This issue contains the amazing daredevil story – with video back-up – of a swashbuckling bearded Australian self-deluded superhero in action.

But first…

There’s one thing many people fear more than public speaking.

And there’s one thing many people fear more than doing a media interview.

It’s FEAR OF PREPARATION for public speaking.

And it’s FEAR OF PREPARATION for doing a media interview.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld makes fun of people who are fearful of performing in public!

 

 

But there’s good news on this.

If you know HOW to prepare – and you put that learning into action – performing in public can be much better than those nightmares and butterflies are telling you.

 

 

LEAVING BEHIND THOSE NIGHTMARES AND BUTTERFLIES

 

I find it’s often this fear of preparation – accompanied by not knowing HOW to prepare – that’s the real problem underlying those nightmares and butterflies.

In the one-to-one and company group training sessions that I run to show people how to tackle their public speaking and media interview challenges, participants are typically quick to voice their concerns about:

* Fear of losing it, freezing or of failing to connect when speaking to large audiences – or even small audiences

* Fear of being unable to stand up to tough questions – and even easy questions – in a media interview.

A few participants also express their fears about participating in the actual training session itself – before or soon after the session gets underway.

(If you’ve been on one of my training sessions, you’ll know they always turn out to be fear-diminishing and fun!)

But once participants know HOW to prepare they tend to be much calmer, more confident and – as a result – actually perform at a far higher level.

They need to know what’s the best content to put in their presentation or media interview answers.

They need to know what’s the best way to structure a presentation and their answers to media questions.

And they need to know how to deliver their words with the best use of their body and their voice.

 

 

ALWAYS PUT SOME GREAT STUFF UP FRONT

 

One useful tip I can give you here is to put something really powerful and memorable at the start of your presentation – or in your first media interview answer.

This ensures you feel good – and entices your audience to want to hear more – right at the beginning.

When you put the right stuff at the start, this feel-good factor can remain with you throughout your performance.

And it effectively improves your performance along the way.

 

 

“THE ONLY THING WE HAVE TO FEAR IS FEAR ITSELF”

 

When participants in presentation and media interview master classes come to grips with the key elements – content, structure and delivery style – and they’ve applied them in their preparations and rehearsals – they magically feel far more confident.

In the process, they prove how right Franklin Roosevelt was when he declared, at the time of The Great Depression, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

 

 

You can re-live President Roosevelt’s historic performance – with somewhat blurry vision and scratchy sound quality – speaking confidently about facing the “fear of fear itself” during his first inauguration speech in 1933.

 

 

 

 

ANTICIPATION OF SCARY STUFF
CAN BE WORSE THAN THE REAL THING

 

Anticipation of something scary is often more scary than the thing itself.

A swashbuckling bearded Australian self-deluded “superhero” rediscovered this truth when he took on the challenge of jumping off the tower at the end of the pier at England’s Bournemouth Beach.

But please don’t overdo your sympathy for the swashbuckling bearded Australian self-deluded superhero at this point.

He was jumping off the tower while strapped onto a zipwire! 

 

 

Nonetheless the self-deluded superhero did start to feel a little nervous just before the big leap.

He noticed this as he climbed the stairs of the tower on the way to the jumping off point.

It started to seem extremely high….much higher than it had looked from the safety of the beach.

And the platform of the pier and the water below, looked menacingly further and further down. 

The suddenly not-so-quite-so-swashbuckling deluded superhero had a flashback to something his psychology lecturer explained in a university lecture room in Sydney some years earlier.

This was something called “Approach-Avoidance Conflict”.

It’s where the closer you get to something scary the more you want to avoid it.

So the higher up the spiral steps the ever-less-swashbuckling self-deluded superhero climbed, the more he felt like running away from the challenge.
 

 

 

But the superhero knew that running away would have left him looking a bit silly in front of his teenage daughter who was poised on the pier ready to record the death-defying exploit on a mobile phone.

So he continued to the top.

He took some deep slow breaths.

He thought about backing down at this last moment.

But he jumped!

Of course, once he’d made the leap and was flying along the zipwire towards the beach, he felt so much better.

The deluded superhero was even relaxed enough to wave to the teenage video artiste while in flight.

He was just like those people who feel so much better when they’ve been shown how to prepare for a presentation or how to prepare for a media interview and – when it comes to crunch time – actually enjoy doing it.

