Speak to Lead

Biden vs Ryan: A lesson from Ronald Reagan for Republicans & Democrats

          The conventional wisdom  seems to be that Joe Biden is going to be wiped out by Paul Ryan. Why? Because, the thinking goes, Joe Biden is everyone's lovable, but crazy, uncle. He is gaffe prone. He has never demonstrated any depth of knowledge of financal details.

On the other hand, Paul Ryan is the ultimate policy wonk, for whom an enjoyable evening is sitting reading the federal budget. His command of budgetary issues will show up Biden's lack of substance.

          The Obama campaign is clearly worried. Biden has been pulled in for several hours of debate prep daily for nearly a week. 

          But perhaps Democrats are being overly cautious; Republican, overconfident. Both can learn from this lession from Ronald Reagan.

         Ronald Reagan's first debate of his reelection run in 1984 was a disaster. Some campaign staff coached him to master mounds of financial numbers and other statistics. But Reagan was not a detailed numbers guy.

        The result? He stumbled. He looked uncertain, confused. He was off his game. And the dominent impression from the debate was "he's too old."

        In preparation for the second debate, Deputy Chief of Staff Mike Deaver proclaimed, "Let Reagan be Reagan." The President followed the now-famous dictum and went back to doing what he did best: sharing his vision for America and connecting with the voters.

          Here's what will bring victory Thursday night:

1. Let Biden be Biden (but without the gaffes). Don't try to turn Biden into a statistician. Give him control of a couple of topics in which he sounds in control of key figures. Then let him do what he does best: relate to the needs of average Americans.
2. Let Ryan be Ryan. But humanize him. Fewer numbers, more impact of those numbers on the average American. Demonstrate he knows people even better than numbers. More vision. Most viewers are no more excited about numbers than Reagan.
3. Keep Ryan passionate, but not angry or testy. Follow the example of his running-mate, Mitt Romney, who, while assertive and energized and confident, was unfailingly pleasant in the way he responded. Because crazy or not, no one likes their uncle to be attacked.

Happy viewing!

Media training: Storming out of a '60 Minutes' interview

Ragan's PR Daily post Watch interview subjects storm out of '60 Minute' interviews by Kevin Allen contains a video (also included below) featuring some of the walk-off highlights from '60 Minutes' history.

If you or one of your clients is being interviewed by '60 Minutes' and feels an urge to get up and walk off, here's some advice from Steve Kroft. Note his answer to the following question:

Q. When [someone walks off] do you feel the promise of a great story happening before your eyes, or do you feel a sense of failure?

A. I think it depends on the point at which they walk out. If they walk out in the first 10 minutes of the interview, you don't have a piece. If they walk out toward the end of the interview, then you've got a lot of material and you've got a piece. And you don't have to write the ending! 

So what's the message? Well, first of all if you've been properly prepared for the interview, you won't have to walk out. But if you haven't been prepared (If you aren't prepared is it hubris or stupidity that is causing you to do the interview?) and are doing poorly, better to cut your losses early.

 

Persuasion: Preparing Spokespersons to Handle Sensitive Questions

In the previous post, Interview Prep: Was spokesman being honest or just nervous?, you saw what can happen when the spokesperson is not properly prepared to handle sensitive questions.

Mr. Hallor appears to me to be a likeable and competent guy with a genuine concern for the public's safety who wants to be helpful to the reporter. This should have been an interesting interview that aired once and then was forgotten.

But the interview goes viral because Hallor acknowledges that WMDs have been found in the U.S., only to have the onsite public affairs person, followed by a written statement, and a phone call to the station (20+ days after the interview-how's that for timely response?!) clarify Hallor's "misstatement."

So how could (and should) this have been prevented? Here are 5 steps for handling sensitive questions:

Interview prep: WMDs in U.S.? Was spokesman being honest or just nervous? You Decide.

A posting today on TheBlaze alerted me to this interview from ABC affiliate KGTV in San Diego. 

In the interview the assistant port director, Al Hallor, indicates that weapons of mass "effect" have been found, although not at the port. A statement from the Department of Homeland Security to KGTV, however, "clarifies" Hallor's response saying he was "nervous and misspoke."

Watch the interview and decide for yourself. Did nervousness cause Hallor to "misspeak"? Or was he speaking from experience?

Let me know what you think.

And let me know what you feel about the new we-don't-want-to-scare-anyone relabeling weapons of mass destruction as weapons of mass effect? Maybe the Twin Towers collapse was just an unfortunate aeronautic effect. 

