Five journalists’ questions that every CEO should be prepared for
Media Training for CEOs requires a particular approach. It’s not just that they’re very busy people who often can’t afford to spend a whole day doing Media Training. They need to pack it into a couple of hours of their tight schedule.
Many CEOs feel self-conscious about doing training with junior colleagues, even if they won’t admit it. CEOs also face questions and issues that no one else in the company has to deal with.
Media interviews can be stressful for CEOs due to high visibility and higher stakes.
That’s why a growing number of PR consultants and in-house communications teams are asking us to provide bespoke, intensive, one-to-one media training courses for their chief executives.
What questions might journalists ask a CEO—and how should leaders prepare for them in interviews?
Here are five questions that every CEO might be asked by a journalist.
1. What about your predecessor, what are you going to do differently?
Obviously, this is most common when a CEO has just assumed a new role. However, even a company leader who has been in position for some time might find themselves having to talk about their predecessor.
Explaining what you as the CEO are going to do differently and how you’ll move the company on without appearing to belittle the person whose shoes you are filling can be tricky. This is especially the case when the board brings in a new CEO because the company has lost direction, its share price has declined, or it no longer has confidence in the previous incumbent.
In our media coaching for chief executives, we look at how they can achieve a balance – setting out their own bold agenda and explaining what will be new and different while appearing to support the person they’ve taken over from.
2. What about your vision for the company?
This might sound like an obvious question but it’s amazing from our experiences as media trainers and journalists (all of our trainers are working journalist operating under NDAs) how often CEOs struggle to articulate it.
Very often the danger is that they deluge the journalist with corporate jargon and meaningless platitudes. Your people might be your greatest asset, and you might be experiencing a paradigm shift but for most journalists this will result in some eye rolling scepticism rather than genuine interest. We know that executives who use corporate language and talk in vague, general terms on not only less likely to be good interviewees but are also less likely to encourage and inspire their teams.
As we point out in our media interview training for CEOs, a key audience for any CEO interview or profile will be the people who work for the organisation, and so leaders have to take this into account when doing media interviews.
What should they say instead? Well, journalists like CEOs who use natural, conversational language. We’re looking for punchy phrases and interesting analogies. But we want the language of a coffee shop or the pub rather than the boardroom. We also want stories. We recently worked with the chief executive of a tech company who talked about their own experience of online shopping and their passion for making it easier, faster and safer. Buying holidays for themselves and trainers for their kids led them to talk passionately and authentically about how they want to improve e-commerce. As we explained, this would be gold for the journalist interviewing them and would certainly have gone into the article or would be used as a clip in a TV news report.
3. What about your remuneration?
Oh, yes, that one. This is just one example of a number of possibly sensitive issues that the CEO will have to be prepared to handle. The boss of house building firm Persimmon walked away in the middle of a BBC interview after being asked about his £75m bonus. In our Media Training workshops for CEOs, we look at how they can handle sensitive issues such as pay in a way that sounds natural and authentic while allowing them to control the interview and move back onto their key messages.
Spotting difficult questions and helping company leaders to answer them with the input of their PR companies and communications teams is a key part of media training for CEOs. They need to consider this defensive play as well as the proactive messages that they will want to put across. There are so many instances where a company boss has done a great interview, articulating their vision for the company and providing some great stories and examples but then things have gone horribly wrong when, typically towards the end of the interview, they mismanage one question.
4. What about politics and what the regulator or one of your competitors has just said?
These are the kind of “While I’ve got you here…” questions that any senior executive could be asked. However, CEOs are more likely to face them. This is because journalists take the view that the boss will have years of experience in the sector and will therefore have some interesting thoughts and insights. Because their role is so comprehensive, people also expect CEOs to have a view on these big issues.
Media training for CEOs
Some public relations consultancies and in-house communications teams have asked about our media training for CEOs because their bosses got caught out in this area. “But that’s ridiculous – it was just one throwaway comment as we walked to the lift together. Why did they make it the focus of the article?” one founder and CEO complain to his PR person. She knew very well that although he had given the journalist some relevant thoughts and insights, as agreed his attack on the government was more interesting and provocative.
“I was waving at him to shut up and return to talking about the vision that he had for the business, which was after all what we’d agreed would be the subject of the interview, but he was so passionate that he didn’t seem to notice,” the PR told us. “I’d really like some media training so that we can make sure that he never does anything like this again.”
And that’s exactly what we did. In our media coaching for CEOs as well as talking about things that they do want to talk about we will introduce these left field or unexpected questions in our role play media interviews. Very importantly, will then work with the CEO and their PR to help them to move back onto their key messages. It might be that they do want to say something about the sector generally or recent comments by the regulator. They might also have a message for the government. The point is that the CEO needs to message-test and refine these comments before mentioning them to a journalist. Again, this is what we will role play so that they and their PR have more control over the actual interview.
5. What about your favourite film?
Yes, really. In almost any profile interview even a business journalist will ask a CEO some personal questions. It ticks the human box and gives the audience more of a sense of who this person is. A journalist recently shocked one CEO we worked with by asking about their favourite actor and whether they prefer to holiday in the UK or abroad.
“Was the journalist trying to catch me out?” they asked us. Not at all, we explained. If the CEO had read any previous examples of this profile piece (something we always recommend) they would have seen that it had a regular sidebar with this kind of information. Again, it comes down to preparation. Even here being ready with an answer can help and that’s why it’s something that we often do in our media training for CEOs.
Media coaching for CEOs
Are you a CEO, founder, PR consultant or comms professional? Come and talk to us about our media coaching for CEOs. We can put together a bespoke package that will work perfectly for you. You can follow us on LinkedIn here.
