A session on messaging, preparing and conducting a media interview, then evaluating your performance.

1. Communications
and media
training
28 May 2021

2. How to Speak
 Your success in life is
largely determined
largely by your ability
to speak, your ability
to write and the
quality of your ideas---
-in that order.
PATRICK HENRY WILSON, MIT

3. QUALITY OF COMMUNICATIONS FORMULA:
Knowledge x Practice x Talent

4. Wilson states every
presentation must have
a (implied or
articulated)
empowerment promise.
What are you going to
know at the end of the
day
that you didn’t know at
the start of the day

5. Ian’s empowerment promise:
 Strategies on how to
frame external
communications for
maximum positive impact;
 Prepare participants to
talk confidently and
effectively to internal and
external audiences.

6. What you
should take
away from
this session:
IF you remember only two
things from today,
Remember the need for:
•Clarity
•Consistency
In your messaging.

7. On the virtue of messaging consistency
Lessons from this month

8. Justin Trudeau’s
message:
Take the first vaccine
offered.
They are all safe and
extremely effective.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

9. Dr. Theresa
Tam’s message
TAKE THE FIRST
VACCINE OFFERED.
THEY ARE ALL SAFE
AND EXTREMELY
EFFECTIVE.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

10. National Advisory
committee on
Immunization
 May 4, 2021:
 AstraZenica and J&J are not the
“preferred” products.
 Consider waiting until an mRNA shot from
Pfizer or Moderna is available.
 Survey the risk in your area and your
personal risk.
 Dr. Shelley Deeks
Vice Chair
NACI

11. CTV Power
Play
May 4,
2021

13. On the virtues of messaging clarity.
Lessons from this week

14. Former Chief Advisor appears
before a UK House of Commons
Committee on May 26, 2021
for seven hours of testimony.

15. Dom’s Messaging on
the pandemic
response.
Many people died needlessly because of the
government’s incompetent response.
The Prime Minister is unfit to perform his current job.
The Health Minister lied to people.
There was no real plan to deal with COVID-19 until it
was too late.
A top bureaucrat admitted “We’re F***ED.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND

16. How the day
will unfold.

17. Me telling you how to
 Think Critically
 Organize your thoughts
 Develop your message
 Performance
 Lift your words off the page
 Deliver your message in a way that’s compelling…
 Or at least not distracting.

18. Your biggest challenge
WHEN IT COMES TO ORGANIZING YOUR THOUGHTS AND ORGANIZING YOUR ME SSAGE….
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

20. Part Two

21. You doing mock
interviews
You prepare your message
Your colleagues pretend to be reporters
We record the interview
We play it back

22. Your biggest
challenge
when it
comes to
performance:
Few chances to practice
Social discomfort
These are not skills we
hire for.

23. Why would you
subject yourself to
this
You’re here because you have or could soon do
an media interview.
Better to fail in a safe place.
You get better through repetition.
Message development will help you in other
ways:
Fund raising
Strategic planning
Stakeholder relations
Employee engagement

24. Also, this--
In order to evaluate your
performance….
..you need to get used to seeing and
hearing yourself.
Note:
There is an uncomfortable gender
dimension to this.
We all need to be aware of it.

25. The big picture

26. –Simon Sinek
“The visionaries aren’t always the ones who
have the ideas, they are the ones who can
clearly communicate them to others.”

27. Unless you’re telling a story, you’re not doing anything.

28. Story:
What you say about yourselves—
to yourselves
and others.

29. Story:
Someone doing
something…

30. …that evokes a
response, enters an
area of interest…or

31. …illustrates a higher
truth.

32. A story
articulates
your values.

33. Once you’ve articulated
values, you can pick a
brand.

34. brand
The lens through which you focus your
story to the outside world;
A list of impressions allowing potential
users to make a decision between one
thing and another;
What they say about you when you are
not in the room.

35. Brand
Who you are
What you do, how you do
it
Why you do it

36. A brand creates
awareness and
instant recall of
your story.

37. Strategic plan
Where the brand and the story
meet the real world.
 We give time and resources to things that are
important;
 We allocate resources based on our
understanding of ourselves and our
understanding of the task at hand;
 What would it look like if we started over
tomorrow morning?

38. Story
Brand
Strategic Plan

39. Preparing for
an interview

40. The twin challenges of media
interviews..
 Getting the information to support your message;
 Organizing the information.
 Picking the right words to articulate the right message.
 Telling the story in an engaging way;
 Responding to questions.
Collection
Distribution

41. Critical thinking
Picking the right words
And organizing them in the most
logical and compelling way
Creates a message that sounds
better

42. Concrete versus
abstract

43. What Good Writing
sounds like

44. Rory Stewart
UK Secretary of State
For International Development
Interviewed May 3, 2019 on
BBC’s Politically Thinking podcast.
“….gender sensitive, multi-
ethnic centralized state
based on democracy, human
rights and the rule of law...”

