Well-Trained Spokespersons Know What to Say, How to Say It and When to Stop
Being a spokesperson is not a job for amateurs. It takes experience, self-confidence and media training. Even if you are experienced and self-confident, you still need media training.
Not all media training is alike. The media training that delivers the most dependable results involves understanding news media, knowing how to write a key message and honing the skill to deliver that key message effectively – and as often as necessary. It’s also useful to know when to shut up.
We call this intensive media training.
Intensive media training is essential for leaders and spokespersons who will be in front of microphones and cameras delivering a crisis response. That’s when stakes are high and flubs can deflate reputations. Intensive media training also is valuable for people who testify before governmental bodies, speak to community groups or address organized opponents.
The key to successful press conferences, editorial interviews and controversial testimony is being prepared in mind and body. You need to know what to say, how best to say it and not have your body betray you. That takes skill, practice and grit.
Few people are naturally good at speaking against headwinds. It can be uncomfortable and contentious with reporters shouting questions, critics pouncing on misstatements and clients pulling out their hair.
Through the emotional turmoil and confusion, a trained spokesperson is expected to impart a key message – and repeat it enough times – so reporters, critics and intended audiences leave the room with the message implanted in their brains. In the process, the spokesperson must keep their cool, tell the truth and stick to the key message.
Four Lessons of Intensive Media Training
The first lesson is to understand the value of a key message and how to construct one. This involves more than what you want to say. It demands you know what you need to say and how best to say it.
An effective key message is a concise, memorable statement that a reporter or listener cannot escape hearing or forgetting. The secret of delivering a key message is not mistakenly delivering an empty key message that fails to make your central point and may even obscure it. You can learn how to identify the key point and turn it into am impactful key message.
Young children are good at repeating demands for food or toys. Repetition sends an inescapable message to parents, caregivers as well as reporters and audiences. Over time, adults tend to lose that skill of simple repetition. Spokespersons need to relearn the sometimes awkward, but effective repetition of a key message. Three is a magic number. More may be necessary. Intensive media training can help.
A second intensive media training lesson is that developing an effective key message doesn’t have to be a solo performance. Teamwork usefully helps to drill down to a core message, refine it and make impossible not to hear. The spokesperson’s job is then to internalize that key message so it flows naturally and is comfortably repeatable.
The third intensive media training lesson is to expose and dispose of distracting vocal and physical tics, such as using filler words such as “like” or “you know”, letting your eyes wander or making awkward gestures with your hands. Wielding a sword is bad, too.
Examples are swaying, clutching a podium, finger tapping, licking or biting your lips, fidgeting with jewelry, jiggling change in a pocket, frowning, flailing your arms, looking up and laughing at your own comments.
Unless you spend a lot of time in front of a mirror, you may not be aware of your vocal and physical tics. You also may be unaware of how off-putting they are. The goal of intensive media training is to make you aware of how you can distract or turn off an audience with finny movements and deadwood phrases by putting you in front of a camera.
This is not a one-and-done lesson. Many people, including talented speakers, fail to notice their tics and are appalled when they become aware of them by viewing themselves on camera. Like too much coffee in the morning, these tics become habitual and require intervention and perseverance to eliminate them.
The fourth intensive media training lesson is drilling the importance of practice. Those spokespeople that look relaxed in front of a camera because they have relentlessly practiced being relaxed because they are prepared and aware. Intensive media training involves aggressive mock interviews with loaded and off-the-wall questions to test a spokesperson’s ability to remain cool and collected under fire.
No matter how many hours of media training you undertake, the real work is done on your own, mastering how you speak and how you look doing it. You need to practice looking relaxed and speaking confidently in front of a mirror, a smartphone or a friend. Media trainers can offer tips of the trade, but only you can internalize how to pull it off in front of a camera or a crowd.
Continuous Media Skill-Building
There are few more accomplished comedians than Jerry Seinfeld. Despite all his fame and success, Seinfeld still goes to small clubs to test his jokes and adjust his timing. Spokespersons should adopt the same philosophy of never assuming you’ve mastered reaching audiences with an intentional message.
Continuous improvement doesn’t need to occur over years. It can and should happen from one appearance to the next. Rigorous self-examination and the flexibility to let yourself improve are also learned skills. Getting better as you go is its own stimulation and reward system.
Making a mistake isn’t fatal, Making it twice is foolish.
Knowing When to Stop
Smart people as spokespersons is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because they have a depth of background to draw on in answering tough questions. It’s a curse because they can easily slip into encyclopedia mode.
Intensive media training instructs knowledgeable spokespersons to lend their expertise in building a key message with backup points, then transforming into an actor who delivers scripted lines without adlibs. It’s a hard transition for many smart people. It takes a confident media trainer to convince them that acting is a noble spokesperson profession.
The temptation to overshare information fails to recognize the primary goal of most reporters is to find a fetching lead, not a bundle of data points. Those excessive data points can be especially confounding for reporters covering subjects in which they lack any background. Confusing a reporter is tantamount to canceling a crisp key message.
Giving reporters and audiences something of value they can comprehend and use is the role of a spokesperson. Confusing and confounding reporters or an audience should be left to those who played hooky and missed intensive media training.
