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

Speaking with TJ Walker, dissecting the communication skills and practices of world class leaders. He's an expert on media training, crisis communications, but not in the US not in Western Europe, on the other side of the world. Pete Burden joins us today from Christchurch, New Zealand, where he's a media training practitioner. He works with major corporations, governments. He's also the author of Media Training for Modern Leaders, an excellent text. I do recommend it. Pete Burdon, thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me, T.J. so Pete, how is media?

You follow the U.S. i mean, I hate to sound egotistical, but it is true. Those of us in the US Often follow just US politics. And the media trainers I've encountered around the world also follow the US Even though they follow their own politics. How is dealing with the media different in a place like New Zealand, which I've never practiced there but I have been there, compared to the United States?

Well, I think it's all very similar, really. The one difference I'd say is that particularly with the political side of things, it can be a lot meaner in the States. I mean, obviously we've got Donald Trump at the moment who's a bit different from probably anyone else. But I think there's far more attack politics going on in the US Than there is here. I mean, our politicians tend to focus far more on what they're going to do rather than necessarily what's bad about the other side.

Really. It's hard to even imagine.

Yeah, I think that's not overly surprising, is it? But that is definitely a major one. I think the rest of it though, I mean, it's all very much the same. I mean, the process the media works under is the same. I think you've got more, far more your media, it's far less, what should I say, circumspect than ours. I mean, I think your media, you know, with your freedom of the press and all those sorts of things going on, the media probably has a slightly bigger reign in the stakes than it does in the rest of the world.

In your book Media Training for Modern Leaders, what's new there? What really stands out that the typical business executive hasn't heard before? Because if they're savvy leaders, they've probably heard the basics of smile on camera, don't say anything stupid. Off the record, what else do you teach them?

Well, the unique part of the book is that at the end of every chapter I have a section on how things have changed in the digital age. And that's things like, for example when you're creating your media message nowadays, you've got to basically have your three points done in 25 seconds. The time you have to reply to media is basically half an hour now, whereas it used to be you just needed to worry about tonight's news, TV news or tomorrow's newspaper. So when there's a major issue, you've got to get back to the media straight away, rather than just just going back to them before their deadline. That a lot of media trainers tell their clients.

Interesting, interesting historical tidbit. Here in the United States, people often refer to the Tylenol crisis as one of the best managed crisis communications jobs ever by corporate communications. This has happened many decades ago when Tylenol was poisoned. But the thing everyone forgets now is they took more than 24 hours to respond to the media. These days. Your company would be rolled up and shipped out to sea if you waited 24 hours to respond.

Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's just totally different. And I mean, as I've seen you talk about a lot on your YouTube channel, I mean, there's been so many crises over the last even six months where they've just dealt with it terribly and they haven't come out as they've needed to because as you well know, the problem is that the media will write their story in about half an hour, if not less, and then they'll send it through all their social media channels. And then if you're not in that story, all it says is you couldn't be contacted or you refuse to comment or something, and then you get hammered on social media. So you've got to get back straight away and you've got to have a plan in place. And that's something most people in my experience don't understand. And that's a huge difference. Now with the media, how do you make that?

Certainly you have a great country and very prosperous economy, high standard of living. But I have noticed when I do trainings around the world, in smaller countries, people often use that as an excuse to not take media training seriously, to not budget money for this sort of training. What's your experience being in a media market the size of yours?

I find that there's actually a lot of my clients I have to educate them to what media training even is sometimes. I mean, a lot of people don't seem to even know that it's available out there. I mean, just about every leader I deal with had some fear of the media and a lot of them don't even realise that Media training is out there available for them. So that's the thing I find the most surprising.

Who are some of the superstars that we might not have heard about in New Zealand? I mean, who is the most famous, well respected person as a speaker and as a communicator?

Well, our Prime Minister at the moment is very good. I mean, in fact, him and Barack Obama are quite good friends. I mean, he even. He had a round of golf with them, I know, about a year ago, because our Prime Minister has a house in Hawaii. He is very good at getting his message across and he's fantastic at it because even as I know a lot of the things you talk about, tj, he dresses up his points into really interesting sound bites. Like he uses analogies with our national rugby team, the All Blacks, so often to get his point across. And it works every time. And I use that a lot in my trainings. As an example.

Your neighbor to the north, Australia, does get a fair amount of media attention in the world press and that seeps into the US press. What do you think of their coverage when it comes to the refugee crisis and other recent international crises?

