a Prime Minister in the House of Commons.

In my view, Boris got it entirely wrong. The words were there but the tone was wrong and the further minimising of his own role simply sounded petulant.

Reengineering Popular Language Makes You Look a Fool

media trainer's notes

How did you feel when you heard Rishi Sunak had stood up in the commons and announced a ‘Temporary Targeted Energy Profits Levy’, carefully avoiding the words ‘windfall tax’? I am prepared to bet that you, like many MPs who heard him say it, laughed out loud. This small incident demonstrates two media training principles: one if you use more complex words to say something that is simple you look foolish. Second, when this is reported or spoken about afterwards, people will quickly revert to the more easily understood, friendlier or in some cases fun phrases. All media reported this as a ‘windfall tax’.

Women Speakers Study Jacinda

Last week, New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, gave the Class of 2022 Commencement Speech at Harvard University. Ardern is always impressive on the world stage, and this was a gem of a speech that hit all the right notes.  Most of the coverage focussed on her reminder that NZ had banned military-style semi-automatic and assault rifles after the Christchurch shooting, something that got a standing ovation coming so soon after last week’s Texas school shooting.  But there are many well-crafted elements.  From starting it speaking in the Māori tongue to a careful joke about NZ being so small, she always knows half her audience, to some big sweeping global themes. All delivered in a strong, confident but humble style, with lots of use of metaphor. There are really a dozen lessons that could be drawn from this speech.

Are you prepared for the Woke Capitalism question?

And finally, a significant new trend is emerging: a backlash against ‘purpose-led business’. And it now has a catchy name: Woke Capitalism. A combination of the Stuart Kirk story and the global leader’s jamboree that is Davos, prompted an important analysis by the FT’s US Business Editor Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, entitled The War on Woke Capitalism (paywall alert.)

Edgecliff-Johnson said the talk of Davos was push-back against ‘purpose led’ organisations and a business led role in solving social and environmental ills, whilst travelling by private jet.

A lot of the chat was prompted by the outspokenness of the Head of Responsible Investment at HSBC’s Global Asset Management, Stuart Kirk. He had previously delivered a no holds barred but pre-approved presentation, suggesting that concern over climate risk had gone too far.

Kirk chose to be highly quotable. For example, saying that throughout his career there had always been “some nut job telling me about the end of the world” and  “Who cares if Miami is 6 meters underwater in 100 years”.

HSBC swiftly and very publicly distanced themselves from Kirk’s comments, and suspended him.

But Stuart Kirk is just the latest in a long list of people from Elon Musk to Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who are now looking to turn the tide on ESG. And according to Edgecliffe-Johnson, this movement was the talk of Davos.

I would suggest every business spokesperson now prepares their answers to the question ‘Isn’t this just Woke Capitalism?’. It is going to be one of the most popular questions asked by journalists of businesspeople in the months and years ahead.

 

Lindsay Williams

The Power of the Specific

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“On the evening of Feb 21, 2022, three days before Russian forces began the largest land invasion on the European Continent since World War II, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave an angry televised speech.”

The Power of the Specific

So starts an eight-page essay in Foreign Affairs, a specialist American journal of international relations and US foreign policy. The essay is titled: Putin’s War on History:  The Thousand Year Struggle over Ukraine. (Sorry, behind a paywall.) The writer, Anna Reid, is a seasoned journalist and author and she chooses to start her long academic piece, with something very specific the date and time of an angry speech, helping her readers to tune into her main thesis.

It is a well-known way to start a feature or a think-piece and it works brilliantly. As a reader it is easier to connect initially with a specific, rather than to a large conceptual big picture, which in this case covers a thousand year history of relationships between peoples we now call Ukrainian and Russian.

From the same edition of the same journal, there is a piece about military innovation and AI.  (Also behind a paywall.) It starts:

‘Gunpowder. The combustion engine. The airplane. These are just some of the technologies that have forever changed the face of warfare.’

Different essay, and a different style of specific, but still specific. The piece starts with three specific examples of ‘technologies’ without claiming them as an exhaustive list. As the reader, I immediately understand that we are talking about a step change in military advance.

