What is your organization's policy on what has to happen? Before someone does a meeting interview? In a lot of organizations, people have messages approved or they may have a system where 10 or 20, or even 50 questions are brainstormed and three paragraph answers are drafted and gone through legal different approval processes. In my experience, having worked with corporate leaders before and after they do media interviews, that sort of prep is not 100% worthless, but maybe 98% worthless. It takes vast amounts of time, company resources and doesn't actually generate tangible results as far as what gets in the final store. So I believe corporations should have a policy.
No one gets to do an interview. If it's a serious interview that's come up through channel And people are aware of it through corporate communications and the corporate structure. No one should be allowed to do an interview unless they've isolated three messages. It's on a single sheet of paper or computer screen. Those three messages, each one can be written down 10 words or less. Each message point has half a dozen sound bites created.
It's on a single sheet of paper or a single computer screen, and that person's boss has signed off on them. That's what I believe is the minimum best practice that corporations should have before anyone's allowed to do an interview. Now, if you really want to take it up a notch, I believe no one should be allowed to do an interview until they have practiced on video on their own cell phone. So instead of emailing their messages, and their sound bites to their boss or corporate communications, they should email that text message plus, attach a video of themselves. The messages and the sound bites. So that's really the next step up and the ultimate the gold standard for all of this is no one should ever do an interview unless they've done an actual rehearsal.
On video done to be an hour long, it could be four and a half minutes long. But they've got the three message points written down half a dozen sound bites, they've done the rehearsal on video repeatedly till they like it. And that's what's sent to their bosses, colleagues corporate communications, then only then are they ready and approved to do the interview.