The infographic below is from the University of San Francisco’s Masters in Public Administration program.

From Rhetorica Update (Vol 4. Iss. 2)

It’s rare to hear anyone say something nice about jargon.Why would we? Long, abstract, technical words, phrases and initialisms are rampant vandals in many speeches, writing, presentations and interviews. They cloud communication, sap patience and corrode likeability. But not all jargon is bad. Jargon can be profitable, even necessary. In every art, profession, science and trade, jargon saves time and is a hallmark of those in-the-know, who can name things without fully describing and explaining them. Such specialist language is efficient, effective and contributes to rapport and fraternity. It is often essential. When an eye surgeon asks urgently for iris scissors, he doesn’t want a canaliculus knife. The problem comes when we unload jargon at the wrong time, on the wrong people, misjudging audience familiarity or interest, or simply forgetting to turn jargon off. The cure, from advertising to zoology, is to have clear replacement words and phrases ready to communicate with outsiders. French playwright, Molière (pic above) said in 1663, “Humanise your talk and speak to be understood.” Sounds easy, takes work, but is worth the effort. So… First words can be powerful. Too often they’re not. Starting every sentence with “So” is as prevalent in business as “like” among teenagers. ‘Nuff said.

From Rhetorica Update (Vol. 4 Iss. 2)

More regularly than we like, we see and hear the evidence of bad advice and group-think in media interviews.

One common danger area for simplistic advice is around the idea of sticking to a message. Any spokesman [male for argument's sake] who can’t get quickly into, and stay on-message, will shortly be in all kinds of trouble. But that’s not all there is to it. The flip side is that completely ignoring journalist questions sabotages spokesman credibility. Even politicians who are in the media more than most spokespeople and who may to some extent get away with this interview style, cannot always ignore questions.

At first it might seem that a spokesman didn’t hear the question, but if the question is repeated, he must at that point at least acknowledge the question, to show that he is (1) listening and (2) not avoiding the topic. An effective spokesman knows how to demonstrate listening and to pass through the brief necessary verbal steps — whether bridging, dovetailing or elevating, etc. — on his way to making his key points. Even beginners can achieve this with a little coaching. Ignoring a repeated question completely, forces the audience to conclude that the spokesman is either incompetent, ill-mannered or guilty.

Here’s a terrific-terrible case in point (The following information was written by Alan Stevens, and originally appeared in “The MediaCoach”, his free weekly ezine, available at www.mediacoach.co.uk.):

It should have been a great interview. Stephen Bates, managing director of RIM Europe was on BBC Radio 5 Live’s breakfast show to discuss the launch of the Blackberry 10, which his company hopes will rival the Apple iPhone. Nicky Campbell asked a reasonable, and expected question; “What did you learn from the iPhone?” Mr Bates ignored the question and ploughed on with his marketing hype (“we have a really unique proposition”). Nicky Campbell asked again, and again. Mr Bates ignored the questions completely. Clearly, someone had told Mr Bates that this is how to handle a radio interview. But it isn’t.

Listen to the interview here.

Sadly for RIM, which I’m guessing has a viable product alternative to iPhone and Android, the company MD lost a terrific opportunity to sell his product.

Orica Releases Cancer-Causing Chemical, Fails To Warn Public

At 6.30PM on August 8 2011, a loud bang came from Orica’s ammonia plant at Kooragang Island. Over the road, Karl Hitchcock’s kitchen shook. Moments later, one of Mr Hitchcock’s contractor buddies ran in saying, “Don’t go outside. It’s raining acid.”

The next day, Mr Hitchcock noticed yellow spotting on parts of the boat parked in his front yard, and when he went over the road to work, he found a green film covering some of the plant equipment.

A kilogram of chromium-six had sprayed into the atmosphere, with some 60 grams of it falling locally, onto the surrounding suburb of Stockton.

Neither the company nor the state government communicated with local residents until three days after the leak.

Panic Fills the Information Vacuum

In the absence of official information, locals and the media were left to speculate — and to “freak out”— as a prosecuting lawyer later put it, in court.

