Ep 97 How to Minimize Damage from Stupid Media Interview Statements indezine.com April 6

What's the best way to recover? If you've said something stupid in a media interview.

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

It happens. It's inevitable. If you are in the media, if you're in the spotlight long enough, at some point you're going to say something in an interview that just isn't quite right. How do you react to it? How do you handle now if it's a relatively minor thing and it's a minor nitpick, maybe you just ignore it. But sometimes you can't ignore it because people you respect, people who like you, care about you and respect you, are outraged. Or what do you do? Then this happened to Hillary Clinton, the former Secretary of state on the 2016 campaign trail. Here's what she said. It was at Nancy, it was the day of Nancy Reagan's funeral. The former first lady and here's what Hillary Clinton said that got her into trouble. She was on MSNBC the day of the funeral. That's typically not a day where you're doing any criticism of someone. She was trying to say something positive, upbeat, and she praised Nancy Reagan for, quote, her very effective, low key advocacy and something that I really appreciated regarding HIV and aids. Now, Nancy Reagan advocated a lot of things, just say no to drugs, Alzheimer's research, but she certainly was not well known at all or her husband for being early to the game regarding AIDS research, HIV prevention, cures and research. So a lot of people were very upset. Hillary Clinton's, a lot of her fans, supporters, voters were angry, they were upset, they were criticizing her all across social media. The tweets were brutal and vicious. So what was Hillary Clinton's response? She could have just ignored it, but then it might have festered and grown and grown and grown and become a bigger issue and instead she took particular action. Here's a statement she put out that day and that's what's important. I think it was because it was actually that day she put out this statement. While I respect her advocacy, talking about Nancy Reagan on issues like, like stem cell and Parkinson's research, Nancy Reagan was sadly no hero in the fight against HIV aids. That's a typical sort of sentiment. That was one of the politer sentiments that was expressed on Twitter. So that's not how Mrs. Clinton responded. Here is the exact response that she put out that I do think was a particular smart strategy. She backtracked very, very specifically. And here's what she said. While the Reagan's were strong Advocates for stem cell research and finding a cure for Alzheimer's. I misspoke about their record on HIV and AIDS for that. I'm sorry. So pretty categorical statement. She didn't use it as an opportunity to attack Nancy Reagan the day she's being buried. That would have caused political problems. She still praised Nancy Reagan on something else. She specifically said that she was wrong. She misspoke so no one can accuse her of spewing nonsense or being a demagogue or not caring about facts or rewriting history. And, and she said I'm sorry. That's an apology. Now, if you already hate Hillary Clinton, this certainly isn't going to make you love Hillary Clinton or feel better about her. I understand that. But if you did like Hillary Clinton and you respected her and you didn't like Nancy Reagan, you thought the Reagan's were horrible with respect to AIDS and HIV research, this actually does make you like Hillary more and more and respect her more. And it just totally diffuses the issue because now there's no hook for anyone to talk about. Well, did you see Hillary Clinton rewriting history and shamelessly saying how the Reagan's were great? No one can say that anymore because the issue has been addressed. Now Hillary Clinton is not most people's first choice of someone to mention as somebody who always handles every crisis in the media person perfectly. And I'm not going to make the case that she's always perfect. But in this particular case, she said something factually wasn't right, got a lot of criticism. A few hours later she offered essentially a retraction and an apology and put it in the context. I think that's the best you can do. This does show how dangerous and frankly treacherous it is when you're a presidential candidate. Even saying something nice about someone on the day they're being buried is going to be analyzed a million different ways. And your enemies, in some cases your friends are going to be looking at it from the context of how can we rip this apart? How can we say this person is doing something wrong? How can we say this person just isn't getting it? All the more reason why presidential candidates really have to be well briefed. Their comments need to be vetted in advance. Even for simple, innocuous, a few positive remarks about someone the day they've died. It's going to be interesting to see how the presidential campaign continues. That's one of the of the beauties of presidential politics. There are new opportunities for learning how to get better every day. As a communicator but also more landmines to step on that could in fact destroy a career. We'll be monitoring all the top presidential candidates not only this year, but in presidential elections for years and years to come.

