Blog Archives - Page 9 of 11

Mind the gap – getting rid of “Ums” and “Ers”

July 18, 2022/0 Comments/by Eric Dixon

As a voice coach, one of the most frequently asked questions I receive from delegates is how to get rid of their “Ums” and “Ers” when speaking.

They worry that audiences will find them annoying or distracting and that the use of such ‘fillers’ heightens the impression that the speaker is uncertain or nervous – which may be true, but they would prefer not to let it show!

The first thing to say is that in everyday conversation all of us “Um” and “Er” from time to time. They are a standard way of filling in a gap while we think on our feet and these sounds often slip past unnoticed.

However, in a presentation or media interview, using too many of them can get in the way and make a speaker less credible than they would otherwise be.

Image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

So how can you get rid of them?

Here’s my three-point plan to reducing your dependence on them in the future.

Slow down. If you “Um” or “Er” because you are thinking of what to say next, slowing down can give you that extra time to think while you are speaking, rather than having to pause in order to do so. Obviously, the change in pace should not be too marked, but it’s remarkable how valuable that extra second or two in each sentence can be, to help you formulate how you are going to phrase your next line.
Use short sentences. Most “Ums” and “Ers” occur because the speaker is trying to deal with too much information at once. Making your sentences shorter – perhaps using only a dozen or so words at a time – helps you present what you want to say in bite-size chunks. Usefully, this is also easier for an audience to absorb as well!
Switch off the voice box. Let’s face it: “Ums” and “Ers” are meaningless noises. So actively switching off the voice box (and often just breathing instead) will get rid of them without adversely affecting the content of what you’re saying. Whilst this will take practice, it’s actually easier to do than you might think. Here’s how:

Take the word ‘bid’, for example. When we say this word, every single sound is voiced – from the ‘b’, through the ‘i’ (all vowels are voiced anyway), to the ‘d’. If you put your fingers on your voice box, you can feel the vibration it is making throughout its entire length.
Contrast this with the word ‘pit’. To say it, you have to switch off the voice box for the first sound, the ‘p’, then switch it back on for the vowel, then off again for the ‘t’. Everything else you do with your breathing, tongue position, lips, mouth cavity is exactly the same as when you voiced the word ‘bid’. Putting your fingers on your voice box this time will demonstrate that the vibration only kicks-in for the vowel sound.
My point is that if you are able to switch the voice box off and on within a word, you can certainly do it between words – which is where the “Ums” and “Ers” creep in. Try breathing in the gap instead. Crucially, such pauses between words need be no longer than if they were filled with an “Um” or an “Er”, but you will sound much less hesitant. In fact, this new way of pausing (sometimes accompanied by a breath) can now suggest you are carefully searching for the precise word to use and can actually add to your authority!

I’m surprised that some voice coaches suggest getting rid of “Ums” and “Ers” involves just closing your mouth as you finish each sentence. But as “Ums” and “Ers” often occur in the middle of sentences, it’s not as simple as that. Also, you can still make the sound “Um” with your mouth closed (try it!) – indeed, the ‘m’ part of the sound actually requires the mouth to be closed, so this doesn’t seem to be much help either. It’s about the voice box, not the lips.

In short, don’t worry too much about “Ums” and “Ers” if they are occasional. But if they are cropping up too often in your presentations or interviews, you need to take action.

To misquote Alexander Pope: to “Er” may be human – but getting rid of “Ers” is divine!

The Short Goodbye

July 11, 2022/1 Comment/by Lindsay Williams

Whatever you think of the political reality, and the extraordinary events that led to more than 50 ministers resigning from his government, Boris Johnson’s resignation statement was well written and – given the circumstances – extremely well delivered.

It was also short and to the point.

For those of us who present or speak in public one of the first things to learn is: less is more. At the end of hours of political chaos – and for the Johnson camp, one body blow after another– it culminated in six minutes of well-chosen words which:

Confirmed he was going (eventually), and updated the world on the agreed procedure to find a successor
Reminded everyone that under his leadership the Conservative party won the 2019 general election with a very large majority
In 72 words summed up the achievements he is proud of: Brexit, vaccine roll-out, exit from lockdown, ‘leading the west’ standing up to Russia
Reminding everyone of the levelling up agenda
A swipe at colleagues for their ‘herd mentality’
Thanking his family, the party, the civil service and emergency services and special mention for the special protection force (with the pointed observation, they are the one unit that never ever leak)
And finally ending on an upbeat note about how great the British people are

That is a long list for a short speech.

Others have already commented on the lack of apology and the disconnect from reality: the statement had no mention of the partygate scandal, the constant allegations of lying, and so on. It is clear to me that there was a very good reason for that…from Johnson’s point of view there was nothing to be gained from giving the media or history another round of negativity. Had Johnson apologised again or mentioned the handling of the Chris Pincher affair, that would have been the headline. He knew what he was doing.

In writing that short speech Johnson had one goal. No further negative headlines, remind everyone of the positives. Having a clear goal makes the writing much simpler.

Relentless focus are at the core of running anything well, and yet this most fundamental of disciplines is rarely applied to the words we use.

