TJ Walker explains how to get better at TV and video interviews: do many short recorded practice sessions with focused feedback on your voice, gestures, and tone, then repeat until you can handle a tough interview without worrying what gets aired. He argues against the common approach of long mock interviews with harsh criticism.
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You have no doubt heard that it's a good idea to practice big interviews, especially TV interviews on video, before you do the actual thing. Well, that is of course true, but I want to go a little deeper and show you exactly how to practice in order to get the most benefit from it. Unfortunately, a lot of communication departments, public relations firms, the practice consists of bombarding the spokesperson with 50 really hard questions, trying to rattle them, letting the trainer be the tough Mike Wallace, CBS 60 Minutes reporter, jumping out of bushes and then spending three hours critiquing every answer in detail and critiquing the interview. Complete. Utter waste of time in my view. What you want to do when you're practicing an interview on video is, is you want to do a whole lot of interviews on video and critique it the first time. When I'm working with someone, I just have them say a few words, talk about their general area of expertise. Watch it, could be 30 seconds. Watch it, figure out what are they doing well, Is their voice moving well, are their hands moving? Do they sound conversation? Put all these things together, focus on what they're doing well, then do another interview a little longer, do another one. Focus on the strengths. Build the strengths. Of course, if someone says something ridiculous like, of course I don't hate all men or all women, you can spotlight that thing they said. That's a sound bite that is off message. But primarily you want to focus on what's working and working well. Here's the key that basically nobody does. You want to keep practicing on video until you've gone through your version of a tough interview. And no matter where you stop the video, if just the last 10 seconds is all that could get on the evening news are on that website, you'd be happy with it. Then and only then are you truly prepared. That will give you tremendous confidence if you know you've gone through your version of a tough interview and no matter what happens, you come across the way you want, you look the way you want, your messages are coming across, and the sound bites you wanted came out. That's the correct way of practicing a media interview on video.