In their distress, people naturally wondered: What had gone wrong? Had there been a leak? Was it toxic? Had it been contained? Was it safe to go outside, to work, to school? And frustratingly… Why had no-one from the authorities or the company given any information about what was going on?

Immediate and intense media scrutiny filled the information vacuum. The narrative was inevitably about the evil “chemical giant” versus “victims” in the local community.

NGO representatives and self-proclaimed experts readily fed hungry media stories about company practices, its history of breaches, chemical dangers, safety oversights and failures — and the need for better, stronger regulation.

Among the reports were claims that Orica had also leaked arsenic, ammonium nitrate, sulphuric acid and mercury vapour, in a series of breaches at plants across the state.

The Wash-up is Never Clean or Easy

Any Google search readily locates harmful effects of chromium-six: skin allergies, nasal septum perforation, lung cancer, asthma symptoms, thick rashes, scarring and crusty skin sores.

Thankfully, no-one (that we know of) was physically harmed as a result of the Kooragang Island accidents. What did happen? While the company survived and is performing strongly in several areas, it has suffered financially and its reputation is damaged:

1. Local resident pressure and global media coverage embarrassed and forced the State’s newly elected Premier, Barry O’Farrell, to apologise to the public and to commit to an overhaul of state environmental law.
2. Initial Environment Protection Authority (EPA) and Department of Health reports heavily criticised the company.
3. In the face of publicly perceived arrogance and incompetence, Orica shut its Kooragong Island plant for several months. The Premier threatened the company with loss of license to operate.
4. The short term hit to company revenue was $90 million.
5. The CEO at the time, Graeme Liebelt, left the company six months before he had been due to leave.
6. A subsequent NSW upper house committee enquiry strongly criticised the Minister for Environment, Robyn Parker, as well as Orica, for the “unacceptable delay” in notifying the public and for causing “unnecessary community distress”.
7. The company was fined some $9 million.
8. Class legal action is pending.
9. Orica is spending (at least) tens of thousands of dollars trying to heal the lack of trust it now has with local communities.
10. Resulting legislative changes require companies to report faster and impose heavier fines for breaches. The EPA has more power.

The Hard Lessons Everyone Already Knows

After a crisis, everyone has an opinion about what beleaguered companies did wrong and what they ought to have done. Judgments always covers not only the crisis incident, but how the company responded (or not).

Karl Hitchcock again: “People eat their vegetables out of their gardens. And this stuff would have went all over them. I think they [Orica] handled it very poorly. The communication is what really got me.”

#

Footnote: This blog has been republished at Bernstein’s Crisis Management blog.

Rhetorica Update Vol.3 Issue 4.

Getting personal can be the highlight or ruin of a speech. Here are two positive cases.

1. Self-deprecation warms the intentionally dull

Apposite disclosure of something personal is an overlooked way to make speeches more interesting, memorable and satisfying.

Nick Warner, the head of Australia’s Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), achieved cross-Asia news coverage for a rare speech he recently gave to the Lowy Institute.

I watched it on live TV, hoping for graphic insights into espionage, terrorism, people smuggling and weapons of mass destruction.

What I heard was utilitarian and anodyne. ASIS sounded like any other bureaucracy, with its “corporate collaboration”, “risk management” and “robust accountability processes”, etc.

I was about to tune out, when Warner said, “…forty years ago — after I left university and as a long-haired and scruffy youth — I went to an interview…to join ASIS. It wasn’t much of a process and I wasn’t much of a candidate.” Like me, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph found this notable and gave it direct quotes.

Earlier, Warner had apologised for sniffing and coughing. “I’m the spy that came in with the cold,” he said. This quip also made it into mainstream news, at no loss to his brand.

If Warner’s aim was to engender rapport and trust, he succeeded; his speech was strengthened and freshened by his brief, self-depracating asides.

 2. Passion and believability

It is 49 years this August, since Martin Luther King Jr made his momentous Jobs and Freedom speech in Washington (cue next year’s 50th anniversary remembrances).

Several things made the speech consequential: quarter of a million souls gathering; the intensity and timing of the issue; the location under Lincoln’s “symbolic shadow”; and King’s incisive rhetoric and plangent delivery.

