Ep 77 What Does Off the Record Mean www.diresta.com March 17 16

So what does off the record mean when you're speaking to the news media.

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public, to the media, at work and in life, speaking with TJ Walker.

So off the record traditionally is meant you're talking to a reporter, an editorial board, someone in the media, and they can't quote you. And they're really not even supposed to use anything you said in a story. It's simply to kind of educate them, give them a better framework for understanding issues. There's a lot of different reasons for talking off the record. The old generic rule of never speak off the record isn't really true. I'm going to go into some of the nuances of this on the program today. What's put this front and center as of this week is that Donald Trump, the presidential candidate, had an off the record editorial board meeting with the New York Times. Now, there's nothing particularly odd about that. The New York Times does this all the time. In fact, editorial boards all across the country do this. It doesn't matter if they're liberal or conservative or what party they lean towards. And the reason for that is they want to have more in depth conversations with politicians to get a sense of their thinking. And they don't want the politicians to feel like they just have to come in and give safe, canned sound bites and worry about how any one sentence or quote can be pulled out and used to beat them up in the political process. So I do think there is a legitimate reason for the news media to do this and for politicians and newsmakers to sometimes go off the record. So here's why this is in the news right now, as does happen from time to time with off the record comments. It leaked out. So there have been news reports that Donald Trump, in his off the record meeting with the New York Times, told them essentially that he had no intention of deporting all of our illegal immigrants in this country and building a wall. That was just basically something to say to start the negotiations, that he's a negotiator. And you always sort of stake out the most extreme position so that when you do negotiate, you get some kind of a bargaining deal and you've got some leverage. Anyone who's followed Donald Trump's career and follows what he says and what he does can hear that and say, you know what? That sounds like Donald Trump. That sounds exactly like what he would say. And even in his book, the Art of the Deal, he basically says, use hyperbole, exaggerate, and it's better for getting news coverage, and it's better in the negotiation process. So it's not particularly surprising. Now, the fact that this leaked out in the political process, though, is big, big news, because Donald Trump has gotten tremendous mileage as being the one candidate who is the toughest on illegal immigrants. And he's praised to. He has promised to deport 11 million people who are not properly documented in the United States. He's also promised to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and to make Mexico pay for it. So Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, other candidates who claim they are tough on immigration are not particularly pleased that Donald Trump has come across as more hardline than they have. And then he tells the liberal New York Times, basically, oh, I wouldn't really do that. I'm just saying that to score points and to help with the negotiation. So they are, they're very upset with him. And the New York Times, they're demanding that the New York Times release the full transcripts. Folks, we're not here to talk about the politics. I just want to isolate the specifics of this process of speaking off the record. Here is the real danger for Donald Trump or anyone else is, for the most part, most of the time, you don't really want to see anything off the record that you would just be horribly embarrassed and would be devastating to you if it were printed on the front page of the New York Times or any other media outlet. There are times to go into more context, more detail, more nuance, some complexity off the record. But if you say something off the record that is diametrically opposed to what you've said on the record, and your opponents would have a field day with it, then you have to contend with the very real probability that it could leak out. You could be painted as a hypocrite, and it could be quite damaging to you. Now, given Trump's brand, I don't anticipate this playing out that way. He's not exactly, shall we say, known for consistency of ideological or policy positions. But for most people, this could be devastating. So I want to give you some rules here, but you have to keep in mind, there's a lot of context involved. There's a lot of nuance. First of all, if you're going to speak off the record, there needs to be a good reason for it. You shouldn't be doing it just for the fun of it. Number two, you need to have some level of trust. Someone calls you up, you never heard of them, and they just say, I'm a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. I don't take their word for it. It could be a political opponent, it could be an intern for a competing company. You don't know. So you need to know the person you're dealing with. Ideally, there's a relationship there where you've dealt with this reporter or journalist or editorial board in the past and they've treated you in a fair, reputable way, even if it's not always positive or glowing coverage. There needs to be some track record, fairness. And then next you've got to try to isolate your comments to the point where it wouldn't devastate you if they did come out and get printed. Now, the general axiom, a lot of media experts, so called media experts, media trainers, corporate communications people say just, you know, never speak off the record. Well, let me give you an example of a time when you might want, let's say you have a female CEO of a publicly traded corporation and all of a sudden a new male employee has filed a lawsuit contending the female CEO has sexually harassed him and has demanded sexual favors or threat of firing. And the reporter sees this come in over the transom. It's an official legal case, it's in the court system. They're calling you up and they want to talk to the CEO. Here's how I would handle a situation. Let me give you some more facts to my hypothetical scenario. Let's say this employee suing has only been on the job for two days, has never met your CEO. Your CEO has been out of the country for the last week. So it's absolutely not possible. And as soon as it happened, the employee in question's parents called and said, we really want to apologize. You know, our, our son is mentally stable, unstable and he's going back into treatment in a facility. We apologize. And that, you know, the suit's going to, is going to be revoked right away. Here's what I would do in that situation because I don't really want, if I'm head of PR for that company or if I am this female CEO, I don't want to say this suit has no merit because then it gets, becomes a story. There's a quote and a lot of people, the only thing they remember is CEO Susie Walker accused of sexually harassing an employee. They don't look at the fine print and it becomes a he said, she said. Some people may want to say, well, where there's smoke, there's fire. I don't want that to be a story. So my goal is to actually try to get the story, not to Run. So in this particular case, I would say to the reporter, if the reporter called up and says, hey, I see this legal case, it's in the court system, I got to do a story on it. I would say to the reporter, I'll absolutely talk to you on the record, but I would like to speak to you off the record first. Can we do that? I would then wait until the reporter gives me some affirmation that they agree to my bargain of off the record. They should say yes. I should hear them say yes over the phone. If it's an in person meeting, I should see their head actually nod. Affirmation. I would then say to the reporter, okay, here's the situation. We feel bad for this employee. The employee's parents have called up, has a history of mental instability. They've done this three other times. We, we didn't do enough due diligence hiring them. But it's just a complete non issue because we actually have evidence based on travel schedules that our CEO has never even met this person. So it's completely frivolous. And the parents of the person involved have asked us to try to keep this quiet because the person has been having some mental issues and would like to just quietly withdraw from the company, withdraw the suit, get on with their life if that is the actual situation. In my experience, most reporters would say, okay, not going to bother with the story. So you've essentially killed the story by going off the record. Now, you killed the story not because of power or influence or pressuring the reporter or calling up the editor or the publisher. You've done it because you gave the person enough background information to convince them it's not an interesting story, it's not significant enough. So I do believe there are times when you can and should speak off the record with the example I gave is one of them. But some people do it too frequently. The other situation, and very different, is not for attribution. There's a huge, huge difference. There may be times when you want to be a part of the story. You want your ideas in, but you don't want your fingerprints on. You don't want your name associated with it. You're floating a new policy, you're putting out a trial balloon. You don't want anyone tracking it back directly to you. Again, there are times, especially in government, when you're floating new policies and you're not sure what the acceptance rate would be with your constituents. There are times when it is appropriate. Again, you need to do this sparingly and you need to make sure you trust the reporter. I still wouldn't do it most of the time unless you have absolute confidence that your name won't be in it. So that's some of the differentiations between, between off the record and not for attribution. If you have questions regarding basic rules like this dealing with the media, let me know all you have to do. Well, rather than me go through all the basics, let me give you the information right here on how you can do that because we have easy, easy ways for you to send information to us.

