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“Delve is an insight engine that transforms how brands understand their world.”
With every story, thread and meme battling for our attention, what do we focus on and care about? Communications pros Sean Garrett and Allison Braley—trusted by Twitter, Amazon, Meta, Slack, Bain Capital Ventures, and more—talk with those shifting the future of communications and who pays attention to what.
Sean 00:01
Welcome to Attention Shift. We unpack where communication and communications is headed. I'm Sean Garrett and we’re supported by Delve with the top-level context engine for comms. My co-host, Allison Braley, and I talk to industry experts about how we show up and get our message across in an era of limited time and shortened attention spans. Let's dive in.
Allison 00:28
On this episode of Attention Shift, we're bringing you Bill McGowan, one of the most celebrated messaging and media coaches in the world, and the author of the new book, Speak Memorably. He's worked with everyone, truly everyone, lots of CEOs in tech and business leaders Jeff Bezos, but also celebrities like the Kardashians and even some of the Real Housewives. As he mentions in this episode, he's also the founder of clarity Media Group. So before we talk to Bill, let's unpack what media training was when we started in our careers, and then what it's become today, at least if it's good media training. And so Sean, going back in your career, do you have any memories of early media training kind of versus today?
Sean 01:04
Yeah. I mean, in the old days, obviously, we lived in an entirely different media environment where you can actually pretty much plan for when you're gunna talk to reporters or not, and it was on a pretty kind of stilted environment, unless it was a crisis, which you also prepared for. But the media training of yore was pretty simple. And I mean, it was all about how you're going to talk to a reporter or have a conversation with a reporter before you have the interview, the process of the interview, what you said after the interview; it's all very much around this kind of big moment with a reporter. And obviously we live in an entirely different environment now. And I think, like, what Bill talks a lot about, is that he wished he could kind of unwind the term media training and make it something bigger and more elevated. But, you know, for now, that's, that's the term that we're that we're stuck with.
Allison 01:56
Yeah. In early days in my career, when I was starting out, one of my clients was Johnson and Johnson, big company, and so I went there to sit in on a media training for some of our execs who were gonna go on a media tour. And this was, like, pretty low stake stuff. This was, like, beauty products, but a lot of the media training felt more like fear-based, kind of like, here's all the ways this could go wrong. Like, don't mess this up for us. We're Johnson and Johnson. We're this really trusted company. And I kind of walked away feeling like, geez. You know, my job is higher pressure than I thought it was. I thought I was booking like, a desk side tour with some beauty editors and and this is something else entirely. But, you know, a lot of it was useful information. Like, what's the difference between on the record and on background and off the record and, like, all of that is, like, incredibly useful, don't get me wrong, but we didn't spend enough time I felt on like, what are we trying to say? Not just, what are we trying not to say, and, and how do we say it? Like, what is the, what is the kind of the way we come across? But again, to your point, it was a different environment. Then this executive was like an extension of Johnson and Johnson without any sort of personal brand halo. There was no social media. And so it was just a different time, and you were preparing for a different thing.
Sean 03:00
Yeah, I think the light bulb went off for me at some point where I'm like, Well, this actually is way more effective. And we think about this, about how we can evolve our messaging when we're doing this in real-time, and we're watching ourselves on videos, and we're looking at ourselves, and we're grading ourselves on how well we're doing. It's not just about the technique. And did I win this question? It's like, is the message actually good? And then things started evolving from there, and people started picking up on that more. And, you know, later, like when I work with, I've worked with Bill for a very well-known sports franchise owner, and also a very well-known startup CEO who went to, basically the company went public, and that's where we got, like, really, into kind of more deeper psychology of messaging and why you're doing this. And I think the cool thing about Bill's book is that it goes into how you apply this technique into kind of all facets of all the communication that you do within an organization or just kind of in your daily life.
Allison 04:06
Yeah, I… Working with Bill has been great, because I feel like even execs who go in feeling like, Oh, I know exactly what I want to say and how it should work, it really gets something out of it as you workshop it, and really play it back and see yourself and hear his feedback. He's just such a pro, and his team is as well. But, you know, it's funny, like, the part of media training that I think people dread, on some level, is it exposes whether or not you really have good messaging. I do a product with my companies that I work with at BCV called a narrative workshop. And it's really like, you get into sort of the media training side of it at the very end, if you want. But it's really about, let's figure out what the messaging is so that you don't go in there and feel exposed when you have to answer these questions. And I'm always amazed in these processes, too, how many people go to interviews having done very little preparation. They sort of don't do anything. And Bill has this whole methodology where you come up with some of that framework, and there's a way to do it where you don't end up sounding stilted and scripted. He's really just teaching you how to map things back to your core points and talk about those core points in a way that's sticky. I think Bill's really great at. But, you know, it's funny, like going back to that early media training, versus now too. I think as communicators working with executives and prominent people, we used to talk a lot about messaging discipline and really staying on message, but you see people more and more in the public sphere, and I'm thinking more of celebrities, but also there's a lot of CEOs who fit this bill, like Renee Rapp, Jennifer Lawrence, they come across really quirky and authentic, and they don't say anything that feels remotely scripted. And so I've been thinking more about how to train people while encouraging them to have these facets of their personality that come through. Do you feel like that's like the key to success now, or is there more nuance?