Well, I think they've got a bit of work to do there, really. I mean, we like to see ourselves as quite a humanitarian country and I think Australia to some extent does too. But they have got a few things going on that they really need to look at there. And, you know, that's something that is quite big over here and it is quite a political issue, even though it's not necessarily going on in New Zealand because there is some talk about, you know, what we should be doing. Should we be pushing Australia to deal with it differently? Should we be pushing to take some of these refugees? So that becomes a bit of an issue for us as well.

The name of the book is Media Training for Modern Leaders. Our special guest today, Pete Burden. His website is mediatrainingnz co.nz Pete, thanks for being our guest today. Okay, stop. That was sort of a typical six, seven minute interview that you might get if you're on a local national talk radio show, TV show. Now we come to the portion of the show where we kind of step back and analyze it. Pete, what were you trying to do in that interview? You've done other interviews promoting your book. How do you figure out what your key message points are and how to make it work with an audience?

Are we not on there, tj?

Oh, no, we're on. This is the part of the show, the real meat of the show, where we're actually Analyzing what we do, this is what our listeners crave the most. So this is actually the more important part of the show.

Okay, yeah. Well, look, basically when it comes to working out what you want to do.

You and I apologize. Timeout, one second. Let's use this as a learning moment, folks. I'm the host of this show and the producer of the show. That was not a mistake on Pete's part. I could take the easy way out and edit that out, but I want to use this as a learning experience. That was my fault. I didn't alert him to this segment of the show. Now, I have typically emailed all of our guests about the format of the show and that this was coming. And it just now occurred to me that I did Pete a disservice by doing that. But let's use that as a learning moment for the show. Okay, Pete, I'll let you pick up from there.

No worries. Look, I mean, basically when it comes to any, any interview or whether it be a quick one with the media, you know, for tv, whether it's something long like this, I mean, basically it's all about working at what I want to get across and then also working out what your listeners want to hear. Okay? And then it's, it's basically just focusing on those things throughout.

Now, you come to this from a long time experience on, on all sides of the microphone. You've been a print journalist, you've been an electronic journalist, you've been a government press secretary, you've got a master's degree in journalism. So you have an extraordinarily well rounded background from all of this perspective. How has that shaped your perspective? Because I've noticed that, for example, when someone is just a TV journalist for 20 years and then they hop into media training, they tend to spend all their time just telling executives to not say things that are annoying to journalists. Well, that's only a part of the puzzle. That's really only one part of it. And you do a disservice by just telling people what to avoid. How have your experiences fused together to give you your training philosophy when it comes to working with CEOs, politicians and others?

Yeah, well, that's a really good point and I agree. I think having that being on both sides of it is really important because I have run into journalists just like you're saying there, and basically they just always say, just tell the truth, just tell the truth. And there's not really much else to it. And while we're always going to do, we're not going to lie and we're going to tell the truth as much as we can. I mean, it's a little bit more complex than that. And I mean, even when I was the press secretary, there were a few issues going on where we just could not say what was happening. Okay. That didn't mean we were going to lie, but it also meant that we couldn't tell the truth. So there are strategies you need around those sorts of things that I think you only understand if you've actually been in a high stakes situation, whether, you know, working for a government minister or a congressman or whatever it might be. Because the role of a journalist is just to get a good story. Well, we want to get the good story, but we also want to get some points of ours out. And it's not always quite that plain and simple as a lot of journalists tend to think it is.

And what's your advice to clients who want to say no comment because it is a touchy area?

Well, I always tell them never to say no comment because those two words automatically make some people feel suspicious of why they said no comment. I mean, there's ways of saying no comment in far better ways. And one thing that can happen, and it happens here, I'm sure it happens all around the world, is that sometimes lawyers will tell the client, just don't say anything, don't comment. Well, I mean, for example, I was in a situation a few weeks ago where I had a lot of lawyers around the table about a particular issue and they weren't overly happy about saying too much about it. And yet what I was saying from the public relations side of it was, look, you can comment on this without taking any responsibility for the issue. So, you know, things like, look, our hearts go out to the family of the victim and, you know, basically something along those lines that might sound a little bit too corporate speak and then just explain what you're doing to help. You know, that sort of thing is fine, you need to do that, and realistically that's all you can do. But when people say, oh no, you can't say anything, I think they're missing the point because, I mean, the lawyer's there to keep you out of jail, basically. Whereas what I'm there to do and what you're there to do is to maintain their reputation so their business can continue working. And if they don't deal with it right early on in that initial period, even as we were talking about before, literally in that first 15 minutes, half an hour, they might not have a business the Next day.