 

I'll have tips on Wednesday on how to prepare a spokesperson to prevent these awkward interview moments. 

Persuasion: Dangerous Message - Joe Friday vs Clarence Darrow at Political Bloggers Conventions

"Just the facts, ma'am."* The phrase made famous by Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday, raised its deceptive head last week at the Netroots Nation (liberal) and RightOn (conservative) political bloggers annual conventions in Pittsburgh.

Toward the end of a Q&A session a woman stood up, thanked the presenters and said, "The facts are on our side. I realize now if we just get them out there, we will win."

In the non-partisan tradition of this blog, I won't be specific as to which of the conventions I attended. I did, however, expect the dangerous thinking exemplified above to be unique to us. I was therefore gratified to see an attendee of the other convention quoted in the newspaper professing the same misguided thinking.

Facts do not produce converts.

Facts are too susceptible to fabrication, half-truths, intentional and accidental misrepresentation, interpretation, skepticism, disinterest, rationalization, and denial. 

Facts can be useful in conversion, but only when used as part of a process, never as a stand alone.

If we want converts, we need to meet them where they are. We need to deal with their concerns, their perceptions, their assumptions, and their experiences. We need to build a relationship of genuine concern and trust.

And we need to offer, in the words of Bush 41, "that vision thing" so people find a better way.

Clarence Darrow, one of the most prominent American defense attorneys in the late 18- and early 1900s, summed it up well: "Don't give the jury reasons to acquit your client. Make them want to acquit him and they will provide the reasons." 

* Joe Friday actually never said the phrase he made famous. But he came close. What he did say was "All we need are the facts."

Media training/Reputation Protection: Reporter's Words You Don't Want to Read

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2009 (WWDC 2009) opened today in San Francisco. It's described by Apple as "the premier technical event for developers and IT professionals innovating with Apple platforms."

One thousand Apple engineers; 5,000 developers. A new iPhone expected to be announced.

And here is the first tweet from the Wall Street Journal's legendary dean of technology, Walt Mossberg (shown here with Steve Jobs):

waltmossbergAt Apple #WWDC where it's all about iPhones and AT&T service is overwhelmed. You'd think they'd have prepared better.

OUCH! "You'd think they'd have prepared better."! What a great first impression.

I don't have any inside info from AT&T as to what went wrong. Maybe they thought they had done everything possible. Coverage would be, it seems to me, an obvious concern. 

Still, having observed how often the obvious gets overlooked, I wonder if coverage was on anybody's checklist.

Where were the reputation czars for AT&T and it's iPhone partner, Apple?

Media Messages: Sound Bites Gone Wild - Over 30 Sound Bites in 1 Statement

One form of sound bite is the use of vivid words - words that evoke the five senses and emotions or are different (often made up). 

This is one of the most frequently used sound bite forms and generally involves using one, two or at most three vivid words. 

So it was with great delight that I read in The Washington Times the following statement by Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas). It contains nearly 40 clauses or phrases, any one of which could be lifted out and used as a sound bite or quote. Most of these sound bites are vivid words, but a couple of cliches, absolute statements and a prediction also appear. 

To make it easier for you to keep score, I've numbered the sound bites.

1) Could it be a bad dream or a nightmare? 2) Is it my imagination, or have we lost our minds? 3) It's surreal; it's just not believable. 4) A grand absurdity; 5) a great deception; 6) a delusion of  momentous proportions, 7) based on preposterous notions and on ideas whose time should never have come; 8) simplicity grossly distorted and complicated; 9) insanity passed off as logic; 10) grandiose schemes built on falsehoods with the morality of Ponzi and Madoff; 11) evil described as virtue; 12) ignorance pawned off as wisdom; 13) destruction and 

impoverishment in the name of humanitarianism; 14) violence, the tool of change; 15) preventive wars used as the road to peace; 16) tolerance delivered by government guns; 17) reactionary views in the guise of progress; 18) an empire replacing the republic; 19) slavery sold as liberty; 20) excellence and virtue traded for mediocrity; 21) socialism to save capitalism; 22) a government out of control, unrestrained by the Constitution, the rule of law, or morality; 23) bickering over petty politics as we collapse into chaos; 24) the philosophy that destroys us is not even defined. 

