Tag: media relations

Media training for stadium-sized egos

May 8, 2025

I coined the phrase (at least I think I did, it may have appeared to me in a dream) stadium-sized ego to denote those C Suite executives who believe the whole world revolves around them and that the whole marketing purpose is to feed their ego. And their ego is much bigger than their physical form. So how do you train these people to be engaging and credible in front of journalists or analysts? It isn’t easy but it can be fun to put them in their place.

Few corporate executives have achieved their level of success by being a milquetoast. It takes a strong personality to found a company or rise to occupy a C level suite, and strong personalities often are encased within stadium-sized egos. This blog post describes how to coach such executives to treat journalists and analysts with respect, show that the entire world does not revolve around their product’s newest feature, and that the interview or briefing isn’t all about them.

First: It isn’t all about you

One needs to continually remind the egotistical C Suite denizen that there are X number of employees at the company. Unless they are a single shingle, then the old adage of “there is no I in Team” certainly applies. It took a village to bring that service or product to market. Spread a little love toward those who put in 100-hour weeks, endured rounds of scope and feature creep, and smiled through countless revisions of the messaging.

Second: The reporter or analyst isn’t as impressed with you as you are

What do you know about the reporter or analyst’s background? Have they worked with a lot of famous people? Maybe they once worked in the White House? Did they serve in the military and take enemy fire? Learn as much as you can of what they’ve done so you can put the stadium-sized ego into perspective. The next step is establishing some common ground, not a race to one-up them. So your C Suiter has been in the same room with Marc Benioff (okay, it was the Moscone Center and it was Dreamforce, so there were thousands of other people in the crowd). That’s nice. Oh, you’ve shaken hands with Larry Ellison? Move over Rover, so have millions of others. They spoke on the main stage at HLTH? They’re certainly not the only one. The point is to make connections. Maybe both the C Suiter and the reporter/analyst have served in the military, so put that commonality to good use.

Third: Treat the reporter with respect

Journalists tend to be very hard-working people, who are under significant pressures of fair and accurate reporting while adhering to deadlines. The pay scale of journalists (with the exception of a handful of broadcasters) is somewhere below that of a corporate executive. Word to the wise: treat the reporter with respect. They earned their place by working hard, learning their craft and subject matter, and establishing their credibility. Just because they drove to the office in a 2012 Mazda3 instead of the latest Mercedes AMG does not give the executive any reason not to treat them as a peer. 

The purpose of media training is to help your people to gain the confidence to communicate with the media and take control of interviews. I’ve offered semi-annual refresher courses for my executives for a few reasons – because people can forget something they haven’t heard in a while, there may be some new executives to onboard, and there might have been a mishandling of information or a misstep in communicating. But the key is morphing that huge ego into something engaging and inviting to the audience. The benefits of sublimating that stadium-sized ego are enormous.

Sneak Peek!

December 9, 2024

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, I am working on two book projects. It is likely I will self-publish the books, and as soon as next year. The “things I’ve heard in job interviews” is further along than the “stuff I’ve seen in concerts” concept, so that one will get published first. Here is a sneak peak of three stories that will be in the book.

When the candidate’s phone rings…

Instead of saving the best for last, I will start with one of the strangest things I’ve ever encountered. We were hiring a content writer for the team, this writer would be one of my peers, and I was one of the interviewers. It was a few days before Thanksgiving. How did I recall that factoid? Because the candidate’s phone rang during the interview. She glanced at her phone and took the call, diving into a lengthy discussion about logistics and menu-planning for Thanksgiving dinner. Her call went on for about 10 minutes. Remember, she’s the candidate and is taking a call during an interview in my office! Boundaries? None. A few minutes later she ended the call but did not apologize. You can bet who didn’t get the job…

I’m a candidate just like you!

This was something my dad would have described as a Rod Serling Moment. Rod Serling was the genius creator of The Twilight Zone TV series. He also created Night Gallery, which played on similar themes. Serling was a brilliant author with a deadpan delivery. This story would have fit in well with the Rod Serling canon. Back in 2010, I applied for a director of marketing communications position at a trade association that was based here in North Texas. I matched the requirements well and was one of the first to apply. Three months went by, and I never got an interview. Adding insult to insult, the association re-posted the position on their website and on job boards. The position had one change – they used my email address and cell phone as the contact information! Did they hire me and not let me know? Soon I was getting calls and emails from other candidates to ask about the status of their applications. Unfortunately, I had no answers. My calls, emails, and personal visits to the association (their office was a mailbox in a UPS Store) all went unanswered. Can you hear the Twilight Zone theme playing in your head?

Shall we speak Klingon?

Technical people such as programmers are a breed unto themselves. They can be very big into science fiction. I am too, but within limits. Imagine my surprise when a candidate for a website programmer role asked me if we could conduct the interview in Klingon! Since my knowledge of Klingon is nonexistent and nobody else at the company is at all conversant, I quickly answered, “English would be fine.” While the candidate may have gained bonus points for totally out of the box creativity, it quickly evaporated when he admitted he had never visited our website. He had no idea what we did nor had any notion of what he would be programming. Priorities? None. Asking to speak in a made-up foreign language while ignoring the basic reading material for the role is a great way to get yourself withdrawn from consideration.

There are plenty more of these stories. I’ve been offered a cigarette, given an incorrect location, called out for dressing too flashy, and more. But I’ve given too, such as offering to take the drug test there on the spot, or helping put up holiday decorations in the lobby because I was early, and explaining why a company’s recent marketing campaign would tank (and I was right!!).