Who have you seen destroy their businesses or their institutions because of bad media in the us? I mean, the most noticeable one in the last half dozen years, of course, is bp. They're a British based company, but what happened to them? How their CEO spoke in the US really destroyed their reputation with their Gulf spill. And their comments, his comments specifically, like, I want my life back. It's America. Of course there'll be frivolous lawsuits. And they lost $35 billion in market cap within six months in part because of poor crisis communications. Who else stands out to the New Zealand audience as far as just classic example of bad communication in a crisis?

Well, the big one over here, it's one that you probably haven't heard about. It was about a year and a half ago now where our big milk producing company, Fonterra, had a huge issue. It was a botulism scare and there was the fears that there was botulism and that babies were going to get botulism from the milk we were exporting to Japan. And the company was terrible. It took ages to say anything about it. And then even when it did say something, the spokespeople weren't available. So they had some person that was lower down the pecking order who clearly hadn't had any form of media training. This was an absolute nightmare. And I know since then Fonterra have done a lot of work to try and fix this up because as a small country that we are, and you know, dairy is a huge export of ours and China is basically the biggest market we export to, that is an absolute disaster. I mean, if they decide not to take our milk, that has a huge impact on our economy. So as far as this goes, in New Zealand, that is clearly the big one.

And milk is one of those industries that people don't think, you say media trainer to people and they think, oh, the big corporate executive, the politician. And dairy is a classic industry that is susceptible to crises in the media because you've got, as you mentioned, botulism, you've got hoof and mouth disease, you have various diseases that can affect mad cow disease. Earlier in my career, I've worked with dozens, if not hundreds of dairy farmers because this issue is so big. And it just goes to show that really, there's no industry immune from having its reputation destroyed in the media.

That's right.

We're speaking with Pete Burden. He is the author of Media Training for Modern Leaders. He is one of or the preeminent media trainer in New Zealand. He comes to us today from Christchurch, New Zealand. I haven't been to Christchurch. I have been to Auckland. Beautiful country. Hope to get back there sometime. How did you get into this business? Before you were a media trainer, you were government spokesperson and you were in the media. Did you grow up wanting to be a journalist or what sparked your initial interest in communication?

Well, I've always been quite an inquisitive person. And it's funny, when I went into university, I still didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then I went to a career consultant and I basically did this exercise where you list all your interests and all of your skills and you put them together and it was interesting because everything that came up there is what I've been doing. I mean, journalists came up, press secretary came up, Excuse me, even media trainer came up. And it turns out that that's exactly what I've done.

Wait, wait, you're telling me there was a college career counselor that. And this is. You're not as old as I am, but you didn't go to college. Yesterday they had media trainer and press secretary as a possibility for a job career.

Yep. This was, Well, I had, I had to come up with the, I had to go and do the research on exactly what the, what those jobs were that meet those skills. But press secretary certainly came up. I mean, we are talking 20 years ago, so it's still a wee while ago.

Okay, and so how did you, how did you get motivated before that? Were you a news junkie? I mean, when I was 12 years old, I know I started to, or earlier started to read the newspaper every day and I was one of these weird kids. On Friday night I wanted to watch Firing Line with William F. Buckley, one of the only public affairs TV show. This is back in the 70s. Were you a news junkie?

Yeah, I'd always, you know, I'd always loved those news TV shows. And I tell you what, really, what really got me going was it was my last year of school, high school, and I was in the football team and I got on the paper and there was a big picture of me on the back page of the local paper. And that was just such a buzz. And then I sort of gleid from that, I think, and then, you know, just thinking what it would look like to have your own byline under a new story, which just really was just so exciting for me. And that kind of just led on to, you know, that's where I ended up.

Nothing like that thrill of seeing your name in print or your face. And let's Face it, I'm certainly not immune. You scratch a typical journalist or a media trainer, you are going to find somebody with a bigger ego than most. Speaking of big egos, I have to ask you not to weigh in on the politics of the situation, but what is the perspective of people in New Zealand when they see the news coverage of Donald Trump gaining a major party nomination in America?

Total surprise. I mean, I haven't heard anyone, you know, left wing, right wing from any political party here that has any time for Donald Trump. I mean, they just think the guy's a nutter basically and can't understand why anyone would vote for him.

