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.