And here is a completely different example.

On BBC Radio Four’s Today on Monday morning, Anneka Rice was interviewed about Channel Five’s revival of the TV show ‘Challenge Anneka’. As a professional communicator, Anneka was quick to shoehorn into her interview the example of a Romanian Orphanage she and her team helped 30 years ago, and updated that story for today. She later referenced a very specific Zoom call during lockdown, when she couldn’t make the technology work, but which led ultimately to the decision to revive ‘Challenge Anneka’. She did these things because – as a professional communicator – she understands the power of the specific to entertain and to make something memorable.

The Power of the Specific

Anneka Rice

Song writers use this trick too: Ed Sheeran sings in Shape of You, ‘Put Van the Man on the jukebox’ … a very specific reference to Van Morrison. And for those of us of a certain age Bobby Goldsboro creates a whole teenage summer vibe with the words

“It was a hot afternoon, on the last day of June and the sun was a demon….”

[ This rite of passage song was a hit in 1973 but there are millions of us for whom ‘the last day of June’ will for ever be associated with the song ‘Summer the First Time’.]

Imagine you are a ‘transformation consultant’: Obviously most of us in business know that you are helping companies to modernise in some way. But in a competitive market, what makes the listener or reader think: this woman knows what she is talking about. We all have clients we remember, transformations that made our reputation, special moments that made us proud.

Capture it! Bottle it! Codify that story! Record the details. Where were you when you received the news, what day was it, what was the weather like? These details provide context that creates mood, authenticity and above all ‘stickiness’.

My experience of businesspeople (outside of advertising), is that they really struggle to find the specific. I don’t fully understand why. What I do know is, that it is much easier to connect to a big idea, to a product or a purpose, once we get one, two or three specific details or illustrations.

Using the specific in any business communication; presentations, media interviews, town-halls, etc. is such a simple trick. And yet most people don’t do it.

So my challenge to you this week: get specific to power up your business communications.

hypothetical questions feature
Eric Dixon

Handling Hypotheticals

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Hypothetical questions seem to be loved by media interviewers almost as much as they are hated by media interviewees.

This is because the “What would happen if?” or “What would you do if?”’ scenarios that they involve are never positive ones for the guest concerned. For example, you can’t imagine a politician being offered the question “What would happen if your party/cause/campaign became immensely popular and received more support than any other?”

The problem for the interviewee is that simply entertaining the idea of the negative outcome taking place – regardless of the fact it might never happen – heightens the awareness that it could occur and immediately drags the interview down what is, for them, a less helpful line of approach.

hypothetical questions

This is precisely what happened during a good-natured spat between LBC presenter Andrew Marr and Shadow Attorney General Emily Thornberry last week. It followed the announcement from Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer that both he and his deputy Angela Rayner would resign, should they be fined by police after being investigated for rule-breaking during the pandemic:

AM: That would leave your party suddenly leaderless. What arrangements do you have in your party to ensure that somebody takes over?

ET: Well – look. [PAUSE] He’s not going to resign because he hasn’t done anything wrong. And Angela won’t resign because she hasn’t done anything wrong.

Notice how Thornberry refuses to indulge Marr in his hypothesis and states her belief that the problem he puts forward is not going to happen anyway. However, her job is made more difficult because the hypothetical scenario involved was actually brought about by her party leader – as Marr immediately points out:

AM: Well, he… he raised the possibility himself this afternoon – all I’m asking you is, if that happens – you can’t have a leaderless opposition presumably – does the NEC step in and appoint somebody, what happens?

