with issue C or file D” or do you step out into the hall and give that briefing?
Not surprisingly, most people would give the briefing. Many would do the same even if it were a reporter who walked up at a conference and asked for a quick interview. Few will take the time or trouble to compose themselves, think about what they want to say and then rehearse it.
The most effective way to improve oral communication is to practise out LOUD, but most people have a builtin resistance to doing this, especially if someone else can hear them.
It’s quite different with written communications. A briefing paper for senior management is likely to be written, reviewed and rewritten several times before it’s passed up the chain of command. We tend to treat written communication with much more care and reverence than oral statements — and yet these days, because of the media, oral communications are enormously important. Even when you’re dealing with print reporters, you need to remember that the medium of communication is speech, not print.
Strategic thinking for the media relations function not only means serious thought about what you are going to say, but also attention to what kind of messenger you are going to be. Rehearsing out loud will catch many errors, omissions, bafflegab and just plain boring statements. Rehearsing with a colleague, family member, public affairs specialist or outside consultant will catch more.
We find with our clients that still other obstacles to clear communication emerge when we ask them to draw their message during a practice session. This forces the speaker to make sure the message is concrete and that helps the reporter and audience “see” what’s being discussed.
But the strategy doesn’t stop there. We use something we call 360 degree learning that surrounds the participants and immerses the spokesperson in the message. Participants talk through their messages, draw them, hear others talk about the message and pose questions about the topic.
We find that most spokespeople have a general platitude about an issue. But very few can say how news consumers can benefit from the topic under discussion. Fewer still can give specifics on how they are going about their stated goals. It’s difficult to get this specific, but we insist that spokespeople know how to answer the fifth, sixth and seventh questions asked, not just the first and second. This cannot be done without practice and strategic thinking before walking out to the cameras and microphones.
The other necessary activity is to inject humanity into the performance. Most senior executives spend their lives in front of computer screens, reading documents and talking into the telephone. But to be a convincing spokesperson is a performance art. People buy people first.
I often tell clients that what a TV audience is buying is “eyeballs.” You have to look the reporter or camera in the eye if it’s a doubleender or videographer and be believable. In training sessions, we insist that spokespeople not only demonstrate their knowledge of a topic and the action they are going to take, but also the caring they have for the issue.
Without expressing caring, the spokesperson is just another “talking head,” wasting our time on TV. Caring comes through on radio as well, and a print reporter will judge you, in part, on whether you transmit your caring, compassion and passion about a topic.
Overriding
The average human ear connected to the average human brain takes in just 35% of what it hears. The amount remembered after one week is just 10%. It might even be less with busy reporters who are hearing lots of “spin” on any given day.
You have to make a special effort to get reporters to listen to you and understand what you’re saying.
The first thing you must do is identify and gather all the various messages you intend to deliver. Write them down. Then try to visualize this mass of information you have gathered to be in the shape of an iceberg.
The most important information you want to convey is like the tip of the iceberg — only 10% of all the information you have on your subject. This is the equivalent of the reporter’s lead, except it’s your perspective on the issue, not the reporter’s.
Imagine you are on a bus and a passenger says to you: “I notice from your briefcase that you’re with XYZ Corporation. Didn’t I read something bad about your company recently? What’s going on?”
Your questioner then pulls the signal to indicate he wants to get off at the next stop. You have 8 seconds to tell that person the most important things you know about your organization.
If your questioner decides to stay on the bus to hear more, you can reinforce your message by delivering the next most important 10% of your information, and so on.
In Hollywood, it’s called your “elevator pitch.” You enter an elevator and press number 20 when someone else enters and presses number 10. It turns out to be a famous producer and you have only a few seconds to pitch your movie idea before he gets off and vanishes. It had better be good. That’s where the SOCKO system comes in.
The SOCKO system is similar to the way newspaper stories used to be prepared in the days before newsrooms were computerized and printing presses still used hot type.
Reporters working on a story near deadline would type their copy on short pieces of paper that would hold only a few sentences. Then the reporter would yell, “Copy!” to summon a copy boy who’d take those few sentences to the editor’s desk for checking before they could be sent down to the composing room for inclusion in the newspaper.
This process continued until either the story was complete or, more likely, the clock ran out and the composing room advised that the page was “locked” and the paper had been “put to bed.” Because of the danger of running out of time, reporters would put the most important facts at the top of the story. Besides, readers often stop reading before they get to the end of a story. That’s the reason for the inverted pyramid structure for print stories. It would take extraordinary circumstances for the editor to “stop the presses” so that new information could be included.
SOCKOs, and the gradual and sequential release of them in order of importance is the spokesperson’s equivalent of the reporter typing on deadline. The analogy continues because at any moment in your journalistic encounter, the reporter might say “thank you,” and your opportunity is over. In this environment, you need brevity, clarity, simplicity and your most important messages on the tip of your tongue.
Communication
Nobody wants to read the same phrase or sentence over and over again. We’d assume the writer was too lazy to edit his or her work. But in oral communication, repetition is not only desirable but mandatory if you want your message to be clearly understood and believed.
Shakespeare was well aware of this and used repetition to good effect to assist comprehension in the primitive theatres where his plays were first performed.
The original Globe Theatre in London had only a bare stage with little or no scenery. Plays had to be staged in daylight because there was no electricity. In those days there could be two or three thousand people milling around in the “pit” at the front of the stage and in the seats, talking, laughing, arguing or fighting. Drunks, pickpockets and hookers were plentiful. Ushers and bouncers hadn’t been invented.
This was the daunting atmosphere confronting actors who’d appear on the stage without the benefit of dimming house lights and rising curtains to begin the performance. Imagine all that noise and distraction. Perhaps
