Media Training Must Be a Yearly Exercise. Here's Why.

We recently ran a poll on our Coast Communications LinkedIn page asking the following question:

How often do you think leaders should get media trained?

The results were encouraging and aligned with what we were expecting.

The vast majority of respondents (90%), stated that media training should be conducted every year, which is a sentiment we wholeheartedly agree with. (There were a handful of dissenting voices — including 2% who opted for the morning the crisis hits and 2% who asked what media training is — but we're assuming this is just a bit of harmless trolling.)

Media training is not something that should be checked off once and then forgotten about. In today’s fast-paced, always-connected digital world, leaders and executive teams constantly communicate with various stakeholders, including employees, customers, shareholders, and, of course, the media. They also find themselves in a dynamic environment that's always evolving, so training from five years ago is unlikely to have prepared them for the current landscape.

For instance, prior to 2020, few corporate or public-sector executives had any experience talking about pandemics and explaining how they were juggling remote work and social distancing while ensuring their organizations remained functional. The pandemic also normalized the use of Zoom and other meeting platforms for on-air interviews, so it caused a substantial shift in the nature of media interactions.

Why is media training essential for all leaders?

1. Protecting Reputation: Executives and leaders are the public face of their organizations. Any misstep or perceived lack of transparency can damage the organization’s reputation, which is hard to repair. Media training helps equip leaders with the communication skills needed to protect their organization’s reputation in any situation.
2. Building Trust: Trust is crucial in any successful relationship. Leaders must build trust with all their internal and external stakeholders. Media training provides the skills to communicate effectively and build trust and credibility.
3. Responding to Crises: New challenges and crises are inevitable in today’s fast-moving world. When a crisis hits, leaders must communicate quickly and appropriately with the media based on best practices. Media training prepares them to handle crises with confidence, providing the skills to communicate clearly in high-pressure situations.
4. Enhancing Leadership Skills: Effective communication is a critical leadership skill. Media training strengthens communication abilities, including active listening, empathy, and appropriate responses to different situations. It also helps leaders develop their unique communication style, enhancing their leadership presence.
5. Professional Development: Interacting with the media can be stressful, but media training can also be fun. Spending time with senior professionals, hearing their stories, and practicing in a safe environment with colleagues is a great way to improve your skillset. Think of media training as a dynamic way to develop new skills or enhance current ones, making it an effective investment in professional development.

Why do you need it yearly?

1. It Takes Practice: In our experience, the majority of leaders are capable of being perfectly good company spokespeople. But it does take practice even to meet the baseline for success. Yes, there are the few preternaturally talented spokespeople, but even they likely get tunes up (formal and informal) before going in front of microphones. As with most things in life, the more experience leaders have in doing media interviews — the more comfortable and familiar they are with the cameras, lights and needling questions — the better they'll be at it. Regular media training with simulated interviews is a great way for leaders to "get their reps in" and get comfortable with an experience that can feel very alien and unnatural at first.
2. Spokespeople and (Leadership Teams) Change: It's risky to assume that the organization's current CEO will always be the spokesperson. What if the CEO is sick, off on vacation without cell reception (or is the problem and being walked out the front door in handcuffs)? A deep bench of effective spokespeople is crucial, which means ensuring that all members of the leadership team are media trained, especially those who are new to the team. It's easy to put media training off as "useful but not crucial" when things get busy. But what happens when a crisis hits and three quarters of the team have never been media trained?
3. Messaging and Priorities Change: Organizations are not static entities. Priorities change, which means messaging changes — which means media training is needed to ensure all leaders are able to articulate the current strategy, goals, objectives and challenges of the organization. A major component of media training is learning the fundamentals of how to navigate an interview, but the other important part is getting familiar with current messaging, internalizing it and learning how to deliver it effectively.
4. It Stress Tests Messaging: Similarly, a media training session with on-camera practice is the perfect place to test and refine messaging. If your messages sound inauthentic, lack clarity or fail to adequately answer obvious media questions, media training will highlight these issues and give you a chance to fix them before stepping into a live interview. Between our PR experts and former journalists, we’ll spot the holes and help you fill them.
5. Media is Evolving: If you saw US President Biden's appearance on the Complex YouTube channel or heard Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's interview on the Freakonomics podcast , you'll know that the nature of media and media interviews are changing. Audiences, channels and formats are all shifting rapidly, so if the journalist was still using a dictaphone with a microcassette during your most recent interview, you'll now find yourself in a bewildering media landscape. Because of this, regular media training is an important part of staying up to date with media trends and knowing what to expect.

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In case of emergency...

To those few respondents who thought (or joked!) you could wait until an issue breaks until doing media training, hopefully, it goes without saying that this is a bad idea. If a true crisis hits, it's unlikely that organization leaders will have the time, energy or mental bandwidth needed to truly immerse themselves in training.

A bit of prep and a quick review of the fundamentals is a good idea when faced with a sudden crisis. But it is only truly effective if those involved have been properly media trained.

You never know when a crisis is going to hit, so regular media training is a crucial way of mitigating risk and reducing the impact that a potential PR crisis will have on your brand.

Is it time for your leadership team's annual media training? Coast Communications can help. Find out more about our media training here .