Well, there are a lot of people in the United States who feel the same way. No one has tuned into this program to hear my political views, so I'm not going to weigh in. But what's filtering into the international media over there? What sort of statements are you hearing from Donald Trump and what is your reaction? I mean, do you just think the United States has collectively gone mad or what's your perspective?

Yeah, well, that's an element of that. I mean, we get that most nights now. I mean, since the, you know, the conventions. I mean, we've been getting stuff right through and including all those. Yeah, no, I mean, again, I mean, I just come back to the media training element of this is that, you know, we just see the stories with a few sound bites from Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. And of course, you know, Donald Trump, I mean, I think he's pretty good with the media really, isn't he? I mean, because he knows how to use that, you know, attack element. Attack element in a sound bite. So that's all we basically see. We just see a standard news story, quick sound bite from Donald Trump and that's all we see. And so, you know.

Well, that's pretty much all we see too. He is the master of the sound bite, there's no doubt about that.

That's right. I mean the thing here is, and I always talk about, in my blogs and you know, anyone I talk about sort of always says it, well, where's the detail? You know, and I keep saying, I always say that, look, I think when he gets put up with Hillary Clinton and it's one on one debates, I think he's going to fail because I mean, I don't see how he can, he can, you know, how is he going to put these things into practice? He talks about. And when he's on stage with 11 people like he was in all those earlier debates, I mean, there was Absolutely no time for him to be able to give any details. So it was absolutely perfect for him because he just had to nail a sound bite and he knew he'd get all the news.

But.

But now things are changing and I can't see that he's going to be able to justify what he says.

Oh, Pete, we'll be great. We'll be fantastic. We'll be winning so much. You'll be tired of winning. I've got great people for all that. That's my lame Donald Trump impersonation. But we will say we'll have to have you back after the election and you can give your analysis from afar on that as well. I am interested in how the craft of media training is practiced in various countries, various continents and niches. I mean, I. I'm always surprised. I go to some countries and people tell me, oh, yes, we never do any training unless it's at least three full days. And I go to other places and they say, oh, yeah, I. I can never get more than one hour with somebody and I have to go back once every three weeks for six months. There's a lot of different ways of training someone. What's the typical way you do it in New Zealand?

Well, I prefer to do it over a full day with anything up to six people. No more than six people. I try and do that because, as you well know, it's being on camera the most that counts. And if you're not on camera a lot during that day, it's a waste of time. I mean, I do know there are a lot of media trainers here that do half a day. And I mean, that's okay. I don't mind half a day, but you really only want to have about two people there for half a day. So it really does vary. And then other people I talk to say they've done media training and you talk to them a bit longer, and it means they've been to some presentation where they've just heard how it works and all this is what you've got to do. And I find that a little bit. I always say to people that I find that a little bit distressing in some ways. Not from my point of view, but from theirs. Because people hear what to do and then they think they're automatically just. They'll just put that into practice when they need to. But as you and I both know, it's like riding a bike. It's one thing knowing how to do something, but actually doing it in practice is something totally different. And I think a Lot of people here and even some media. A lot of media trainers here don't have enough time on camera with their clients.

Yeah, absolutely. You're preaching to the choir. It's absolutely a function of time on camera. Learning how to speak to the media by watching someone speak is like learning how to drive only by watching a video on YouTube. If that's how you learned how to drive, I don't want to be on the road when you're there. Walk us through it. What's a typical day like? Let's say I'm one of the six executives at a major learning institution or a major energy company in New Zealand, or they're in Christchurch. I show up for the training with you. What's going to happen to me today?