Sean 05:49
You know, the whole command and control communications kind of approach where you stayed on message and you were super disciplined, and that was your entire way to grade whether you did a good job or not, you know, just doesn't work anymore in this media environment. And I don't even think if someone who was coming up, you know, young in this industry would think like, how is that even? Was even a thing? But it was a thing, and what Bill does, and what other smart communications people do who focus on messaging and executive leadership is really, course you have a story to tell you. Course you want to get across a certain point of view, but it's about bringing that point of view into the environment that you're in. And you mentioned celebrities who do a good job of this, and a lot of those same folks, you know when, when you see them interviewed, they come to it with an intention, this conversation with an intention, but really what they're good at is improv, and what improv really is is listening, and listening is about reading the room and about hearing what other people are saying and picking up on signals, and even just picking up on a word or something on someone's tie or something just just happened in the audience, and turning that into a thing. And it's just like being able to be there and be present and hear things is a very underrated skill. And I think, you know, we've all worked with leaders, and we've all worked with people who are really good at that, and we're all work with people who walked in a room and there's just, like, seven elephants in that room, and they don't notice any of them, and you're just like, Come on, man, like this is, like, so easy, but like, they're staying on message, they're staying focused, and like, they're just missing the bigger picture. And I think being able to be succeed in this environment requires you to read a room really well, and to read a question really well, and read what's the… into it. And, you know, again, you do everything with an intention, but it's an intention that doesn't blind you.
Allison 07:57
And the context to the situation is so important, and you it's funny, you mentioned improv. And one of the things that I think made me a better communicator, and it's so dorky, but I was on an improv team for a little bit in, when I lived in New York, and it made a huge difference in my, the whole way I approach communicating. Was I particularly great? No, did I bomb like, have the flop sweats so badly once when I had to do a Russian accent and failed? Yes. It was a good time. Don't ever ask me to do a Russian accent.
Speaker 1 08:22
I was on a quote, unquote, professional improv troupe too.
Allison 08:28
Mine was very unprofessional. So, so, so you got me there. Extremely. Closet Robot. Shout out to Closet Robot, my improv team. But I was thinking about this, this whole like press fails and wins thing too, in the context of what does good look like these days. And my old examples that I always used to use in media training were this Spirit Airlines interview on CBS. I think a lot of people use this one, but it's fascinating to me on a couple of levels, like one, he chose to do this interview knowing that he was going to get absolutely lambasted.
Sean 08:57
What was the situation?
Allison 08:59
So they got, like, last place in some reader survey for a travel magazine on, like, airline quality. And he goes in there, and they're just like, guns blazing. Like, what's like, basically explain yourself. Like, why does your airline suck so bad? And he's like, You know what customers care about? They don't care about legroom, they don't care about whether they get a water bottle for free. What they want is low prices, and they vote with their wallets, and we're the most profitable airline, and, you know, like our flights are full and people are welcome to pay more if they want those amenities, but that's not what we offer here at Spirit. And I think he did a really good job kind of redirecting the interview, which started off really adversarial, and honestly, he kind of wins by the end, Like, you can't disagree with that. And so I thought he did a good job making a really hard interview work for him, which is not a skill most people have. And he comes across as defending his airline without being defensive, which, again, is like a hard needle to thread, I think. So we'll link to that in the show notes. And then, like my bad example that I cite sometimes when people are like, Oh, what's the big deal? Like, so what if I make a misstep? There's this interview in Time Magazine with Peloton’s founding CEO John Foley, where it's sort of innocuous to me, like, it's clear he's trying to be humble, but he's like, I'm a really bad manager, like, I suck at managing people. And it gets referenced in this activist investors deck later, as another example of why this guy is bad and shouldn't be running the company. And there's a few interview examples in there where he sort of was too flip and didn't think about, you know, how that could come across in the context of having a tanking stock price and all that, and how his words could be used against him. And so again, like, I don't want to advocate for people not feeling like they can be free to be themselves, but to your earlier point, Sean, you have to do that in the context of a strategy and not just be out there shooting your mouth off for fun, or it can come back to haunt you. It's interesting how media training has evolved, and I'm always fascinated to see how the greats do it. There's a bunch of different flavors of it, and I think Bill's is one of the most strategic. So we wanna welcome Bill to Attention Shift. And if you haven't already, you should read his book.
