Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number
Joanne Lockwood: of amazing people and simply had a conversation around the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a
Joanne Lockwood: better place for everyone to thrive. To join me in the
Joanne Lockwood: future, then please do drop me a line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk,
Joanne Lockwood: that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co dot Uk. You
Joanne Lockwood: can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify
Joanne Lockwood: and the usual places. So plug
Joanne Lockwood: in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get
Joanne Lockwood: going. Today is
Joanne Lockwood: episode 95 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: navigating challenging conversations, and I have the absolute
Joanne Lockwood: honour and privilege to welcome Michael Dodd. Michael
Joanne Lockwood: describes himself as a recovering journalist and
Joanne Lockwood: media communication specialist. When I asked Michael to
Joanne Lockwood: describe his superpower, he said, being able to ask tough
Joanne Lockwood: questions in real interviews and enabling people to give
Joanne Lockwood: great answers. Hello, Michael, welcome to the show.
Michael Dodd: G'day, Jo. Great to be here on inclusion bytes.
Joanne Lockwood: Great to have you. We've been planning this for some months. I'm really pleased we
Joanne Lockwood: finally got it to happen. So, Michael,
Joanne Lockwood: you're a covering journalist and you're used to helping
Joanne Lockwood: people answer tough interview questions. So
Joanne Lockwood: how does one go about navigating the challenge of
Joanne Lockwood: having challenging conversations with. A bit of
Michael Dodd: forethought, ideally, rather than just plunging in and saying
Michael Dodd: what pops into your head. So one of the
Michael Dodd: arts of interviewing people, which is what I had to do when I was
Michael Dodd: trained by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Michael Dodd: to put people under pressure, particularly politicians,
Michael Dodd: but business people and others as well, in media
Michael Dodd: interviews, is to actually ask
Michael Dodd: questions which they don't really want to answer quite
Michael Dodd: often. And these days I'm much more popular because I actually
Michael Dodd: help people ahead of media interviews or ahead of tough
Michael Dodd: conversations they might have to have with clients, with
Michael Dodd: prospects, with even their own people, let alone tax
Michael Dodd: inspectors. And the idea there is to get them
Michael Dodd: to be thinking about things in advance.
Michael Dodd: So they're thinking about the messages they want to get across
Michael Dodd: to the audience, which may be to one asker or it may
Michael Dodd: be to a massive audience. Beyond that, in the case of
Michael Dodd: media, and it's all about thinking ahead,
Michael Dodd: what are the tough questions they're likely to ask? What we
Michael Dodd: call in the world of australian journalism, blowtorch on the belly
Michael Dodd: questions. And if you think about those in advance, it's
Michael Dodd: often a lot easier to get across
Michael Dodd: what's in the mutual interest of you and the asker and any
Michael Dodd: wider audience to keep everyone happy. So
Joanne Lockwood: typically in this kind of the world of work the terms of
Joanne Lockwood: conversations, probably around performance,
Joanne Lockwood: redundancy, reprimanding somebody for something.
Joanne Lockwood: And a lot of people, when they become a
Joanne Lockwood: manager, don't think about this people
Joanne Lockwood: side. They're thinking it's all sweetness and light, being in charge and everyone will do
Joanne Lockwood: as they're told. But the challenging conversations is a learned skill and
Joanne Lockwood: I'm sure you'd agree with that. Absolutely. And if you're dealing with people on your
Michael Dodd: own team, taking them with you is not automatic
Michael Dodd: and you've got to make sure you do that. So one of the arts
Michael Dodd: of giving great answers is to get your head in the mind
Michael Dodd: of those who you're dealing with, whether they're asking you questions
Michael Dodd: or waiting for their reprimand or whatever it is. And
Michael Dodd: if you can get into the mind of the person who
Michael Dodd: is your target audience, then it's so much
Michael Dodd: easier to tell them not what they want to hear, what they
Michael Dodd: need to hear and what's in your and their mutual interest for them to
Michael Dodd: hear by thinking it through beforehand. So a lot
Michael Dodd: of my work is to do with media, helping people go on
Michael Dodd: BBC programmes and CNN programmes, and to be
Michael Dodd: thinking ahead rather than just be thinking. I hope they
Michael Dodd: asked me the right questions, because journalists typically
Michael Dodd: think it's their mission to ask you the wrong questions and you need to be
Michael Dodd: ready for it. But what I found, the more I've worked, particularly with chief
Michael Dodd: executive organisations, that's organisations where
Michael Dodd: you get a bunch of chief executives working together to try
Michael Dodd: and help improve their own performance. What I found is,
Michael Dodd: for them, it's not so much media, which is their
Michael Dodd: number one concern when it comes to giving great answers to tough questions,
Michael Dodd: they typically think, well, what am I going to tell this
Michael Dodd: person who I'm hoping will become a customer? Or
Michael Dodd: what am I going to tell the official inspectors? Or if things go wrong,
Michael Dodd: what am I going to tell the official inquiry or the courts?
