CS Insights: Media Training Matters

Ed Hammond spent nearly 20 years as a journalist at Bloomberg and the Financial Times before co-founding Collected Strategies. He now spends a significant amount of time coaching clients to prepare for and manage their engagements with the press. He shares a few points on why training for an interview matters.   

How you say it counts

There isn’t a perfect formula for preparing for a TV or radio interview. Some people like to memorize talking points, hoping to find an organic moment to slip in a pre-prepared statement, others like to game out the questions  they’ll face and run through practice answers. Few think about voice.

For many of us, voice is the tool we use most and do the least to hone. Besides  perhaps dropping the rougher edges of whatever regional accent we bring to the party, the question of how we sound when we speak is an afterthought. To understand why that is, it’s worth looking beyond the obvious explanation  that talking alone into the mirror feels, well, a bit odd.

That a rehearsed voice is an inauthentic one is a common misconception, and as with most misconceptions there is some truth to it: too much practice tends to make you sound like a robot. But between the raw and the robotic, there is  potential for improved authenticity. Here’s why harnessing it is worthwhile.

1. You want people to remember what you say

Broadcast audiences absorb two things: what you say and how you say it. If the voice is too nervous, too stumbling, or just too uncomfortable they will become mesmerized by the performance rather than interested in what you’re saying.  Even the best landed talking point loses its appeal if spoken poorly.

2. Control is currency in an interview

Having it breeds confidence to counterbalance the squirmy feeling that comes with being asked questions in front of an audience. It is hard to feel  simultaneously nervous and in control. And it is why we prepare soundbites –  controlling what we are going to say gives us a feeling of confidence, but it is an imperfect solution because unless you know exactly what you’re going to be asked, you can’t control what you’ll say. What is in your gift is how you say it - the speed, timbre, intonation, the pauses (pregnant or otherwise). If you are speaking, you control how it sounds.

3. You don't need to be too real

Such are the careful contrivances on which a broadcast interview is built - a preplanned conversation, usually between a professional asker and a subject who has some basis for providing informed answers, replete with bright lights, cameras, microphones, face-plastering make-up - that it can never be called an authentic experience. So, while it is important to not come over as fake, there is no penalty for taming your voice beyond its unadulterated state to better suit an environment so unlike anything we might call real life.