45. “Everything
begins (and
ends) with
honest (and
specific)
language.”

46. Good writing
 Is concrete, not vague;
 Talks about people and things;
 Avoids abstractions;
 Engages the reader/listener in a specific
problem or opportunity;
 Can be easy translated into action.

47. Good clear writing
delivers simple,
effective
messages.and.

48. Simple effective
messages are easy
to deliver.

49. We waste time and effort by
being unclear about our story.

50. We spend a lot of time in our
lives…
speaking to people who are not listening
writing reports that never get read
failing to reach people who don’t know we
exist and may have something to say.
failing to engage people who do know
about us.

51. We spend a lot of time
talking to ourselves about
ourselves.

52. Without a story,
your idea will die.

53. Use critical thinking
before an interview
 Are we saying what we think we’re saying?
 Have we made our case?
 Are we responsible for all reasonable explanations?

54. Critical
thinking
exercise:

55. An exercise

60. STOP!
Can’t go out.

61. Hang on.
Needs some changes.

62. Ship it
I’m OK with
this.

63. Find a group.
Start talking.

64. What did you decide and
why?

65. Is this an economic
development story, or a
safety story??

66. Communications
is a team sport
You shouldn’t do it alone.

67. Error
blindness

68. The legal standard for libel
 You are legally responsible
 For every reasonable interpretation of the words you say.
 “I chose my words poorly”
 “But that’s not what I mean”
 Lousy defense

72. Kathryn Shultz, 2011

73. Error Blindness
 Trapped in a bubble where we feel right about
everything
 Being wrong doesn’t feel like anything,
 Feels like being right
 No internal cue telling you “you’re wrong”
 Strong social pressure to avoid admitting mistakes

74. During an interview
is a bad time to
discover
you are wrong.

75. Make sure you’re right--
before you start an
interview.

76. Think critically
test your assumptions
Rehearse your answers
Talk to someone
Evaluate
Before an interview

77. Before an interview, ask yourself:
What could I be wrong about?

78. Questions to ask before an interview
 What’s our policy?
 What have we said about this before?
 You’ve just heard what I’m going to say----
Is this the first time we’ve said this?
Will it garner support amongst our members?
Will it outrage anyone?
Are we OK with that?

79. Two poorly chosen
words.
First week of November, 2019

80. GOVERNMENT LEADER, UK HOUSE OF COMMONS
Jacob Rees Mogg
 In the early days of an election
campaign….
 Invited to respond to a judicial inquiry
on the Grenfell Tower Fire.
 14 June 2017
 72 people killed
 Faulty cladding
 Residents were told by firefighters to
stay where they were.

81. ISSUES OF CLASS
Factor 1 in the story
 Grenfell Tower is public housing
 Inhabited mostly by low income,
marginalized people.
 Tower is in the middle of the SW1
postal code
 Richest neighbourhood in London.
 Were people forced to live in unsafe
conditions….
 Because they were poor?
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

82. PEOPLE LOVE TO HATE JACOB REES MOGG
Factor 2 in the story

83. Poorly chosen words….
 Disrupt and bury your original message
 Cause trouble for your colleagues
 Earn you a ‘special’ visit with the boss
 Damage your reputation
 Make all further interviews more difficult.

84. Avoid Error blindness
 Think critically
test your assumptions
Rehearse your answers
Talk to someone
Evaluate
 Revise/repair your message
 Try again.

85. Critical Thinking
 Being wrong feels like
being right…
 until it’s too late.
 Your internal sense
that you are right is
not a reliable guide to
the external world.

86. During the
interview

87. Responding to media
questions

88. Barry McLoughlin
Your goal is to be message driven,
not question driven.

89. In order to get your
story out…
 You must anticipate both the good and the bad
questions
 You must prepare by focusing your message
 You are obliged to work hard to get your story out.

92. The thing about
questions…
 Roughly one half of all questions asked by journalists suppress
information.
 The input-output perversion: the more you put in, the less you
get out. It’s not about the question, it’s about the answer.
 A strange dichotomy:
 The questions that sound tough are actually easy to
answer.

93. Kinds of questions.

94. What you can do with poor questions:

95. Answer questions
with precision
 Answer the question you are
asked
 Don’t guess
 Don’t speculate
 Don’t answer hypotheticals

96. An example of
precision answers
 Donald Sterling
 Owner of the NBA Los Angeles
Clippers
 April 2014, banned from the NBA
 Fined $2.5 million
 Forced to sell his team
 Private recordings of racist
comments made public.

