TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

How can you persuade a reluctant CEO to undergo media training?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in Life. Speaking with T.J. walker.

The question today comes from Gerald Breaux, who puts out his excellent brocast. He's one of the foremost practitioners in the media training profession, so I urge you to check out his site. I saw the question and I had to hop in with my own answer. For starters, this comes up for me all the time because I have heads of public relations within a company outside PR council say to me, tj, we got a problem. We got this CEO who thinks he's great, and it's typically a he, but he needs media training. What do we do? Here's my answer. I tell him, whatever you do, don't tell the CEO you need media training. Now, this may seem odd given the fact that I'm a media trainer. In fact, the name of my company is Media Training Worldwide. I've written books with that title Media Training A to Z. But I don't actually advise people who are dealing with a CEO to use the phrase training. Training has negative connotations in a lot of quarters. You potty train a child, you train a dog. Training implies deficiency. You lack information, skills, talents. And that very well may be the case with the CEO in this situation. But it's more threatening to the ego. I recommend using the word practice rehearsal, much less threatening. If the CEO loves golf, you could remind him, hey, Tiger woods has a coach. Tiger woods practices before every tournament. So it's much less threatening if the person happens to be a Broadway star. Let them realize. Every Broadway star, every great actor, actress, Meryl Streep has a director. Meryl Streep goes to rehearsal for Broadway shows and movies and TV shows. So remind the person that the greats in any field practice and rehearse. So what I then recommend is just don't make it seem like an option. Don't say to the CEO, okay, when would you like to schedule a whole day of media training out of your busy life? Don't ask that question in a vacuum. What I recommend is say to the CEO, all right, that big interview with CNBC is coming up next Tuesday. Did you want to rehearse on Thursday afternoon or did you want to rehearse on Wednesday morning? Make it seem as though it's something obvious that has to be done. Make it seem as though it is a standard part of standard operating procedure. It's a part of your due diligence. If you give someone the choice and position, it as somehow a luxury. It will never happen, especially for busy CEOs. But if you make it sound like it's just, of course it's something we do in the same way we spell check press releases or the same way we send a press to legal or investor relations before we send it out. It's just a part of the standard operating procedure. The more you can make your CEO understand this needs to be a part of the standard operating procedure. It might not be a full blown two day or even one day media training workshop, but it certainly could be a very intense four hour, three hour or even one hour rehearsal that involves video recording, playing back and critique. Now the next thing I recommend is position this as a perk. You ask a CEO, hey, do you want to ride on the bus across country or do you Want to fly first class as other CEOs do? Or your own jet for that matter? No CEO is going to say, oh, I want to ride the bus across the country. It is not going to do that. And I believe that's how you should position media training, public speaking training. Let the person realize, hey, you're now a superstar. This company, this organization believes you're a superstar. You deserve to be treated like a superstar. Your counterparts in other companies, other organizations get massive amounts of training from top trainers. Let's say you know something about the person's politics. If the person likes Ronald Reagan, for example, remind them Ronald Reagan would spend an entire day videotaping and rehearsing major speeches like the State of the Union. Don't you deserve the same treatment? If the person likes Bill Clinton as a communicator, remind them, hey, Bill Clinton, he, even though he was really good on his own, still practice rehearsed with a full time professional speech coach before he gave major speeches and let the person know, CEOs of major companies by and large do use the services. Certainly a lot of them are my clients. They do use the services of professional media trainers and presentation coaches. They might not say, today I'm going to a public speaking workshop or a media training workshop, but it's really the same thing. If the person is speaking, getting recorded, playing it back and critiquing it, that's a training. You can call it rehearsal, you can call it whatever you want. The final thing I would recommend is get a video of your CEO's last performance, send it to some professional media trainer. It's best if it's outside the organization because it's just. I know it sounds self serving for me to say this, but I know when I've worked within organizations before, it's just too close to comfort to critique someone that you see every day at the coffee pot or in the mess hall. So I'd recommend you send it to some outside trainer. Certainly this is a service I make available to clients and prospects at no charge. Send the video to someone and have them give a detailed analysis. So what I do with the CEO video sent to me is I'll look at it. I write down a detailed list of everything the person did well. Then I talk about areas for improvement and exactly what needs to be done and how it would happen. And I typically do this in a short, 2, 3 minute video. Send that to the head of PR or the person's assistant. The CEO looks at it and that whets the appetite for someone wanting to learn more. Here's the key in how you criticize you have to lead with a person's strengths and you have to be highly, highly specific in how you praise them. It can't just be generic. Oh, you're a great communicator. You've got to say, Mr. Ms. CEO did the following things really well. Great use of hands, excellent expressiveness with the face. Speaking speed was great. You have to really, really chronicle everything they do well. Then focus on exactly what they're doing wrong and how you would fix it. Focus on those things and I think you're going to be in much better shape when it comes to getting that CEO to agree to time spent. Let's just say time spent getting better with media skills. Whether we call it training, practice or rehearsal. In a moment, I'll answer the question I do get from time to time, which is why is media training so expensive?

Speaking is brought to you by Media Training Worldwide. For all of your media training and public speaking training needs, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com.

Apologies if this seems self serving, but it is a question I do get from time to time and what better forum to discuss it than right here? People ask me TJ or why is media training so expensive? I didn't budget that. Why do you have that's cheaper? Here's one of the questions I have for people. If you were going to buy an ad in a Super bowl for a million dollars or two million dollars, are you going to just create an ad by holding up your cell phone and talking for 30 seconds and spending $0? Are you going to ask your kid or family member to hold up a camcorder and do a couple edits and maybe spend $1,000 and then you'd save money for that 2 million dollar ad. You could do that. Of course most people would say that's crazy teacher, that's insane. If we're going to spend 2, 3 million dollars for an ad, we'll spend at least a couple hundred thousand dollars creating the ad because we want the quality to really be there if we're going to be in front of all those people. It's really no different when it comes to media skills. So many people will spend small fortunes on public relations firms to get them placements. And I'm certainly not knocking PR firms, they provide a highly valuable service. But if you're doing interviews every single month, after a year or two, quite often the big difference in how far up you go, the media food chain, how many additional interviews you get, how much more coverage, it's a function of how good you are in the interviews. Simply spending all your time on placement and being average or so so or below average is, is counterproductive because you're not building long term relationships with the media. They're not seeing you as a great guest and you're just not helping yourself. So it's, I hate to use the cliche pennywise pound foolish, but it really is that situation. Now if you're doing all your own publicity yourself, you're spending $0 on placement. Well then by all means you might want to go and get an online media training course. I mean, I have some that are as little as $20. That may be the best option for you. But spend something if you're spending any money on placement. I frankly think it's insane not to spend a certain percentage of your overall PR budget on media training so that you create something better. Talk to any publishing house. It's not just about the money you spend buying a book. You have to spend some money editing it. You have to spend some money laying it out. You could buy the best written novel in the world if you just photocopy it and you don't do any editing or any spell check, no one's going to buy it. And unfortunately that's the same situation with a lot of people's media skills. If you want to really get the most out of what your PR firm is doing, if you want to get the most out of your placements in your interviews and you want to get invited back, then you need to be not just competent, not just articulate, not just comfortable, you need to be great. And the way to do that is to get professional media training. Sorry, that sounds self serving folks, but it happens to be true. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. As always, may all of your presentations in life be a huge success.