Yet what do we remember?

“I have a dream… “, uttered nine times in the one speech.

If you can remember more, it is most likely: “… that my four little children…”

King tied his personal dream to public ideals and realities: the American “creed”; the “red hills”, “vicious racism” and “sweltering oppression” of Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama; and Bible faith. Yet what we remember is the intensely picturable, personal “… my four little children”.

The plight and desire of oppressed black Americans was King’s too. It was personal.

With due respect to Benjamin Franklin: relevant, interesting and measured personal disclosures are well said and well done.

How to ask questions

Most media training helps spokespeople present their case to, and we hope, through the media to the readers, viewers and listeners our clients aim to reach.

We also work with journalists, training them in the skills of message presentation as media interviewees. They may be used to bowling balls, but they are not so familiar with how to bat. Yes, they can often advise others about what works and what doesn’t, but they have infrequently done so themselves.

Recently, we’ve started to see another dynamic emerge: the need for specialist interviewing skills.

While journalism training incorporates advice on the art of interviewing into its curriculums, it seems that few if any teaching institutions offer How to Ask Interview Questions as a specific subject.

From what I’ve seen, as with other so-called soft skills, the art of asking questions is neither well-developed nor understood in business circles. The implications include:

• getting the wrong answers, or at least missing elements of accuracy or context
• shutting down rather than opening up the communication
• denying the interviewee the opportunity to say what they really think, know or feel.

Here are a few tips you may find useful if you have to interview people for your own web videos:

1. Let interviewees say what they think and express what they feel by asking truly open (investigative) questions rather than closed (interrogative) questions.

There’s more to this than the simplistic usual advice often proffered about open and closed questions. Senior business people may be so attuned to asking closed questions to get the answers they want, they even think they’re asking open questions.

Not all of Kipling’s six honest friends (what, where, when, who, why and how) are truly open. When, where, what and who can easily result in brief factual answers. How and why lead to longer, narrative style answers, which are essential if you want interesting interviews with the surprises and twists humans are so capable of.

Interrogative questions often start with: can, is, will, have, do. Overused, these will kill interviews.

2. Resist editorialising.

Don’t inject judgment into people’s opinions during the interview.

Professional reporters are a clear window, not a coloured lens, through which viewers see the world.

Of course, if you style yourself as a pundit or commentator, inject your opinion strongly, but knowingly.

3. Each interview ought capture a theme.

Having a variation of themes across your interviews strengthens your body of work. If no theme emerges, try asking a more penetrating question, or see the next point.

4. At the end of each interview, offer the interviewee a chance to put in a nutshell what they want to say.

Journalists sometimes use questions like How would you summarise your feelings? and Is there anything else you’d like to say? to capture a spokesperson’s essence in a concise statement. This can result in a punchier, pithier presentation that becomes a grab.

5. Let people rehearse or retake their answers, if they appear to struggle or get tied up.

Some people give their best answer the second or third time around. Sometimes it’s good to ask, ‘Would you like to try that again?’

6. Load questions with one idea at a time.

Having two or more components to any question increases the likelihood of the answer going awry because of interviewee forgetting part, or choosing an easier part. Asking longer questions also makes video interview editing harder and more time consuming.

7. Ask questions that move your interviewees from abstract (ideas) to concrete (examples) and back again.

This will tend to create well-rounded and interesting reports that include conceptual as well as grounded, narrative elements.

8. Don’t have too long a list of questions.

If you stick to a formulaic list of questions, you can end up resisting natural and more interesting conversational flows. Remember key words in questions you want to cover. Have a few key ideas to cover, then go with the flow, within the boundaries of your project’s aims.

9. Ask about feelings with emotional interviewees and thoughts with cerebral ones.

10. Encourage people to speak up and project, if they are softly spoken — or risk losing the interview.

If you’d like to discuss any part of a video interviewing project and how to make it more authentic and interesting, please free to contact me.

Communication And Confidence

A Fine Line

From Rhetorica Update Vol.3 Issue 3 June 2012

Under and over-confidence are noticeable and common. A shaky, scratchy, voice. Speaking too fast, too loud or too soft. Eyes flitting from side to side at precisely the wrong moments. An intense stare. Hesitant phrasing, passive constructions and qualifiers. Failure to listen. Struggling to pursue an agenda.