Sean 10:56
Yeah, so it's fully useful information, really thoughtful takes on how to stand out in today's world of bland corporate speak. You know, the big message that Bill offers is, you know, be memorable. The only way to be memorable, especially kind of in this AI slop world, is to, you know, be unique, be interesting, stand out. Have a strategy. Have those intentions and just don't like play to the lowest common denominator, like so many others will do. Don't play it safe. Don't get weird. If you get weird, have a strategy. But Bill provides a framework to all that. So without further ado, Bill McGowan. So awesome to have you, Bill.
Bill 11:37
Sean, I was incredibly psyched when I saw your email in my inbox. We go way back, and I've always admired the work you and Allison have done over the years. So it's like, it's like being reunited with old friends.
Sean 11:54
Yeah, we won't get into specific stories.
Bill 12:00
Especially since there’s client confidentiality.
Sean 12:01
Exactly. There might… it's actually probably more my post traumatic stress than yours, but it's really good to have you.
Bill 12:04
Thank you.
Sean 12:06
And congrats on the book. Thanks very much, because you wrote a book about 10,11, years ago, and which, you know I remember, being an awesome resource. And in your… the beginning of your book, you kind of talk about why you had to update that maybe, let's just start from there. Like, what? What prompted you to be like, okay, book two ought to be on speaking.
Bill 12:32
The first book, I really thought of as just communicating in all different scenarios, whether it be doing an interview with a journalist, giving a toast at a wedding, finding yourself in an elevator with your boss or at the company party and having to talk him or her up. So it was almost what do you say and how do you say it in every situation? But really, over the past 10 years, I think what I've discovered is there's such a growing need for people to raise their game when it comes to speaking at work. And we did a lot of really interesting research for the book that showed that 85% of our time at work, according to the Harvard Business Review, is spent in collaborative mode, and that good communications can boost team productivity by about 25% and conversely, poor communication results in about a $1.2 trillion of loss in business. So I realized from all the sessions that I've been doing for clients that there was a real need to help people break out of this numbing sameness about the way they communicate at work, internally and externally, because every day in every office all over the world, there's an opportunity to motivate, persuade, influence, inspire people with how we talk. And those opportunities are being squandered every single day because people speak in this very bland, boring, empty calorie kind of way that sounds exactly like the last presentation you heard. So I felt as though it was really time to come out with a book that gave people tools on how to be distinctive and stand out. It's part of what we call the three C's—the killer C's—conformity is one, and that really is about the idea of speaking in a business environment where everybody speaks the same jargon, the same business cliches. And ultimately, people do that because they've learned it through osmosis. They've learned it by watching other people present, and as a result, these bad habits get passed on over and over and over again. And I think people feel as though it's the least risky way of presenting at work, because everybody does it. It's accepted language, but ultimately it inhibits you from standing out. And that conformity zone is often confused with a comfort zone. I feel about public speaking and presenting the way Eleanor Roosevelt talked about life. She has a famous quote that you should do one thing every day that makes you feel uncomfortable because it feels risky, and that is definitely very true of communicating in a business or a professional environment. Try to push yourself out of that conformity zone, because that's where engagement and retention lies.
Sean 15:36
So on the conformity point, Bill, like, one thing I thought was really interesting about kind of the premise of your book is, for such a long time, CEOs and even communicators, there was this, like whole thing about being on message, controlling the message, owning the message. And you know, you have three message points, three bullet points. You always bridge back to them. You always come back and like, you're always there. Like that also is super boring to watch someone who's on message all the time. Now you're not… Now you're gonna be safe. Nothing bad is gonna happen. But the whole point of your book, Speak Memorably, is to be memorable. Like you can't be on message and memorable at the same time. Or can you?
Bill 16:18
I do think there's a Venn diagram there. I think it is possible. I certainly don't want people in the quest to be memorable, to be wildly off message, but I do think what's needed is for you to figure out what are the most important things I want to convey here. What do I want to have be sticky in people's minds? And let me figure out a way to craft that in such a way that it doesn't sound like it came off a key message document or an FAQ that was prepared by somebody else. Authenticity, certainly in the last 10 years, has jumped dramatically in terms of priorities and what's important to demonstrate, certainly in leadership positions, and being messaged and rigidly sticking to staying on message doesn't really convey that attribute. And so what we're really trying to do, certainly in our private coaching sessions at Clarity, is we are trying to help them craft something sticky and memorable around their big ideas, instead of just delivering them in a very jargony and business-bland way.
Sean 17:30
You mentioned the book, like you have a bunch of different techniques, which I think are super interesting. You know, I've worked with you in the past, and you've probably came up with this since then, but I'm fascinated by what the Coppola formula. What is that? And why is it not about lost in translation?