The historic footage of the once-again-swashbuckling bearded deluded Australian superhero in action on the Bournemouth zipwire can be witnessed here:
 

 

 

 

HOW QUALITY MEDIA TRAINING WOULD HAVE HELPED THOSE TEARFUL AUSSIE CRICKETERS 

 

If there’s one thing worse than watching a deluded Australian superhero in action, it’s witnessing the performance of fallen Australian cricketing superheroes struggling to answer questions after they’ve done something really thoughtless, really stupid and really bad.

In fact, the appalling recent unsporting on-field performances of those Australian cricketers breaking the laws and spirit of cricket by tampering with the ball have only been matched their appalling off-field performances at press conferences attempting to explain their behaviour.

 

 

To their minor credit, amidst their embarrassing pauses, stumbles and tears, the cricketers have at least apologised for their terrible unsporting misdeeds – though this was far from eloquent and not-at-all pretty to watch.

Of course, media training alone – however brilliantly delivered – may not have solved their self-inflicted problems. 

But it’s clear that the cricketers could have done with – and should have previously had – far more effective media training before being thrust in front of the mics and cameras.

And they should have had it long before this latest crisis erupted.

(Media training can have the virtue of helping sportspeople and businesspeople better realise what they should and shouldn’t do on the sportsfield and in the field of business, because it focuses their minds on how things will look to the wider audience if they get it wrong.)

 

 

ACTUAL SUCCESS DOESN’T MEAN COMMUNICATIONS SUCCESS

 

The challenge humans have with success in any field of endeavour is that, while they develop and demonstrate their skills within their area of expertise, it doesn’t mean they automatically become good at communicating about their subject – especially under the pressures of talking to the media or a big audience.

It would seem the miscreant cricketers had little or no training in answering tough media questions – for if they had, the lightbulbs should have come on far more brightly about the importance of doing the right thing when being watched by dozens of cameras on and off the field.

When I media train members of professional sports teams, I seek to train ALL the team members as well as key officials.

And I show them how to deal with both easy questions (which they can, before the training, potentially still make a mess of!) and tough ones. 

Naturally the training should not be on how to put the best face on breaking the rules – and it isn’t.

But sportspeople and businesspeople should know general things about how to make the best of tricky situations and the importance of coming clean at the outset if they’ve done something wrong. 

It doesn’t look as though the Australian cricket team – even the now ex-captain, who should have had particularly intense media training – received much in the way of media guidance either before or during their self-inflicted ordeal. 

So the problems with Cricket Australia need addressing from multiple angles.

 

 

Along the way there’s much that others – in all sports and in all businesses –  can learn from Cricket Australia’s fall from grace.

 

CITY A.M. RECOMMENDS NEW TALKING BOOK

For those potentially interested in learning how to give great answers  to tough questions by having guidance piped through the headphones of your mobile or computer, London’s City A.M. newspaper is recommending the experience.

 

 

The paper has put the talking book version of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work” on its list of the “BEST OF THE LATEST BOOKS AND AUDIO BOOKS.” 

You can read the City A.M. recommendation of the talking book at:

http://www.cityam.com/282728/best-latest-books-and-audiobooks-divided-why-were-living

The good news about the talking book version of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work” is that if you’re not already signed up to Audible, you can listen from the comfort of your sofa FREE with Audible’s 30-day trial.

And if the City A.M. review convinces you to check it out, the details are on the Audible website at:

https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Business/Great-Answers-to-Tough-Questions-at-Work-Audiobook/B078HHFJZ9?qid=1513935634&sr=1-1

 

 

HAVE A CHAT ABOUT YOUR COMMUNICATIONS-BOOSTING MASTER CLASS

 

If you’re thinking of booking one-to-one or group training sessions to boost your presentation or media interview skills – or a keynote address for your conference or away day – you can discuss how they work on 44 (0) 7944 952835.

The author will be running sessions in “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work” and “Presenting With Confidence, Impact And Pizzazz” in a range of places in the near future.

These are all closed sessions commissioned directly by specific companies, but you can take the opportunity of discussing such sessions in a face-to-face caffeine-fueled chat if you’re at any of the following places at the right time: 

Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Mid-April 

 

 

Torquay, South Devon: Late-April

 

 

Singapore, South Asia: Early June 

 

 

If you’ll be in any of these locations at these times and would to have a face-to-face chat, email  michael@michaeldoddcommunications.com to line up a meeting.

There’s more information on media training here: http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/media-master-classes/

And more details on “Presenting With Confidence, Impact And Pizzazz” here: 
http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/presenting-with-confidence-impact-and-pizzazz/

Alas there are no future swashbuckling bearded Australian self-deluded superhero zipwire performances currently scheduled.

But as they are fun – like training sessions and conference keynotes –  they could happen without notice at any time on a zipwire near you!