In both presentation and media training, our trainers will ask what people want to achieve in their interviews or in their talks. It is surprising how many of those we coach do not have a clear answer to that question. Many warn us that they have a tendency to ‘waffle on’, ‘say too much’ or say the same thing ‘several times in several different ways’. But they don’t connect that to the lack of a clearly defined objective.

The skills of journalists put them ahead of the norm on this point. Print journalists count the words they type, and constantly cut words and paragraphs to tighten the writing. They also deliver to very tight deadlines. Broadcasting teaches you to think in seconds. Broadcasters all know the average talking speed when reading a script, is three words per second. If in doubt we time it. Seconds matter in broadcasting.

Economy of words is an undervalued discipline.

Image: YouTube

dont like the sound of your own voice feature

Don’t Like the Sound of Your Own Voice: You Are Not Alone.

July 5, 2022/0 Comments/by Lindsay Williams

Why is it that we cringe when we hear a recording of ourselves?

It’s because you normally hear yourself speak from inside your own head. You are used to hearing your voice before it fully escapes your skull. It is only when it is a recording that you hear it as others do.

The good news is that everyone else already knows what you sound like, it’s only you that is taken aback!

Regional accents also take their owners by surprise. ‘I sound so Essex/ Birmingham/ Yorkshire’ is another common reaction we get on playback of role-play presentations or interviews.

I personally love regional accents, provided they are not so strong I can’t understand what is being said. I think the variety and distinctiveness is entirely positive for anyone giving a presentation or a media interview.

There used to be a prejudice against strong regional accents or foreign accents on the BBC, but this was already falling away when I worked there 30 years ago. Now they are positively encouraged.

Neil Nunes was not universally popular when he first appeared as a continuity announcer on Radio 4, but I have always loved hearing his voice. He is now a regular news reader, instantly recognisable with a deep voice and a Jamaican accent.

Neil Nunes’ unusual voice initially caused controversy when he started on BBC Radio 4, but now he is a regular presenter of the evening news.

In 1994 while at the BBC, I argued and won for the then unknown Adrian Chiles, with his Birmingham accent, to present our new business show Wake up to Money on Radio 5 Live. I felt his voice was usefully different and gave him authenticity, while giving the show a distinctive personality. (He was also a very hard-working and brilliant presenter.) Adrian was a huge success and almost immediately snapped up by our rivals at Television Centre. Business news is easily thought of as stuffy, and a regional accent freshened it up. It’s a formula followed many times since, notably with Steph McGovern. In this video, Steph herself explains how being northern with a good strong accent has been her unique selling point.

Those speaking a second language also worry about their accent. Again, I think it works in the favour of the speaker, provided the argument is clear.

Most of us are familiar with research that says some regional accents are trusted more than others. This is an issue debated in the world of marketing. The paragraph below comes from the website of an outsourcing consultancy About Match.

In recent years the number of businesses adopting regional accents for their adverts and contact centre services has witnessed a sharp increase. A PH Media Group uncovered a recent 27% rise in UK companies using accents in on-hold (telephone) marketing. Of the total, 37% said they deliberately adopted a particular accent to reinforce their brand’s identity. The survey explored associations people have with certain accents, uncovering that Scottish is perceived as trustworthy and reassuring, while Manchester is seen as industrious and creative.

Yorkshire is an accent perceived as wise and honest – a good reason for Broadband supplier Plusnet to feature a Yorkshireman in their TV campaign. Also, the accent is a nod to the brand’s Yorkshire routes, helping to reinforce its identity.

Another ‘hang up’ about the way your voice sounds may be related to class. Whilst we are not such a class-ridden society as we were, there is still plenty of unconscious and conscious biases related to class as seen in this Reuters report on branding and accents. But the world is changing fast and all of us working today are being told to step aside from those snap judgements. Accept people for what they are and the talents they bring.

I have a strong hunch that often it is an individual’s perception of class bias, rather than the real bias of any audience that causes the most damage. Don’t let your accent be an excuse to hide your talent.

You can, of course, change the way you sound but it takes time and work. In my book, it is much easier to own the way you speak and use it.

My advice to all presenters or media interviewees is to embrace who you are. Provided any audience clearly understands you, your voice is an asset, as individual as your face. Being distinctive is valuable. Provided you get everything else right – interesting, useful presentation, entertaining, informative interview – the way you talk will just be enjoyed and, if you are lucky, remembered.

The Media Coach team always feels it is a privilege to work with underconfident individuals who have a message to get out there. Sign up for our bespoke Presentation Training or Personal Impact Training and challenge us to transform you from shrinking violet to sunflower.

The Mick Lynch Style: Not Recommended

June 27, 2022/1 Comment/by Lindsay Williams

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

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.

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 23^rd June

Guardian Comment 23^rd June

New Statesman 22^nd 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

June 21, 2022/0 Comments/by Lindsay Williams

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.

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’

‘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.

It’s So Easy to Misspeak

June 13, 2022/1 Comment/by Lindsay Williams

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’

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.

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.

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

June 6, 2022/0 Comments/by Eric Dixon

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.

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).

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

May 30, 2022/1 Comment/by Lindsay Williams

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

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.

The Power of the Specific

May 23, 2022/1 Comment/by Lindsay Williams

“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.”

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.

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.

Handling Hypotheticals

May 16, 2022/1 Comment/by Eric Dixon

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.

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.