Bill 17:47
I saw an interview. I saw an interview. Well, actually, I mean, Francis Ford, that's…
Sean 17:53
I know, but. Right? Well, I’m more a Sophia Coppola person, but, yeah, sure.
Bill 17:57
But so I saw Francis on an interview at CNN, and I think Fareed Zakaria was interviewing him, and he said, Do you have a formula for making movies? And he said, Well, I learned from the masters in Hollywood years ago that you should find your three best things, and you should take the best thing and finish the movie with it. You should find the second best thing and lead the movie with it and find some logical thematic place in the middle where the third one could go, and he's talking about movie-making, but really movie-making is storytelling every time you get up to talk and present, that's storytelling. At least, that's how it should be seen. And the problem I find is most people approach a presentation thinking I need to put a series of slides together, and they don't think of it as an overarching story they're telling with a beginning, middle, and end. So the Coppola formula really is about how do I hook my audience right from the get go? And certainly one of the biggest enemies to memorability is the dreaded agenda slide. You know, all this talking about what we're going to talk about, which I find as the number one biggest scourge in trainings that I do with people, and Allison, that's one of the things I think has been learned through osmosis. It's all this, Okay, so now I want to talk a little bit about this, and now I want to unpack that for you. And wow, you know.
Allison 19:27
I’ve personally gotten that feedback before, of like, you need an agenda slide, and it's like, no, I don't. I want to get right into the meat of it so I don't lose people.
Bill 19:35
I mean, culturally, there obviously are some companies where they really insist that you set the audience's expectation. But you know that can be done after a very short opening story, where the payoff to the story is thematically connected to the purpose of why you're standing in front of these people. So you can say, that's why I'm here today. I want you to walk out with tools to be memorable instead of being forgettable. But that should be about the extent of the expectation- setting that you give.
Allison 20:02
Thatyou need to do. And who's doing this? Well, Bill besides, obviously, Francis Ford Coppola is is crushing it, and potentially Sophia too? But who else is doing this?
Bill 20:13
I think Brian Chesky is a really top notch communicator. And knowing Brian, he's worked, he's really put a priority on this, and he's worked hard on it over the years. I think he understands the real value of being an excellent communicator. So I do think that he values storytelling, and he tries to illustrate his points rather than just tell you. And you know, I know we're going to talk about interacting with media in our conversation today, and I know and as well as you do, that, the first day a journalist shows up in a newsroom, the edict they're told to follow is, show, don't tell. And obviously that means is, tell me a story or give me an example that illustrates the point of the article. And I find that when executives and leaders don't put that premium on storytelling, they're just making the job more difficult for the journalists. And I know there were many interviews I sat through over the years where we're 20 minutes into the interview, I'm thinking, oh my god, I have not heard a single sound bite. Yet this is all just abstract, theoretical nonsense, and so today, especially with journalists strapped for time and spread so thin, the last thing you want to do is make their job more difficult for them.
Allison 21:34
Yeah, and who's doing a bad job at this? Conversely, like, Who do you wish you could train and help?
Bill 21:41
That's a good question. I worry that if I name a name, it'll sound like ambulance chasing.
Allison 21:46
Yeah, yeah, you could always do the like, well, there's a CEO of a large XYZ company, you know. And leave us guessing.
Bill 21:53
I mean, frankly, just about 75% of the companies out there have a CEO who is firmly in that conformity zone, who is just about interchangeable with all the rest of the 75% and they are not seizing the opportunity to be different and distinct and memorable. It's so widespread, Allison, that it's really hard to just even…
Sean 21:24
It's a target rich environment, is what you're saying. So I mean, I think maybe it helps when they have more tools, or they feel more confident, and you have a bunch of different tools in the book, and we're not gonna… you should go buy the book and read all them about yourself. But at a very high level, let's talk about, like The Magnificent Seven that you kind of introduce. So seven tools, you know, metaphors, kind of labels, like cues that you can use, if you're maybe one of those 75% of CEOs, that just can make your life a little bit easier, and, by the way, communicate better to your team, but also maybe to your family and all other people that are really important to you. So what? Maybe give us an overview on them, and then maybe talk about, like, when you introduce these to folks, like, what begins to click for people when you do this?
Bill 23:14
Over the years, I've definitely, I've definitely realized a) what journalists say, or what you can say to a journalist that ends up in a quote. And it's been a relatively unofficial, anecdotal study I've done over 25 years, but these seven devices are the ones that elevate your message to potential quote material or sound bite material. Or, let's say you're on an industry panel or fireside chat at a conference, because today it's not about being on Good Morning America. Or, you know…
Sean 23:50
Maybe you're on a podcast like Attention Shift. You gotta be really memorable.
Bill 23:54
There you go. You gotta deliver the sound bites, right>
Allison 23:56
Big career moment.