Okay, well, the first thing that happens when you come in is we do a quick interview. We do an interview basically just on anything. There's no major topic. It's probably, I'm going to ask you about your job or your business or something because. And I know that you do this too, because I have seen your videos about this. Because it doesn't matter who it is. Everyone's always just totally nervous at the beginning. They're just worried how they're going to look. They don't want to make a fool of themselves. So we get them on camera straight away, everyone, and then we look at that back and we're all positive with the critiques. And then everyone sort of got a little bit of confidence. And so then what I do, I go through the different stages of the interview and after each stage we'll go and we'll do an on camera interview. Like, for example, first of all, I always talk about dealing with the initial approach from a journalist because some people, you know, I mean, the last thing you want to do is do an interview sort of right on the spot. And then it's how to deal with an ambush interview, that sort of thing. So we firstly, we talk about that and then I normally go in and I do another quick, spontaneous interview. And I'm not telling them this, but it's actually about body language. And so we'll watch that one back and we'll turn the sound down and we'll have a look and see how they actually look. Because as you know, body language is hugely important for TV and even radio because it affects the tone of your voice to hear your sound. So then we go through, we look at how to create a message. We'll do some exercises on creating messages. Again, we'll do some interviews on the message and then we'll go through and we'll create some sound bites for that message, do some more interviews and then I'll tell them about a number of traps they can fall into with the media, like repeating negative statements, all these sorts of things. We'll do some more interviews and then a few times throughout that day as well I actually get them to interview each other because I think it's really important that they understand what it's like to be the journalist. And I find that quite, I get a lot of different feedback from that. I mean, some people say it was easy, some people say they hated it. They far rather be the person being interviewed because that's one thing I think people don't realize. Most people tend to think that media are out to get them and that's it. But what they don't realize is that journalist needs to go back to the editor with a story and they're going to go back with a story. So you might as well help them out. And you do that by dressing up your points into effective sound bites. But like you say, it's all about doing the stuff on camera. So you do need to know the theory behind it. But then you've got to put all that into practice. And I try not to do it all together. But if I'm doing the, if we're doing an interview on just getting the message across, well then I'm not worried about body language because I think it's too much for people to be focused on all these things together, you know, in a couple of hours.

Focus on one skill at a time.

That's right.

I'm not going to ask you to give names, but can you share with us any experiences in training that it really didn't work well or there was a problem? I mean I, I had a training a few years ago, an executive at a high tech company and the in house PR council was also asking questions for the sample press conference. He didn't like the questions. He started screaming, cursing at her, cursing her out and crying uncontrollably. I have never seen anything like it. And once I was working with a Prime Minister of Caribbean nation and we were asking fairly straightforward questions and he says that's a ridiculous question. I refuse to answer your question. Next question. Now we shaped him up by the end of the day, but he clearly did not understand the premise at the beginning. Can you share with us any of your experiences with people who had a hard time in this?

Well, there was one, there was one time a few years Ago, it was actually a retirement village, I'm not sure what you call them over in the States. Basically a place where old people go to, you know, towards the end of their life.

Retirement home, elderly, elderly, assisted living facility, things like that.

Yeah, anyway, I was doing it. I was doing a thing with a few managers of these places and one of them, when I was being the journalist, I was, you know, as you do sort of later in the day, I was being quite pushy with her, honest, you know, trying to test her out on how she would deal with a, you know, really tough interviewer. And she was getting, I could see she was getting really, really annoyed. And every time I asked her another question, she, she looked really annoyed and she literally, I thought she was going to throw a handbag at me because she had a handbag to throw and she was sort of pulling, holding it and stuff. And then afterwards I said to her, look, you realize this is just mock. I'm not, you know, I'm not being real. And she sort of, she sort of said, oh yes. And she was. But the rest of the day she was fairly kind of, she was so, you know, she was so anti me. And it was, it was quite funny really. I mean, the others saw the humor in it, but she, she was, took everything I said totally personally because, I mean, I was saying that, you know, this is your fault, you know, the death is blooming, you know, it's your retirement homes policies are all stuffed and, you know, this sort of thing. And just to see how she would react. But she took it so personally that, you know, but that's the only time I've ever had one like that. I mean, you get some, where you have, get some sort of very weird answers that, you know, you've sort of think, well, that's great you're doing media training because if you see that on live tv, you know, your government would fold or your business would be at an end straight away.

You know, the perfect time to give a horrible response is in media training when nobody else is going to see it in the real world.

That's right.

And do you have any, any trainees, any clients who just still can't get over the nervousness? I'll never forget once I was working with a woman at a major oil refinery and this was speech training, public speaking training, not media training. And I did what I always do, had her stand up, give her introductory speech, just a short few words. She fell down, went into the fetal position and started crying. She was just so nervous or scared, different People react to the stress differently. Have you had anyone maybe not that dramatic an example, but just really have difficulty with the nerves?

Yeah, I mean I do get that. I mean most of them actually come across, you know, they'll tell you they're really nervous but it doesn't always doesn't necessarily come across. And I think that's a big confidence issue for a lot of them. But no, there have been some that are absolute. I mean I've had people that are literally shaking. Not a lot, I must say. And there is a political, I won't say what the political party is here, but I do training for a candidate college for a political party here and that involves about 30 odd people and so the odd one there, I've noticed they get really, really nervous because they're also being tested on whether they're going to be a good candidate and things as well.