This puts Thornberry in a tricky situation. Her interviewer, is, after all, only legitimately asking questions about something her party leader has brought up. Nevertheless, her dislike of the hypothetical question is so great, she responds by spending most of the time stating what is currently happening (rather than trying to forecast the future) and then repeating her view that it’s unlikely to happen. Notice the length of her answer (a full 24 seconds) as well as how hesitant it is, for someone who is usually a very fluent interviewee:

ET: [PAUSE] At the moment, all we are doing, is we are holding this government to account. We are preparing for the Queen’s speech which is happening tomorrow. And – er – and preparing for the… for our opposition and our holding the government to account when it comes to the next term, and the – er – legislative programme that the government is going to be putting forward. Er – we will wait and see what happens next, but I am confident that he will not be fined because he has done nothing wrong.

But Marr is not going to give up that easily:

AM: Well I’m… I’m still sticking with the possibility that he raised himself – I didn’t raise it, he raised it – um… this afternoon. And if that happens, and you are left leaderless, can you at least reassure people that we won’t have months and months and months of a… a Labour Party leadership campaign going on?

In these circumstances, Thornberry clearly feels that refusing to get involved for a third time isn’t really an option – so she gives a short, curt, factual reply, which at six seconds in duration is a quarter the length of her previous response:

ET: It would be a matter for the National Executive Committee to decide what to do next; how long any leadership campaign would be.

Marr, having finally got her onto his line of thinking, then piles a second hypothetical question onto the first…

AM: Um – and would you be confident you’d get a leader by the time of the party conference in October?

… which prompts his interviewee to explain why hypothetical questions are so reviled:

ET: [PAUSE] You see! I answer one hypothetical and then another hypothetical comes. This is the reason why politicians don’t answer hypothetical questions at all. And we do it as politely as we can!

AM: It’s not an unreasonable question…

ET: No, but the trouble is, you can’t build a hypothetical on top of another hypothetical on top of another hypothetical. You just can’t!

AM: I’ve… I’ve had a very long career doing exactly that!

ET: And I’ve had long career not answering such questions! [LAUGHS]

AM: [LAUGHS] You certainly have! Emily Thornberry, thank you very much for coming in and not answering that question!

In usual circumstances, we would normally suggest that hypothetical questions are revealed as such (“I don’t have a crystal ball…” or “I can’t possibly predict what might happen in the future…” or “We’ll have to see what plays out…”) followed by a ‘bridging’ expression which allows you to talk about something else instead (“…but what I can tell you is…”).

However, such a response wasn’t possible in the interaction above precisely because the imagined scenario being debated was brought up by her own side; refusing to talk about a hypothesis your own team have created is impossible to do convincingly. Labour’s spin machine would have realised this, of course, but would have felt that for Sir Keir to have taken the high moral ground on this issue was worth the consequences that might follow.

What’s more, the good nature of the interaction worked well for both interviewer and interviewee. So, on such occasions, it’s often worth keeping the tone of the conversation light, if possible.

Not a Good Look for Someone Who Wants to be PM
Lindsay Williams

Not a Good Look for Someone Who Wants to be PM

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Paul Brand pointed out on Twitter last week what was obvious to any viewer. The leader of the opposition looked very uncomfortable in his set-piece interview on Good Morning Britain.  You might even say scared.

Not a Good Look for Someone Who Wants to be PM

It is not a good look for someone who wants to be Prime Minister.

He, of course, has a right to be on his guard: Beergate revelations were getting a lot of traction, and a week after this interview led to his promise to resign if found guilty of an offence.

On this occasion he was being interviewed by the GMB duo of Richard Madeley and Susanna Reid. Reid positions herself as a tough aggressive journalist and she has clearly put a lot of thought into how to be an intimidating interviewer. The BBC no longer allows disrespectful aggression and will publicly and privately criticise presenters who step over the line as Nick Robinson did with the Prime Minister last year, but other broadcasters still encourage some interviewers to make this style part of the brand.

Others on Twitter were irritated by such superficial analysis of Sir Keir Starmer’s performance.

Not a Good Look for Someone Who Wants to be PM

At The Media Coach, we do think body language matters and on TV it can – as it does here – undermine the message.

If you listen to Starmer in this interview without watching the footage, what he says is strong, clear and credible. He doesn’t sound as if he is struggling to cope with the aggression or the questions.

But if you watch you have a totally different impression.