Bill 23:59
Yeah. And so it is about crafting your message in a way that sticks with people. So just to go through the seven, it's metaphor and analogy. I had one that I had to deliver myself when I got interviewed for this Renee Rapp story The New York Times wanted to do about hey, you know, she came wildly off the rails in her Mean Girls media tour. Was this planned? Was it not planned? Could media training have helped her? And they said, Well, you know, she was certainly applauded by her fans. They loved the fact that she was unhinged. I said, you know, in many ways, unhinged has become the new authentic. And yeah, I kind of knew in my mind there's no way she's not going to print that, so. And sure enough, you know, I ended up with the piece. But the thing about these Magnificent Seven devices is you can't be clumsy in delivering them. You can't blurt it out at the beginning of a line or the beginning of an answer and make it sound like you've been practicing in the mirror all day, because a journalist will punish you by not quoting it. It feels too contrived. You’ve got to create what we call the illusion of spontaneity, where maybe you put it at the end of your thought, and you build to it, and you even have maybe a little thoughtful hesitation, as if this thing is just miraculously dropped out of the sky and graced your brain with it. So the execution of it is really important. But a creative label is another device. If you guys are fans of Curb Your Enthusiasm, literally every episode of Curb has a creative label.
Allison 26:49
The spite store.
Bill 27:38
The spite store. Stop and chat. Chat and cut. The goodbye. You know, every single episode is almost known by a creative label. Or the guys at Google, years ago were asked, What criteria do you use to decide whether you want to invest or acquire a company? They say, well, it's got to pass the toothbrush test, right? It's got to be a product or service used twice a day, every day, and that toothbrush test became this thing that people recognize. Quiet quitting is a creative label. The great resignation is a creative label. You can see the viral pickup that these things have. I think journalists love it when you take a cliche expression and you twist it slightly into something new. So just saying to a company that is trying to get product through the pipeline faster. You know, business success is survival of the quickest, you know, not fittest. And I think that that makes it stand out a little bit. I when I was toying with ideas, put the name, Speak Memorably, one of the candidates, which thankfully ended up in the junk heap, was Putting on the Riz. And… I thought clever but.
Allison 26:49
Does that make you the Rizzard of Oz, Bill?
Bill 26:53
Very good. Allison, very good. So the reason why these twisted cliches work is because they're true to the principles of comedy, where a lot of comedians will tell you what works is taking people down this path and then at the very end, giving them something totally unexpected, and that's what makes it memorable.
Allison 27:12
And that's a great lead-in though, because I was curious, like, you know, you talk about humor in the book, and I feel like humor works for some people really well, and some… not for others. And I've been lucky enough to work mostly for executives who kind of know where they fall on that spectrum of like, I can pull off being funny or I can't. But if you're, if you're someone who doesn't use humor a lot or isn't super comfortable in that zone, is it? Is it a place you can learn to be comfortable? Or should you stick to your knitting?
Bill 27:38
I do think you should never feel like you're outside your own skin, and you're trying to play somebody else's game. But humor and comedy have been conflated in people's minds, and I tell people and implore people, please don't start with a joke. I know you've got friends who probably have told you, oh, start with a joke. They'll love it. You know, and that is about as bad advice as picture the audience in their underwear. You know that the two of those should go away immediately, but it does mean maybe occasionally, just seeing the topic you're talking about, maybe through a little bit of a humorous lens, nothing too radical. Don't feel like you're way out on a shaky limb, because if it bombs, you're really never going to get your feedback under you. That is one of the most unsettling feelings in public speaking, but it is the ultimate high wire act of communication. But the rewards sometimes are really worth it, because it does… has been shown in studies to increase short term memory by 2x, so it is valuable. They did some interesting studies where they showed news stories to an audience, and it was clear that the straightforward news presenters had much weaker engagement and recall than the Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah and all those comedy shows have a much higher recall factor.
Sean 29:08
What about, like, the opposite of comedies, people who are, you know? I mean, this is very common in the tech world, just people who are really, really, really smart, and they want to be intellectual, and because they are intellectual, and they want to kind of argue their point in a way that you know might win the day with a venture capitalist, but not winning over kind of other audiences, per se. How do you help simplify and make more memorable people who just come with a lot of like… I mean, almost too much… IQ horsepower.