And what's your advice to someone if you're watching the video of the trainee and it's clear to that person and to you that their hands are shaking visibly or some other body part, what do you then say to them? What's the very first technique you suggest that they do for the next interview?

Well, I always just say to them it's all about practice. I mean the next interview will be easier and the one after that will be a bit easier and the one after that will be a bit easier. And that is always the case. I mean, I use the analogy, I mean I'm certainly no athlete but seven years ago I ran my first marathon, but I didn't and my only marathon and I'm not going to be running anymore. But I didn't walk out on the day of the marathon and run a marathon. I mean I started running five kilometres, then I started running 10km and then I started running 15km and then I became got the skill to be able to run a full marathon. And I look at that same in this thing as well. I mean it doesn't matter what someone comes along to, the media, training, at what level they come to the event, they'll always leave a lot better. But then they have to go away then and do their own as well. There's just, there's no other way to do it and I think pretty much anyone can do it. But it's just some people need more practice than others and some people will start at a lower level than others but they can all. Some people learn at a faster rate. So that's what I always say. I mean, you know, I say don't Be despondent about this. You can fix this, but you have to practice.

I never really thought about the analogy with the marathon, but I think it is so apt in so many ways. At first glance, a marathon is basically impossible. I mean, the first person allegedly who ever ran a marathon then instantly died from exhaustion. But most physical fitness experts will tell you, as you implied, anyone who trains properly can run a marathon. You might not win the race, you might not get to the Olympics, but if you just put in the time and do the homework, you can in fact complete a marathon. And I would say the same with basic media expertise, anyone who has the basic physical skills. Now, with marathon, if you have severe physical problems, obviously maybe you can't. But when it comes to dealing with the media, if you have a tongue and a basic ability to think, you can communicate effectively.

Absolutely.

Now, I'm just curious. You ran your first marathon at age 38. Congratulations. Were you able to do a media interview afterwards? If someone had said, as you're finishing the crossing the finish line, how does it feel? What would you have said or done?

No, I would have been struggling. I had severe cramp in my legs. I could hardly walk. And even the next day when I went to work, I literally had to get my leg out of the car. I had to pull my trouser because my leg wouldn't actually move out of the car properly.

Well, I congratulate you for the tenacity and discipline of doing that. When I was 40, I decided I was going to run a marathon and I started training a little. But I also decided I would get laser eye surgery because I was also vain. The vanity won out. And because I got the laser surgery like the week before, the doctor said, well, you can't do any extreme physical exercise. So that was my excuse to not run the marathon. So that was a as close as I ever got to it.

Still plenty of time, T.J.

You know, now I've read so, so many negative things about what it does to your joints and bones and other things. I'm just not convinced it's good for the health benefits. And I put that into I'm 53 years old now, and it's not that I'm old, but I am more careful these days about saying, am I doing that because I really want to do it, or am I doing it because I want to be able to tell other people I've done it? And a marathon is one of those things where, if I'm really honest with myself, I don't want to run a Marathon. The only reason for me to do it would be so I could brag and, you know, put on Facebook. Here I am on the finish line.

Well, I did a bit of that, too. Okay. I must say, the reason, for me, I mean, the reason I did it was because I'd done a few half marathons and then I thought, well, why don't I knock down half of something here? I've got to do a full something. And that's kind of where it came from.

You know, you've got to know what you like and don't like and what your goals are. For me, what I try to do is 12,500 steps a day. I play competitive tennis two, three times a week and I lift weights once a week. And it's not going to get me into the Mr. Universe contest, but it gets me. It gets me a little thinner and I think in better shape than any other man I know my own age who's not an athlete.

Well, believe me, my time was nothing near Olympic qualification.

Well, just finishing is an accomplishment. We're speaking to Pete Burton, who is the author of Media Training for Modern Leaders. He is one of the most well known and in fact, arguably the preeminent media trainer in New Zealand. He's based in Christchurch. If you want more information or if you're listening to us from that part of the world or Australia Pacific, you may want to engage him directly. You can find out more by going to mediatraining nz Co nz. Pete, you have a lot of experience working with educators. I have worked with educators, but I always find there's the case of just the old expression, the cobbler's children wear no shoes, that educators who claim to care the most about education are often the hardest to get them to commit to being educated about dealing with the media. And certainly when you look at formal education programs, whether it's for business, law, journalism, there's very little training and typically no training. Or if there is training, it's bad training on how to speak to the media. Sure, there are journalism courses on how to write stories and ask questions, but at least in the United States, there's. There's virtually no training in the academic world about how to be interviewed or speak to the media. What's it like there?