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In this segment, we do our joint partnership as we often do with the good folks at Indazine, the one place on the web where you can find everything you need for PowerPoint slides production. A lot of great freebies they have there over at InDesign I N D I Z I N E and I'll provide a link for you in the show notes as well. These are some of the questions that have come from the readers of InDesign. TJ, can you tell us more about stories? Moreover, are stories used in business presentations and speeches different from everyday stories? Yes and no. Sorry to seem like I'm waffling there, but the whole point of telling a story is to make a particular point that's relevant to your audience. Now, if something funny happened at the office and somebody slipped on a banana peel and wasn't really hurt, but was skidding around, everyone laughed and your spouse said anything interesting happened at the office today and you give that story, well, it's not the most important story in the world, but it does serve the purpose of letting your spouse know what happened that was interesting today. If you are giving a new product launch for a new app, would you necessarily want to talk about the person who slipped on a banana peel in your office? Probably not. What you want is a story that makes people understand your app better. The need for your app, why you created it. So when the founder of ebay talks about how he needed a Pez dispenser for his fiance and he couldn't find it and wanted an online auction, that story dramatizes the need for ebay why he created it. So at some level it's exactly the same. A good story for business A business presentation is like a story that you tell friends and family over a beer or over dinner, in that it should be interesting and it should be about a point. But typically the business presentation needs to be about a business point, not just something funny. Not just to be amusing. Here's the big problem. People tell themselves. I'm not a natural storyteller and this is a business presentation. So I now have an excuse to not to tell stories. Because this is a serious business presentation and stories are just for friends. Just for Entertainers just for comedians. I'm off the hook. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Great business leaders illustrate every point with a story. Doesn't have to be a long story, doesn't have to be a funny story. But when Steve Jobs is introducing an iPad, he says, imagine, here I am, I'm sitting down. And he actually sits down. I want to read the New York Times. I don't have to go get a big newspaper and get my hands dirty. I hit this. Boom. I'm now reading the New York Times. He's telling a story and walking people through how someone would actually experience it. He said, the most compelling story in the world. No, but it drives the point home and it lets you visualize it. Next question from Indesine. What about negative and positive stories? Is it better to start with a negative story and then show how the situation can be made positive, or is it best to stay positive all the time? A good story has contrast. A great Broadway play or East End play has real conflict. There is a real problem. Someone grew, overcame the challenge. They were nervous when there was a problem. They're happier when it was resolved. Not every story has to have a happy ending, but when there is some complexity to the story, it makes it more interesting. So I wouldn't worry about making everything positive now. You don't want to get up and tell a bunch of stories about everything you did is screwed up and you showed up hungover and you're a total incompetent. Obviously, if it's too negative, people might draw a negative conclusion about who you are, your product, your service. But to me, the main thing is, what's the point of the story? And now tell it with all of the negatives and positives and emotions to make it interesting and memorable. Final question. How can emotion be used as a helpful concept in stories? Can you share some stories, some examples? Emotion is important because when you're telling a story, you need to say how you felt, how other people felt. Again, every great Broadway drama has emotion in it. It's never just, here's a family, everybody is feeling pleasant. There's no conflicts, end of play, curtain down. That obviously would not sell a single ticket, would be a huge disaster. You need to talk about how you felt when you're resolving problems, when you're telling a story. So, for example, when I'm telling the story about. When I'm doing a media training course and I'm telling people, here's exactly why. You need to have a message. You need to have sound bites. It's not enough to Answer questions because you can answer questions in intelligent, rational fairway reporter think you're great. They pull one quote out and that's not the quote you want. It could be a negative quote that harms your job. And I know from firsthand experience, and I go right into the story where I was a press aide for a member of Congress a quarter of a century ago, did an interview, gave factual, straightforward issues answers, but the quote was me saying HR 1400 is unclear. If you want to hear the rest of the story, I urge you to go back to some of the earlier podcasts. I don't want to repeat the story that soon. Bottom line, I was fired. I felt bad, I was unemployed. And I share that with my audience. I share that with the people I speak to and I train because I want them to realize there are real consequences to not being prepared with your messages and sound bites for interviews. You can lose your job and I don't care who you are, you're probably going to feel bummed if you lose your job. And my message to them is to quote the often overquoted Warren Buffet, smart people don't learn from their mistakes, they learn from other people's mistakes. I want you to learn from my mistakes. I wasn't born naturally brilliant knowing how to speak to the media. I learned the hard way sometimes by actually getting fired by things I said to the media. That's why I've come up with techniques to help you get exactly what you want so you don't have to get fired. So there's so an emotional component to it. And I'm up front with people. You know, I get kicked out of the office, asked to leave that day, didn't feel good. But it drives the point home of why it is so important to go into a media interview not just with messages, but with the actual quotes that you want in the story. So thanks to the good folks at InDesign. As always, you should check out the website. I've provided a link in the show notes. I'm TJ Walker. As always, thanks for spending some time with me today and I hope all of your presentations in life are a huge success.

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