Bill 29:41
Yeah, it's interesting. I was at a training session at Excel not too long ago, and I was mentioning the merit of not getting down into the weeds, into one of the partners I was working with. And he said, Oh, you mean don't show my work? I was like, precisely, that's exactly what I mean. Yeah, and I find that oftentimes one of the biggest challenges is you're talking to a dual audience. You're talking to people who are extremely well, extremely knowledgeable about the subject matter you're talking about, but maybe people who also are not familiar with it. And I find that analogies can be really good to help everybody understand it. So I was working with somebody, for instance, in the logistics business, and we were talking about supply chain. And, you know, that can be one of those topics that makes people's eyes roll back in their head. You know, it's not exactly the most engaging, exciting topic to talk about, and a lot of people don't really understand the nuts and bolts of it. And so one of the analogies that we came up with to explain the height of the supply chain crisis was it's like a six-lane freeway trying to merge into a one-lane country road. That's basically what we had here. And I think the beauty of the analogy is it helps take a concept that may be complicated, unfamiliar, and foreign to people, and by comparing it to something that's common to all of our experiences, you help them understand it quickly and efficiently. I think that has a lot of value to it, and it's also one of the Magnificent Seven. So it's really sticky. I was working with some hedge fund people a couple years ago, and they were doing a topic on another barn burner subject, Brexit, and this one guy on the panel said, well, listen, you know, face it, before the last Prime Minister left office, she was the chess player only had the king left, and she was just moving it around one space at a time, so she got checkmated. I don't remember anybody else who was on that panel that day. I don't remember what anybody else in that panel said that day, but I still remember that guy, and I think the people in the audience who were very knowledgeable on Brexit, I still think they appreciated that. I don't think they ever felt like they were being talked down to. So I do feel like there are tools that help you appeal to both levels of an audience.
Allison 32:13
Yeah, and I mean, we got into some of the Magnificent Seven already, but I'd love to hear some more of them, and maybe this is a way, into that. But, can somebody who is truly bad at this ever become good? And what are like the three things they can do to improve right away? Because I'm sure there's someone listening who feels like they need to really improve or help their executive improve. What are sort of the most tactical, practical kind of tips?
Bill 32:38
Being more analytical when you listen to other people talk, I think is great. I was talking to Steve Levitt the other day, one of the Freakonomics guys, and he made the observation that he had to sit through these commencement speeches because his son was graduating from college, and… some of them were terrific, and some of them were just brutal, really hard to sit through. And he said, but what's interesting is I just finished your book, and so I was able to really analytically dissect each of the really bad ones, and I realized they tied back to so many things you told people not to do. So he said, In the end, I actually found the terrible ones more interesting to listen to because I was able to analyze them from a different perspective. And I think we can all do that every day at work. When somebody gets up in a meeting or somebody gets called on in a meeting. Yes, it can be painful to listen to somebody flail around and not get to the point and be really obscure in what they're trying to communicate. But it's a learning opportunity. It's an opportunity for you to really pull apart what's going on there and ask yourself, am I? Am I falling victim to the same kinds of shortcomings that this person is make yourself even a two column chart on your… on a pad at a meeting. Tired, old and cliched is the left column, new, fresh and different is in the right column. And jot down things that people are doing. They think, wow, that's, that's, that's really different. I haven't heard that. And why am I so engaged with this woman who's talking in front of me? What is it she's doing? Try to be really analytical about it. And if there are devices and techniques they're doing that you feel are consistent with the way you communicate, borrow them. You know, I think we're all conglomerates of devices and styles we've heard from other people who we might admire, and we're a little bit of a tapestry of the way other people communicate that we admire.
Sean 34:52
So speaking of like, how do you like… You know, maybe you can tell us who this is, or give us some signals. But what’s kind of the biggest transformation that you've seen, where you've walked in the room and going, oh my god, this is going to be… they don't pay me enough to do this like in one day, right? But, you know, if someone's gone through a training like this, typically there's a video interview at the beginning of the day, then the very end, there's another interview, and you kind of can watch it and see, like, you know, the before photo in the after photo, per se. What's the biggest kind of change between those two images that you've seen that you could tell us about?
Bill 35:28
I’m going to take us wildly outside the tech world.
Sean 35:33
Go for it. Yeah, we're happy to do that.
Bill 34:35
I do believe in a fair amount client confidentiality, but let me just say it was one of the Real Housewives and she had written a memoir, and she came in for training to go out and talk about her book, and I sat her down, and we covered a lot of stuff, and then it was time to do the role play that I recorded, and it was about as bad as I've ever heard. It was just an absolute 10 car pileup, and needed major, major work. And so we played it back, we watched it, and then we launched into take two… Absolute perfection. I've never seen a turnaround like this. Totally not expecting it. Not that I didn't think one of the Real Housewives was not smart. It was just that I did not expect her to take the guidance and be able to implement it and turn it around immediately into something that was… I didn't have any critiques. I didn't have any feedback on the second one. The first one, pages long of feedback and things that I thought really needed to be changed. What do you ascribe to that? It's hard to say. Maybe she came in without that ego involved that sometimes gets in the way of CEOs. They sometimes do think, I know best, or there's a skepticism around taking somebody else's advice or every bit of their advice. Maybe she had no preconceived notions, and she was completely open to changing the way she went about doing it.
Allison 37:20
Yeah, I hope this was Ramona, and I hope she brings this with her, into her, into her on-screen life, more because there’s a lack of self-awareness there, for anyone listening.