Communicating in official and professional contexts induces even stranger affectations. Clouded by the need to impress, one faulty assumption is that if it sounds formal it must be good. It mostly isn’t. An annoyingly common example is unwarranted use of the reflexive personal pronoun, myself.

When risk is not understood or ignored, an ego bubble might need pricking. Followed by a fresh injection of confidence.

In most cases, a confidence lift gets better results than mere technical correction. Science and experience support this:

• Confidence is at once relaxing and energising. It turbo-boosts performance by freeing brain processing power for higher-level listening, thinking and speaking.
• Confidence permeates authenticity through the eyes, hands and voice.
• Confidence is attractive and reassuring, increasing the likelihood of audience receptivity.

Confidence grows best from basis, which comes from belief in your message, understanding your context (audience need, occasion, format), preparing, encouragement, prior achievement and skill.

Steady eyes on the goal ahead more than focus on the slender wire at your feet, gets you along the line.

Uncommon Quotes

With Confidence

Someone accused Craig Venter, as he raced to be first to sequence the human genome, of playing God.

He punched back, “We’re not playing.”

*

After World War Two, some Holocaust survivors doubted that Oskar Schindler could have run a beneficent labour camp in Poland.

In a media conference, a reporter asked Mr Schindler, “How do you explain that you knew all the senior SS men in the Cracow region and had regular dealings with them?”

Schindler replied, “At that stage in history, it was rather difficult to discuss the fate of Jews with the Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.”

Short of Writing, Consulting Hands?

Service Expansion

Rhetorica is known for distinctive training and facilitating.

We also offer on-call, experienced professional writing and consulting services under retained and project arrangements.

Contact me on +61 421 993 165 or by email for more information.

One More Thing

DIY Tip

Practicing for a media interview, Q&A or presentation?

Don’t only brief. Coach too.

Strong coaching in role play builds confidence and incorporates repetition that presses words and phrases into memory. This increases the chances of the right words coming back at the right time, and in the right way.

YES, it’s important to speak with the media, BUT know when to stop.

1. Queensland’s incoming Premier, Campbell Newman, said in his victory speech, “We will keep our promises … and we will not let you down.” Some think he had to say that, others that it was a throw away line. Neither option seems sensible. Why unnecessarily promise the impossible, and worse, in public? Further, mis-pronouncing his deputy Langbroek’s middle name at the swearing-in was an entertaining hiccup. A simple run-through would have avoided the embarrassment.

On the positive side last week, Campbell Newman showed himself to be a savvy media manager when he called addressed media at his first Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting. He had a staffer hold a pile of paper a foot thick and told reporters the pile was recent Labor legislation. The stunt scored him blanket evening news bulletin coverage.

2. NSW Labor MP Craig Thomson said to a waiting media pack, “To be honest with you…” I’m not saying he’s dishonest, but as the clouds darken around him, he ought to stick to the facts and avoid unintended irony.

Taser importer, George Hateley. James Elsby: The Daily Telegraph

3. George Hateley (pictured above) imports Tasers and says NSW Police “are on full roll-out.” After the recent tragic tasering of Brazilian student Roberto Curti, The Daily Telegraph had Hately saying he even tested Tasers on his own children. Hateley spoke of the eagerness of NSW Police officers for Tasers: “They say ‘George, we need more, we need more’.” Our advice to Mr Hately on doing his media sell is, “Hold your fire.”

Need help knowing when or how to hold your fire in a media interview or other communication context? Contact Rhetorica. We can help.

Peter Verwer speaking at the National Press Club. ABC 24 frame-grab

Please forgive my cynicism, but you wouldn’t think the head of a national property council would give much of an interesting speech.

After listening to Paul Verwer’s recent speech to the National Press Club, I might change my view. Mr Verwer was exemplary. In passing, he proved you can speak well in business without slides and without a script.

In comparison, Robyn Archer’s impassioned, but scripted address a week later at the same venue looked almost bureaucratic.