“When training, there was a common thing holding people back; anxiety about public speaking,” explains barrister and comms professional Benjamin Thiele-Long.
Having worked in financial and business communications for over a decade, Thiele-Long is now a senior prosecutor for CPS and author of How To Be Utterly Brilliant At Public Speaking, Presenting and Talking to the Media.
During his time working in comms, his experience — predominantly gained at Ketchum and Petco — revolved around, amongst other things, delivering media and presentation training.
But, he had all the answers to the collective anxiety people have for standing up and speaking; whether it be speech delivery, media training or something else.
“I realised there were some core skills that I had the benefit of being taught and was able to share,” says Thiele-Long.
“We know, I think very much, that words have power. And, actually, sometimes a very subtle change of words can have a very different emotional reaction.”
Ultimately, Thiele-Long argues that the function of any PR delivering a form of speech or public speaking engagement, is usually a persuasive act. He notes that, as a barrister, he is very aware of his language and the persuasion needed, but he says:
“One of the things I noticed in PR, both in terms of written and oral communications, whether it's a press release or how we brief our spokespeople to talk, I don’t know that we think about that persuasion so readily.”
Elizabeth Giles, editor of PRmoment, sat down with Thiele-Long to find out how PR professionals can win the room and tap into their persuasive side.
If you dislike public speaking, or are nervous, can you win the room?
Benjamin Thiele-Long (BTL): “Nerves are just a form of energy and our job as PR pros is to help that energy transfer into a more useful type of energy. So nerves can be transferred into passion or a dynamic presentation on stage. Structure and knowing your material is something that cannot be replaced. Nine times out of 10, I find nerves can be dissipated purely by just practicing over and over. There's absolutely no substitute for really good structure and planning. Nobody can wing it.
“Feedback is really important, and this is a trap that PR can fall into as we can sometimes critique quite a lot and sometimes rightly so as we have spokespeople that we want to improve, but if you’ve got someone who's new to this or fairly nervous, critical feedback with lots of lists of all the things that they’ve done wrong is not going to help the emotion. Perfection can get in the way of progress, and actually a better way to give feedback to a nervous, green speaker is to accentuate the positives so it’s less negative.”
Will being funny help you win the room?
BTL: “It’s really on case-by-case and a lot of it depends on the setting, but I generally avoid it. Trying to crack a joke is very hard, and if it doesn’t land it’s really hard to get back from so I tend to avoid it for spokespeople, particularly [if they are delivering to] external audiences.
“When people become more confident, they can start to use levity in a scenario. Especially if you're in a line-up of speakers, and it might be that you can pick up on something funny that a previous speaker has said, and just build on that and form a connection with the audience. We absolutely have to avoid humour that is depreciating to other people, in any kind of public speaking, it’s not a hill I would die on. It’s very rarely appropriate and it can always be taken [badly]. So, it's a judicious approach with humour. I think it does have a place but must be very carefully executed.”
Is there a worry nowadays that executives/CEOs won't win the room?
BTL: “There's a very basic structure to answering questions that I advocate a lot and used in media training for a long time; and that is Point, Proof, Anecdote. Which means when answering a question, instead of rambling, you make the point you want to make and why you believe it to be the case. The best way to do that is arm your spokespeople with appropriate anecdotes, facts, and/or data.
“So, particularly if you get asked something controversial, your spokesperson does. Quickest way to avoid a topic. That is actually going to be inflammatory is to actually have to talk about something they can and say that's not my area, or this is my responsibility on what I see or in our country that we're seeing it this way in our jurisdiction, whatever it may be, that's actually much more important and PR that we should be coaching our spokespeople to answer the questions in an effective way for them.”
Can PR try to win the room while pitching?
BTL: “I've seen so many good pitches and I've seen tons of horrible ones. There's a whole section on pitching in the book that helps companies that are trying to pitch to investors as well as PR agencies, or any type of agency that's pitching for clients.
“There are some really easy ways to lose that process. I really focus on how to win it and how to stand out because when a company is looking at maybe 10 competitive pitches and hearing from multiple people in the room, you need to stand up from word go and win the work.”
Pitching tips PR can implement today
Do edit your slide deck to infinity: “I see slide decks that are far too long, too big and too boring, and the reason that happens every time is people have 30 slides for a 30 minute pitch. You’re never going to get through a slide a minute with introductions etc. Always edit the slide deck thoroughly.”
Don’t leave anyone behind: “If your team goes out to pitch and you have two or three people on that pitch that don't speak; [you should question] why are they there. If they’re not serving a function they shouldn’t be there, and you probably have them there because it's probably because they have served a function so have them talk about it.
"If you've got someone, even if they're really junior, on the team and they're going to be doing some of the most basic work. Have something meaningful they can say and add to the conversation. It’s old school pitching, where you’d have the senior account manager or director with an army of people behind them. We don't pitch like that anymore, that's not how it works, and it will not impress anybody. So, don't do that.Bring people to the meeting that will do the work, give them something to say and do not leave them behind.”
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