97. PRESIDENT OF THE NBA
Adam Silver
 Held a news conference
 Compelled to justify
 The forced sale
 The fine
 The lifetime suspension

98. Organizing your
thoughts.
before an interview

100. Subordinating
Style
Components of the
narrative are linked by:

101. Causality
Temporality
Precedence

102. Causality:
One thing
causes another

103. Temporality:
One thing happens
before another.

104. Precedence:
One thing is more
important than the other.

105. Time for a
shift
Temporal
Causal
Precedence

108. Is there a tool
that helps me
structure
information?

109. The Positioning
statement

110. The positioning
statement
Emotional statement;
Key Message;
Two Facts;
Action Statement
 (demand)

112. Positioning
statement exercise

113. Think of an issue
Prepare a positioning
statement.
Be prepared to give us the
first two lines of your
interview.

114. Report back in 15
minutes

115. Performance 101
Body language
Tone
Bridging
Appearance
Situational Awareness
How your face betrays a lie.

116. Body Language

117. Work on the content,
Work on your presence.

121. Tone

124. Bridging

125. When things
go bad
pause
collect your thoughts
stay cool
start again

126. –Barry McLoughlin Associates, 1990
“Communicating With Power”
“Acknowledge a reporters point if view, but
bridge back to your main message, if you
are consistently being steered away from
the subject-area you are comfortable
discussing.”

127. Please try to
be graceful…
Think of bridging as like shifting gears;
Use your own words, the ones that work
best for you;
Always answer what you can of the
reporter’s question;
Keep your tone sincere.

128. Graceful bridging
UK HOUSE OF COMMONS
23 MARCH 2016, PM Q’S
CUTS TO TAX CREDITS FOR THE
DISABLED REJECTED IN HOUSE OF LORDS
PM ASKED A DIRECT QUESTION
BRIDGES TO A DIFFERENT ANSWER

129. appearance

131. We have created a
visual culture
 55% of the impact is facial cues.
 38% is from the sound.
 7% is from what you are saying.
The VJ Handbook; CBC
Training and Development,
Neil Everton. Pg. 103

132. We have created a
visual culture
 Performance wear:
 Tone down jewelry
 non reflective glasses
 match clothing to location

133. R.I.C.E.
 Relaxed
 Interested
 Connected
 Energized

134. Relaxed
 breath deeply
 roll shoulders and move upper chest
 Relax your jaw

137. Getting it out of your brain…
or lifting it off the page.
 Energy
 Speed and intensity (vary)
 Pacing
 Speed and movement from one item to the next (vary)
 Flow
 The movement from one temporal or conceptual relationship to another.
(internal logic)

138. Get Ready Mentally
 Have a sense of who you’re talking to.
 Most people will speak with more freedom and energy….
 When they have a sense that someone is listening.
 CBC VJ Handbook.

139. As if there wasn’t already enough to
remember.
Open body
language
01
Eye contact
02
Don’t jam
everything into the
first answer
03
Telegraph intent.
“I’m interested”.
I’m Interesting. I
think you’d be
interested in what I
have to say.
04

140. Situational Awareness
 Check the supers
 Check the graphics
 Check your hair
 Check your wardrobe
 Check the background

141. After an interview

142. Review your
performance
 Watch the item once, get overall impressions;
 Watch the item again with your eyes closed and
pay attention to;
 tone, emphasis, energy, pacing, flow;
 any disturbing verbal idiosyncrasies?

143. Lessons you learn after many media
interviews
 It’s gonna get out, everything gets out eventually;
 Most of the information you put out is visual, tonal;
 Jump don’t push;
 Get ahead of the story.

144. The importance of an
institutional commitment to
transparency.

145. Linda Smith,
IABC
THRIVE UNDER INTENSE SCRUTINY BY TELEGRAPHING
YOUR VALUES;
VALUES PROVIDE THE FOUNDATION FOR MANY OF THE
IMMEDIATE DECISIONS YOU HAVE TO MAKE.

146. Va l u e s
S t a t e m e n t
s
Do the right thing
Dare to be
transparent,
passionate and
humble.
Get things done
in a fact-based
disciplined way.

147. “Going through the crisis, there were two
advisors I’ve paid no attention to. The first are the
lawyers and the second are the accountants. It not
about money or legal liability. This is about being
accountable for providing consumers with safe
food.”
– C E O M I C H A E L M C C A I N
G L O B E A N D M A I L , 0 1 F E B 2 0 1 1