Michael Dodd: And the same principles apply where it's
Michael Dodd: really important to actually get across a message
Michael Dodd: for any particular occasion and to get across
Michael Dodd: what you're planning to say, not what you're just thinking about
Michael Dodd: on the run. I mean, people who watch great media
Michael Dodd: interviewees often say, oh, they're really good at thinking fast
Michael Dodd: on their feet, and the truth is, often they're not. But
Michael Dodd: what they are good is at thinking ahead before they do
Michael Dodd: the interview, what they're going to say, and actually, when the right
Michael Dodd: question comes up, saying that, rather than
Michael Dodd: saying what I hope I can say, and getting
Michael Dodd: themselves in a mess. So planning, preparation and practise
Michael Dodd: is really important before all important
Michael Dodd: business conversations. I've noticed when
Joanne Lockwood: I've watched politicians on various
Joanne Lockwood: parties over the years and other
Joanne Lockwood: great people who would get interviewed a lot, is that when
Joanne Lockwood: they get asked a question, there's almost like a holding sentence
Joanne Lockwood: you put out first. It's almost like you go, great question. I'm glad you raised
Joanne Lockwood: that. So it's that immediate sound bite that gives your
Joanne Lockwood: brain an extra 5 seconds to process something before you
Joanne Lockwood: say the next thing, isn't it? And I think that helps you as well, not
Joanne Lockwood: rush into the answer. Well, it can if you are taken by surprise.
Michael Dodd: But ideally I would be training people not to do
Michael Dodd: that, just to basically have their great
Michael Dodd: thing they're trying to get across, and to say it up front without
Michael Dodd: any sleazy, slimy politician blabber that they've got to
Michael Dodd: go through before they get to it. I mean, there's a great saying in the
Michael Dodd: world of media training which hopefully won't shock too many of your
Michael Dodd: audience members, Jo, it's that giving a great
Michael Dodd: interviewee performance is the opposite of
Michael Dodd: sex. The reason being is that when
Michael Dodd: you get it right, the climax comes at the start.
Michael Dodd: Now, if any young men listening, don't try this at home
Michael Dodd: in the wrong field. But when it comes to an interview, when you're
Michael Dodd: watching on tv, you want the sleazy, slamming politician to come
Michael Dodd: to the point straight away. You don't want him saying what a wonderful,
Michael Dodd: marvellous question it is and how wonderful you as the
Michael Dodd: interviewer are looking today, et cetera. You want them to
Michael Dodd: get straight to the point, climax at the front. And that can
Michael Dodd: work in many non media occasions. They're not all of all
Michael Dodd: occasions, but certainly a lot of conversational occasions.
Michael Dodd: That's really important for getting straight to the point.
Joanne Lockwood: Okay, I like that. I like the idea of just being
Joanne Lockwood: that prepared. And I confess I've not done
Joanne Lockwood: media training, but I've had people give me advice when I've gone on the radio
Joanne Lockwood: and done other things. And the best advice I was always given
Joanne Lockwood: was write down next to you on a piece of paper the key
Joanne Lockwood: points you want to get across. And whatever they
Joanne Lockwood: ask you, you answer the questions you want to answer rather than their
Joanne Lockwood: question, or you fit in your answer that you want to get
Joanne Lockwood: across, not as a direct response to their question, but as trying
Joanne Lockwood: to give my message across rather than their message. Is that
Joanne Lockwood: something you would talk about? It's certainly something I talk about and get asked
Michael Dodd: about. And the trick is you're trying to do
Michael Dodd: both answer the question and get across a
Michael Dodd: message that's on your agenda for that particular audience.