What is strange is that Starmer has not already been coached out of looking rattled. Given his job and his ambition you would think some work would have gone into this.

As someone who coaches people to look comfortable on TV (among many other things) I would say it is not particularly difficult to tackle and simple coaching techniques are pretty consistently effective.

How you behave on camera when being ‘grilled’ by a journalist is no different to any other unconscious behaviour.  You cannot change it until it becomes conscious. And then you need a feedback loop so you can constantly ‘improve’ and get to where you want to be.

In training we use the video camera, record an interview, play it back and identify the unwanted behaviour, then suggest alternatives. Trying these different things out on camera then watching it back can fairly quickly produce behaviour change. Clearly, this has to be ‘topped up’ at regular intervals but if you are always appearing on the media that is not a problem. You can ensure each event is recorded and watch some of them back.

Media interviews (and presentations) are a performance. As soon as you realise this you can apply a whole range of tools and techniques honed by actors and broadcasters. Slow down. Speed up.  Drop your shoulders.  Breath differently.  Pretend you like the person interviewing you, etc.

My colleague, Eric Dixon, says your audience needs to ‘Believe, Like and Trust’ you – giving the acronym BLT,  just like the sandwich. I look for ‘Warmth, Authority and Animation’ which is a less elegant acronym but works better for me in training.

I know of a number of politicians and others who fought against media training (Jeremy Corbyn was one apparently) and who rather too late in the day embraced it out of necessity. London is full of great media trainers, someone should persuade Starmer to invest. If it’s not too late.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

aggressive interviews feature
Lindsay Williams

Ten Tips for Surviving Aggressive Interviews

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The tricks journalists use in an aggressive interview are small in number and well known; and in reality, really aggressive interviews are rare. But if you think your spokesperson, or you, could be facing aggression, here is a checklist of things to do or think about.

aggressive interviews

1. Rehearse your messages 
As with all interviews, there is a need for rehearsed, thought through messages. Always ensure there is something credible to say.

2. Identify the tough questions
Once you have your messages, work out what the tough questions are likely to be. Politicians and even senior bosses are in a much more difficult position than most, because they can often be legitimately asked about a very wide range of subjects. For others, the scope is more limited and anything outside the scope can be ‘closed down’ by simply explaining you are not the right person to answer the question.

3. Work out the answers!
Now you have worked out the tough questions, work out the answers but keep them as short as possible. These are called ‘reactive lines’ and are different to your messages. You don’t offer a reactive line unless asked the question.

4. Don’t lie
The hardest ‘reactive lines’ are the ones where you can’t tell the truth and you can’t lie. In my experience, there is always a way but it can take a few minutes to work it out. However tempting it is, never ever lie. If you lie and are caught out which in these days is highly likely, you will lose credibility for ever.

Aggressive questions

Jeremy Paxman, former BBC Newsnight presenter perfected the ‘rabbit punch’ question.

5. Beware the rabbit-punch
Beware the ‘rabbit punch’ question: a tough destabilising first question, often unexpectedly personal. It’s a technique that was often used by the now-retired UK journalist, Jeremy Paxman. A couple of his classics: to politician and former cabinet minister Ann Widdecombe ‘Were you a little in love with Michael Howard?’ To the Iranian ambassador ‘Sir, your country is lying to us isn’t it’. To deal with this you need to respond briefly and if appropriate with wit and then move on to saying something credible and relevant.

6. Slow down
If the questions get tough, slow down your answers, it will give you more thinking time.

7. Avoid jargon 
Do not start using jargon and technical language; you will immediately lose the sympathy of the audience, and provoke the journalist to be more aggressive.

8. Be reasonable
Stay reasonable, even if the journalist isn’t, and be humble.

9. Say sorry 
If you have made a mistake admit it and say sorry. If lawyers tell you, you cannot say sorry you will have to say you ‘understand’ concerns.