25) We have broken from reality; 26) a psychotic nation. 27) Ignorance with a pretense of knowledge replacing wisdom. 28) Money does not grow on trees, 29) nor does prosperity come from a government printing press or escalating deficits. 30) We're now in the midst of unlimited spending of the people's money, 31) exorbitant taxation, 32) deficits of trillions of dollars spent on a failed welfare/warfare state; 33) an epidemic of cronyism; 34) unlimited supplies of paper money equated with wealth...

Of course, 35) it could all be a bad dream, a nightmare, and that 36) I'm seriously mistaken, overreacting, and that my worries are unfounded. I hope so, 37) but just in case, we ought to prepare ourselves for revolutionary changes in the not-too-far-distant future.

Phew! What a bonanza for a reporter!

Leadership Under Fire: Answering Tough Personal Questions Positively

Unprepared interviewees.

They seem to be ubiquitous in the news these days. Every election, at almost any level of politics, seems to have at least one candidate who stumbles when asked a question about embarrassing personal or professional conduct.

And it's not only politicians. Business executives, professional athletes, and plain Joes suffer the same fate.

I'm often asked why people, many of them experienced public figures, aren't prepared when the inevitable questions come.  

Former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, who was forced to resign after being caught in a sex scandal, provided an answer.

When asked by NBC Today Show's host Matt Lauer whether it had ever occurred to him his actions might be exposed, Spitzer replied,

Persuasive Speaking: Reputation Protection Part 3 - Five "Quick Fixes" to Safeguard Your Client

In Part 1 (Do Speakers Need a Reputation Czar?) I pointed out that many high-profile speakers end up looking bad because their personal staff and public relation advisers fail to make sure the speaker is ready for "prime time."

In Part 2 (Why Staff & PR Pros Fail to Protect the Speaker) I identified six triggers that produce poor counsel.

Here then are 5 tactics you can do to protect your speaker's reputation:

1. Be clear about what the speaker wants to accomplish in the speech or interview. Thendetermine what conditions you'll need for that to happen. In Secretary Geithner's Wall Street presentation, for example, a major goal was to reassure investors that the administration's rescue plan would work. A necessary condition to get investor buy-in was a detailed plan. Instead, investors got generalities. 
2. Become the audience. Ask the questions they'll be thinking: So what? Who cares? See your speaker's actions through the listeners' experiences. Perhaps using the corporate jet does save money for General Motors in terms of the CEO's time, but that's not part of the listeners' experience.  Note: If you're too close to the speaker and having trouble thinking like the audience, bring in someone who can. 
3. List your speaker's vulnerabilities. As you think like the audience, you'll discover soft points in the speaker's thinking or inconsistencies in his or her actions. Write them down. Then decide how to eliminate or neutralize them.
4. Know your speaker's comfort level and don't exceed it. For example, in Governor Jindal's response to President Obama's Address to Congress, the staging required him to speak directly into the camera for several minutes while standing in place. That unnatural staging would have been hard for even a good actor to pull off, let alone Governor Jindal. 
5. If something doesn't work in rehearsal, change it. In these high-profile situations, rehearsal time is often short. If your speaker is still having trouble with a word, phrase, or movement after two or three tries, change it or move on. Trying to "get it right" is unlikely to succeed and will lead to heightened frustration.

  Applying these five tactics well will help your speaker accomplish the desired objective.

Persuasive Speaking: Reputation Protection Part 2 - Why Staff & PR Pros Fail to Protect the Speaker

In Part 1 (Do Speakers Need a Reputation Czar?) I pointed out that many high-profile speakers end up looking bad because their personal staff and public relation advisers fail to make sure the speaker is ready for "prime time."

Why is it that even competent, often highly-paid, professionals fail the speaker? Here are six reasons I've observed:

1. Too close to the speaker, the issues, and doing business as usual. Out of touch with the audience. To the auto execs, flying the corporate jets to DC was normal. To members of Congress and the American taxpayer it was wasteful and arrogant.
2. Underestimating the symbolic impact of the speech, and not understanding that symbolism is much more than just the speech text.
3. Being unable to get the speaker to commit the time to rehearse, arrive early, and prepare mentally.
4. Complacent. Operating with an everything-will-be-fine attitude and therefore not aggressively anticipating potential problems and developing contingency plans. 
5. Unable to be blunt in telling the boss or client that something isn't working, especially if what isn't working was the boss or client's idea. 
6. No experience as a director and performer able to recognize all aspects that make a persuasive speech a powerful experience.  

Hence the need for a specialist, a "reputation czar."

In  Part 3 I'll give you a list of "quick fixes" that even an inexperienced staffer can use to protect the speaker's reputation.