Sean 37:33
No, I'm constantly just amazed by Allison.
Allison 37:37
You've, you've trained everyone from Jeff Bezos to Kim Kardashian, and you touched on one thing that makes CEOs a little more challenging is ego. What else makes those two different types of clients, you know, unique. Or who's harder, who's easier?
Bill 37:52
I think it really depends. I mean, in the case of somebody like Kim, she shows up and she puts her phone away for two and a half hours and doesn't look at it, doesn't touch it. Has a Moleskin. She's taking copious notes, so that you know, whether that surprises you or not, that's kind of the way she approached it. But then there are, of course, as we both know, CEOs who are brought kicking and screaming to the session. I don't need this. I've been trained before. It's gonna be wasting my time. And then they walk in the door and they sit and like this with that kind of, okay, okay, punk, dazzle me. What do you got? And I try to approach those sessions like a real challenge, because there's nothing more gratifying than having them, 15 minutes in, sheepishly, take out a Moleskin and start furiously scribbling notes. That's the ultimate, that's the ultimate win.
Sean 38:48
I mean, that's really why you're doing this Bill, right?
Bill 38:51
That's right, yeah. Exactly, exactly.
Allison 38:54
I feel like a lot of people have this wrong idea about media training now, and I've encountered it even, even in my own work, which is, you know, oh, I've been media trained before, when I was at insert big company here, and it was basically like, here's how not to embarrass us. And I said, like, that's not what this is. That's not what that's not what we're gonna do together on this project. And it's hard to give convince people of that once they've had the idea of media training, sort of like poisoned for them. If that makes sense, like… does do you feel like media training needs a rebrand?
Bill 39:26
Absolutely, I try not to use that term at all. It's a terrible moniker for what this is, especially because Sean you pointed out earlier, it's not about media so much anymore. It's about panels, it's about fireside chats. It's about podcasts. It's not about being on CNBC or being on TechCrunch Disrupt, although that is still a thing, but the opportunities are so much more frequent now, and it's about how do you handle yourself in any Q&A situation. It could be an all hands or an Ask Me Anything at your company. Could be a town hall. There are principles about how you go about answering questions that are universal in their application. So, yeah, it's, it's that I've been in media training before. I don't need this. I've learned everything. There is…
Sean 40:20
I would love for this rebrand, but we all know that. I mean, the issue is, is that, like, you always need an imperative in order to make a purchasing decision. And the imperative usually is like, wow, we have all these people who I'll go, could be out there and be talking to the media, and they have no idea what they're going to do. And so we need to bring someone in to do this, and then, oh, bonus points, there's lots more that you can apply this to. So I think it's about like, how do you reshape kind of, that very first kind of purchase decision to not be about like this, like, the most stark example of like a need, which is like, you know, we have a our head of product has never been trained, or, you know, eventually, is going to have to talk to the reporter someday. So therefore, we need to start this process with that need in mind. And I agree, I would love for it to start with just general, like, how do you run a meeting? How do you, like, save this 1.3 trillion, you know, caused by bad communications? Like, how do you begin to make communication better throughout the organization period, through these tools, these techniques, these approaches. But I'm also not going to be like, get in the way of bringing in you or someone like you, Bill, because, like, you know, because of them, you know, someone said, we really need media training. Like, it's, it's, so that's the kind of the thing that we're all I think we're all as communicators like wrestling with right now.
Bill 41:46
And I think what I try to communicate to comms people who do come to me and say, Listen, I get it, but it's going to be really hard to convince my CEO to carve out 2, 3, 4 hours in their calendar to do this, especially when they feel like they've done it and it's going to be a waste of time. And I usually try to say to them, this is not media training. This is productivity training. This is a training that will help the entire organization be more productive, more efficient. And imagine if you could give people the tools to transform every 40-minute meeting into a 30-minute meeting. Just imagine what could happen when you send people back to their desks with an extra 10 minutes after every meeting. Imagine how much more we get done. How much less burnout there would be among people who just literally pong from one meeting to another all day long. These things are extremely important. I often tell them, yeah, I get it that you've been media training before, but listen Alcaraz, who just won the French Open, he still has a swing coach, and he's at the top of his game. Every professional athlete has a coach that watches them with a careful, critical eye, and that's why their game is up here.
Allison 43:09
Yeah. And one other way I've found that's been helpful to sell this kind of thing in is to talk about, you know, whatever training you received a few years ago is now kind of moot, because the world has changed completely. What's changed the most in the way, you know, you work with people over the last five years? What's kind of new?
