You’re an authentic, open, relatable person. You love to listen. Being a good person is important to you. You’ve seen so many a**holes in Silicon Valley. The last thing you ever want to do is look in the mirror and feel like one of them.
These wonderful personality traits are so rare and so amazing. You are the boss everyone fights to work for. You are the leader every customer trusts. And yet, if you bring your “I’m the nice guy” mindset to a media interview, you will be a problem spokesperson. Why?
Because you will politely answer every question the reporter asks. You feel super awkward about changing the topic to your message and your agenda.
Because you will repeat what the reporter says in order to bond with them. (People do this unconsciously to create connection with others.) Once those words come out of your mouth, the reporter can just quote you repeating her language and use that in her story.
Because you will spend five minutes of a 20 minute interview schmoozing, and then only get to 25% of your story during the remaining time.
Being an amazingly nice guy is wonderful. Guys like you are all too rare – especially in the tech industry! But in media interviews, put the need to be liked aside. A media interview is a business transaction. As we’ve said before on poseyblog, don’t let your wonderful nice personality make you that reporter’s bi#&h!
On the other hand, maybe you are that brilliant jerk running this week’s super-hot company. You think that any reporter who gets to sit down with you is lucky. You interrupt the reporter in mid-sentence. You wax on about your own ideas while ignoring the legitimate questions the reporter asks. You stop mid-interview to ask the reporter why he isn’t writing down that amazing thing you just said. You scoff and mock him when he asks a question you don’t like.
All I can say about you, dude, is that our industry has seen dozens of you who hurtle into the spotlight and then burn up on the way down. Reporters have very long memories. Karma always catches up to the brilliant jerks.
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