10. Don’t get personal
Don’t fight with the journalist. It’s better not to say ‘you’ at all. What I mean by this is don’t say, ‘you are wrong’, ‘I don’t know where you got that number from’, ‘you guys are all the same’, etc. If you make it personal the journalist is likely to increase their aggression. Your job is to stay reasonable and professional. In a Sky News interview from 2015, Kay Burley did her worst with the head of Merlin Entertainment, owner of the Alton Towers Theme Park, just after an accident on a ride called the Smiler. Five people were  seriously injured in the incident and Burley ridiculously aggressive and unpleasant. Nick Varney, managed to survive a long aggressive interview, without ever losing his cool.

This blog was first published in July 2015.

rehearse aloud
Lindsay Williams

The One Simple Thing Most Presenters Don’t Do and Why You Should

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There is a simple, time efficient practise that will massively help you sound more professional, get your ideas across more efficiently, give better presentations or be more confident in that media interview: and yet most people simply will not do it.

What is it? Rehearse aloud.

rehearse aloud

I recently came across the golden nugget “Practise Analytically, Perform Intuitively” in an essay by David Perell on golf and writing.

In golf this can be explained simply. Practise analytically can mean videoing your swing, being critical, study what you are actually doing when you strike the ball. Perform intuitively: means once you are actually playing, just do it.

“Practise Analytically, Perform Intuitively” can be applied to many things, including communication skills. Spend time planning, analysing, tweaking, editing and above all rehearsing before you actually do something. Then when you get to the moment of delivery, you just do it. Clear your mind and let it flow.

Rehearse during not after the preparation

Rehearsal, in my view, is part of the work you do before your creative process has finished. My advice: rehearse aloud, before you are ready. I read somewhere, rehearse aloud once you have done about 40% of the work on your speech, your presentation or your message prep.

Speaking aloud during the writing will make the whole thing better, as well as prime you for your eventual performance.

And to supercharge your productivity and effectiveness, record your rehearsal (audio or video) and listen or watch it back.

rehearse aloud

Why do most people not do this? I think it is because it takes self-discipline and because you have to confront the problem that initially you are not that good! And that is painful. But there is likely to be some really interesting psychology going on behind the extremely widespread reluctance to rehearse. As a communications coach, I come across it every day.

[I would love to hear from anyone who has research or science behind the reluctance to rehearse aloud. I am looking for ways to help my clients overcome this hurdle faster and with less discomfort. There is also an army of PR people who would love to know how to manage the dozens of justifications and excuses that spokespeople use to avoid rehearsing.]

In summary, why you should rehearse aloud:

  • You will develop ‘tongue memory’, reducing the stress of performance and the likelihood of blanking.
  • You will improve your final performance 5-10% every time you actually rehearse aloud.
  • Recording and listening back may initially be painful but it is super useful: you won’t realise how fast you speak, how flat your delivery is or how boring your content is until you listen back.
  • If you are reading a script, rehearsal will help you ensure you are using ‘standard intonation’ i.e. putting all the stresses on the right words. You would be amazed how many people stress the wrong words during a performance and have no idea.
  • Preparation and rehearsal will allow you to find your flow. You may even enjoy it.

In summary, when you should rehearse aloud:

  • For your presentations. Chunk it, do a section at a time. Refine as you go.
    • Do a full run-through, record it and time it. Listen back, make a few notes.
  • For your media interviews. Rehearse your argument or your messages aloud.
    • Chunk it: rehearse one message at a time. Practise moving from questions to relevant messages.
  • For your job interviews. Practise articulating and evidencing what you are selling.
    • Ask yourself, do you sound competent? Do you sound boastful? Do you sound like a leader (if the job requires this), do you sound like someone nice to work with?
  • For any Town Halls. Chunk it. Record it. Time it.
    • Ask yourself what the audience will think, feel and do as a result of your address.
  • For any Speeches. Rehearse aloud in full performance mode.
    • Time it. Listen back. Ask is it clear? Is the tone right? Is it entertaining?

If you can’t find the self-discipline and the diary space to prepare and rehearse aloud, you should know that it is one of the services we provide either online or face to face. Choose either Presentation Training, Media Training or Personal Impact Training.

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