Your questions.

Send your questions to jwalker on Twitter. You can email infoediatrainingworldwide.com you can post your comments on the blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, wherever you are watching or listening to this program. And and I'll be very happy to answer your questions or take comments. We do have comments, rebuttals, anything you want to add to the subject matter or to introduce new topics. Did get some feedback on a recent show I did regarding the Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy, who is the second most watched TED speaker of all time with her presentation on how if you have a Wonder Woman pose, that's what you should do before speeches and interviews to fill you with confidence you'll be much better. I think that that is fundamentally misguided advice and horrible advice for reasons I devoted an entire show to. And I've gotten some other comments. One came from professional colleague friend of mine, Diane Diresta, a well known public speaking expert, trainer, author and she wrote a blog on this and I wanted to share with you some of her views. She writes about me that I disputed her claim, called it a fraud. I do think that it's not fraud in any legal or SEC sense, but fraud in the sense of just fundamentally misleading in a way that can be harmful to some people. She gives her opinion. She says, quote, the power pose was recommended to assuage public speaking fear. It's based on neuroscience research and when this pose is held for two minutes there is an increase in testosterone. Higher levels of the hormone testosterone are found in those who are risk takers. What was novel was that there was Harvard research backing up her claims. Do I think she's a fraud? No. Unless the research is flawed, it's helpful to have a technique to increase confidence and there is a body language of confidence. The mind body connection is widely accepted now. None of those things are issues I disagreed with. I disagree with the premise that confidence is what you should be focused on to give a great speech and actually be confident in a speech. You should focus on giving a great speech. Amy Cuddy gave a great speech. I just wish she'd focused on what she did in her speech to make it great and not focus on a teeny, tiny, almost irrelevant speck. Back to Diane DiResta's comments. She writes, however, as an executive speech coach who works with women leaders and male executives, I don't claim that this one pose, the Wonder Woman pose, is a panacea for public speaking fear. Nor does it make you a knockout presenter, which is, by the way, a great plug of her book named knocked out presenter TJ and I'm linking. I'll be linking to diresta.com it's diresta.com if you would like to see her full blog post and check out her book as well since TJ makes several good points. Amy Cuddy had a compelling story, a strong structure to her speech, and good visuals. I always tell my clients that great delivery sits on great structure. Your presentation delivery is only as good as your organization. Public speaking success is 90% preparation, 10% delivery. So she takes a slightly dissenting view from me, but I do think we agree on the fundamentals. Diane, thanks for taking the time to do that. Your thoughts are well appreciated. And by the way, all of you should check out her blog on a regular basis. Go to DiResta I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.

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