Bill 43:28
Probably the degree to which everything you say is public. Even private meetings within your company, people are going to post on social. It's not… there's no guarantee things are going to be contained. I mean, look at what happened to that CEO. I think it was of Design Within Reach, who had that famous “stop living in pity city.” Do you remember? Do you remember that video where she was talking to… telling her staff to stop complaining about this and complaining about that? That was about as viral as it possibly could be, and what was undoubtedly in her mind, just an internal message to employees. So what's really changed over the past five to 10 years is just the likelihood that what you say that is memorable for either a good reason or a bad reason is not going to stay confined to just a small group of people, or can burnish your reputation, or it can make you seem like a thought leader. It cuts both ways, and so every time you open your mouth, the stakes are high. I think that that's what I try to focus on with people. There are no gimmes, there are no mulligans, there are no everything. There are no do-overs. Everything has the chance of lasting a really long time.
Sean 44:55
Speaking of differences now, I mean, I think we have to, like, figure out the tally on this house and whether, how much we bring up AI in every single conversation. But it seems relevant. Obviously, with the advent of AI there's, there's some leaders who are going to be like, you know, what? Amazing. I have my own little like, speaking partner or coaching, coaching partner here. I can do changes. I use AI every day, like, I happily use it. You know, the question obviously becomes like, where does it fit in? People are going to use it? So where does something like AI fit into how people develop their own messaging, how people develop what they say to their teams, say to media, what what have you, or say on panels or podcasts?
Bill 45:40
There's no question that for a lot of people, AI is tremendous. It really does eliminate that blank page syndrome, where it gives you this amazing jump start. But I also feel that overused, it can exacerbate this whole conformity zone, this conformity trap, because what you get out of AI is not your voice. It is an amalgamation of millions of other voices. And I think, by its very nature, what it's doing is it's pushing you to this center that has a sameness to it. I don't think it's a great way for you to stand out and be distinctive. In fact, I had a situation where someone sent me an email not too long ago, and it was a silly thing. It was like a social more of a personal email about, you know, welcoming somebody to a team. And I knew this person was very enamored with generative AI, I thought, let me just put into ChatGPT give me an email that celebrates the arrival of somebody on a new team. Sure enough, word for word, because it had this canned, synthetic, icky feel to it. I just knew it wasn't something that came out of a human's brain. And there's a chapter in the book about communication in the era of AI, and I do feel as though authentic, real, different, fresh articulation of ideas is never going to be more important than it is in the coming years, simply because people, more and more, are going to rely, rely on AI to be content… the content generator, and what comes out of there is not necessarily going to be fresh, original, pithy, different. Getting back to our analogy about the supply chain. Just for kicks, I decided, let's put it into… give me an analogy that would help me explain the supply chain crisis. What I got was maybe a four paragraph spit out comparing it to a spider's web, and it was really clunky and dense, and so it's not there yet. No question it's gonna get a lot better. And one of these days, maybe 90% of people will rely on it. But I think what it will do is it'll make the 10% who don't rely on it, who feel like they want to hone this muscle of communicating in a different, authentic way. It'll make those people stand out all the more.
Sean 48:30
So Bill, one thing we ask every guest given the name of this podcast, and you're a very busy guy, you're… you’ve got a book that just came out, you’ve got a lot happening. But like in between all your clients and all the stuff you're doing to, with your book, what's capturing your attention these days?
Bill 48:49
What's capturing my attention these days? Probably things that are not being communicated at a feverish pitch. I think that the high decibel volume and the high decibel level and the furious urgency that's being communicated and everything to grab our attention, I'm finding that I'm growing increasingly allergic to that, and I mean, listening to your podcast is a sanctuary. Listening to a couple of others that I like is also but, you know, listening to watching shows that are slow-paced. And, I mean, that's just capturing my attention. I'm not sure it's capturing anybody else's attention, but I do think that people are becoming certainly immune to this synthetic craziness that is seemingly attached to everything to try to get people's attention. I think people are becoming more and more savvy around the manipulation that's part of an attempt to just draw them in and keep their attention for a while. So I can't say anything in particular when I'm not absorbing media by watching where clients are appearing. I'm just in my kitchen and listening to music and cooking and single-mindedly, not multitasking. I find one of the greatest luxuries today is being single-mindedly focused on one thing and not thinking about, Oh, I should reach out to that person and what about that session tomorrow? No. Just tuning it all out and really enjoying the moment of doing something right now, without thinking about what happened before and what's coming up tomorrow.
Allison 50:48
They call that flow state. It is magical.
Bill 50:50
I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sean 50:52
Well, thank you very much, Bill. It's been awesome to have you.
Bill 50:54
It's been great talking with you both. Thanks so much.
Allison 51:00
Thank you for joining us today for Attention Shift, for today's deep dive on communication strategy. Check out our sponsors, Delve, at delve.news and Mike Worldwide at mww.com. Please like and subscribe to Attention Shift on Apple Spotify or your podcast platform of choice, and we'll see you in a couple weeks for our next episode.