MEDIA INTERVIEWS - When Thinking On Your Feet Is A Really Bad Idea It’s a compliment to be fast on your feet. Right? In the athletic sense, definitely, but it refers to mental fleet-footedness too. Like when your boss fires a question at you in a meeting, and you respond quickly, knowingly, definitively, with maybe just a dash of worldly wise irony thrown in for good measure. You stick your answer, poised, on point. You’re quick. Afterward, colleagues say – wow, you really know how to think on your feet. But thinking can be overrated. In a meeting, no one’s going to take a fragment of what you say and present it to the world as the only thing you said. But a journalist will. When I counsel executives, lawyers and leaders, one of the first things I suggest is that having all the answers is not a qualification to talk about what you know in public. Shooting from the hip is a good way to shoot yourself in the foot. You have to be selective about what you say to journalists. A reporter usually has neither the space nor the inclination to display your forthrightness, cleverness – quickness. He or she wants a quote. Eight or ten words that usually amount to just a few pixels of the big picture. In the office, hard questions demand and deserve straight answers. Journalists demand straight answers too, but they don’t necessarily deserve them. That may sound harsh, but the fact is some reporters tend to deal their questions from a crooked deck. They play by rules that don’t necessarily show your full hand, or theirs. Some will take things out of context. They’re in the business of storytelling. Drama, edge, conflict. Point, counter-point. They’ll do what they have to do, more often than not, to get there. Anyone being interviewed should be every bit as concerned about telling a good story. Capturing the big picture by advancing a few key ideas, not a few cute quips. That requires thinking through what you want to say, your themes, your narrative, before an interview...
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 15:10:25 +0000
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