Yeah, it's exactly the same here. I mean, there's nothing. And the thing with the educators too, I find, is, I mean, it's a lot. It's almost like a little niche of mine over here, which is great because, I mean, these people are basically CEOs of schools. I mean, schools are a big one. I do, I also do other education as well, but schools are the big one. And I mean, as I said, I mean These guys are CEOs of a lot of kids and 95% of them came to that job through being a teacher. And so they've got absolutely no idea whatsoever about how to deal with the media. And the reason they come to me is because they're all concerned that their school is going to be the next one that hits the media spotlight. Because I'm sure it's the same over there. There's always something going. There's a bus crash with kids or there's some bullying accusations or, you know, it's always happening at some school and it's almost like luck of the draw to whether your school is going to be the one that gets picked on. And so they do my training as an insurance policy against that happening to them.

And as well they should, because schools are magnets for media attention. And unlike an oil refinery or an industrial plant, every reporter in the world feels perfectly entitled. And I think they are. I don't think it's misplaced. But to just march right into the school and demand to speak to the principal. It's taxpayer paid, it's a public entity and there has to be accountability and transparency. What is your advice to principals or CEOs of schools in this situation when they're so often put in a bind where something bad has happened, but they can't really talk about an individual student because there is presumably confidentiality for any one student.

Well then they can, I mean, they just have to talk generically about, you know, about the issue without actually talking about their kid. I mean, they'll talk about the policies they've got in place to deal with these issues. You know, they'll talk about how, you know, how the safety is vital for, you know, safety of the students is vital. And while those statements aren't overly attractive to the media, they need to be dressed up in ways that do make them attractive to the media. So again, that's like we were talking about earlier about not saying no comment. There are ways you can do that and give the journalists something the journalists can use because that's the big thing here. The journalist needs the story. So you've got to give the journalist something, but you dress up your points. And again, very few people over here actually know how to dress up a point. And so that's when the journalist goes negative on them.

And when you say juice, are you Saying juice up a point to make it more interesting.

Yes.

As in turning it into a sound bite. How do you get politicians, executives, educators to really understand the difference between a message point and a sound bite? Because I find with my own clients, people confuse the two. They think it's arbitrary. They think it's a matter of luck of what gets quoted and what doesn't.

It really is an education thing. I mean, like I've mentioned before, even a lot of the, you know, the CEOs and people over here don't really understand the media training thing or what it's all about. Most people just think the media's out to get them and they're scared of the media. And that's it. That's bottom line. They don't. And they certainly don't understand that if they take it out of context or quote it out of context, which is the big complaint, they don't understand why that's the case. They don't realize that the media will just pick little pieces out of what they say and use that. They don't understand that. They seem to think that the media will pick the little bit out that they want them to pick out. But as we all know, the media doesn't work that way. And it's very hard with some to actually say to them, you can actually have a huge influence over the story, but a lot of nada. Media will go and do what they want anyway. It can be very hard to get that point through.

There are biases in the media. Media can be unfair, as I always stress to my own clients. There can be left wing bias, right wing bias, institutional bias. But the number one bias most reporters have is a bias in favor of anything interesting enough to get the story either published or on the air and not thrown away. And if you come into the interview with something interesting to say, then really everybody can win.

Absolutely. I mean, that's. Again with the book. I mean, that's one thing. I try and make the whole sort of theme of the book while it's, you know, I've got those bits about how things have changed a bit over the last few years. The whole emphasis of that book is to create that win, win situation. You get your points across and the journalist gets a good story.

And this has been a win, win situation for our listeners. Pete Burden, thank you so much for being our guest. The book is Media Training for Modern Leaders. I'll provide a link to it in the show notes. You can purchase that at Amazon. Don't worry about the book getting lost in the mail coming from New Zealand. You can have it instantly brought to you through Amazon. The website is mediatraining nz Co nz. Pete, thanks again for being our guest. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for listening to Speaking with TJ Walker. Where the communication skills and practices of world class leaders are dissected.