Michael Dodd: And there is a way of doing that, ideally every time,
Michael Dodd: because if you watch BBC's news night
Michael Dodd: or some other tough question asking programme,
Michael Dodd: an audience member is pretty quick to judge yes, that
Michael Dodd: person is honest and reasonable and addressing the question
Michael Dodd: that the audience wants to know asked on behalf
Michael Dodd: of a competent interviewer. And
Michael Dodd: they don't want a lot of blabber. And they also don't want
Michael Dodd: a politician setting their own agenda. They want
Michael Dodd: them answering the questions that the question asker is asking
Michael Dodd: on their behalf. And so, ideally, when
Michael Dodd: you're trying to get it right as an answerer, you should
Michael Dodd: be dealing with the question because people are asking the question for a reason.
Michael Dodd: But when you're really clever, you can get
Michael Dodd: across the important bits that you've written down, Jo or whoever
Michael Dodd: else is talking, you can cover those as well, where
Michael Dodd: they're relevant. And so in any particular answer, a
Michael Dodd: really good answer does answer the question, but goes
Michael Dodd: on to get across a message, usually a
Michael Dodd: positive message, on the topic that they're being
Michael Dodd: asked about. So there's a win win to be had between
Michael Dodd: the person answering the questions and the
Michael Dodd: question asker and the wider audience who's listening
Michael Dodd: in. You mentioned night there,
Joanne Lockwood: the Fiona Bruce question that she asks these days.
Joanne Lockwood: And you can just tell that the career
Joanne Lockwood: politicians launch straight into the party
Joanne Lockwood: manifesto, don't they? There's kind of this. Here's the facts and figures. This is what
Joanne Lockwood: I want to tell you. And you end up with just party
Joanne Lockwood: politics spouting kind of the corporate message, and you
Joanne Lockwood: never really hear the real truth. And that's what I find.
Michael Dodd: Well, a good interview is on BBC News Night and other programmes
Michael Dodd: good at persisting and making sure
Michael Dodd: the politician doesn't just get to say what they want to say. It's not a
Michael Dodd: party political broadcast as far as they're concerned. There was a guy who
Michael Dodd: was probably quite a reasonable interviewee, called Simon Hughes. He was a liberal
Michael Dodd: Democrat. And he once famously said, on the
Michael Dodd: Today programme on Radio Four, which is a serious
Michael Dodd: political interviewing programme, he said, I can't answer
Michael Dodd: the question you're asking, but I've got the answer to two other questions that you
Michael Dodd: haven't asked. And this is what they are, and it's quite
Michael Dodd: a glib statement, quite an arresting statement, but that's not
Michael Dodd: really what the interviewer and the wider audience want.
Michael Dodd: They want answers to the questions that they are asking about,
Michael Dodd: not ones which a sleazy, slamy politician
Michael Dodd: or even a reasonable, responsible, honest
Michael Dodd: politician wants to do. But the real
Michael Dodd: trick, and a great answer is effectively to do both.
Michael Dodd: So you are answering what's asked, but you're also giving
Michael Dodd: across sometimes that extra little bit, which can be your
Michael Dodd: message as well on the topic, which
Michael Dodd: can actually be very helpful for the viewers. I mean, what a
Michael Dodd: good interviewee is often saying sometimes is they'll give the answer, but then they'll
Michael Dodd: say, but what's even more important is this.
Michael Dodd: And providing it's in the territory that's being asked about
Michael Dodd: by the interviewer, then that's perfectly reasonable and often very
Michael Dodd: helpful. And they can often put things in a new
Michael Dodd: perspective, maybe partly for their own interest, but also for the interest
Michael Dodd: of the viewers. And what a really
Michael Dodd: good question answerer is doing is doing that a
Michael Dodd: lot.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I certainly watch some
Joanne Lockwood: really good interviews, and I know people like Laurel Kunsberg and
Joanne Lockwood: Fiona Bruce on those sort of programmes, Andrew Neal on this week, and
Joanne Lockwood: they really are good at asking questions and different styles
Joanne Lockwood: and different directness. But as you say, the tenacity,
Joanne Lockwood: if you're a career politician or you've got a
Joanne Lockwood: high position, high rank in some organisation, when you go onto
Joanne Lockwood: those perennials, you really know that you're going there to be in the lion's den.
Joanne Lockwood: You know you're going to get the tough questions. You're not going there for a
Joanne Lockwood: chat and a coffee, are you? So you are prepared.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think something comes across
Joanne Lockwood: as this combative type attack and
Joanne Lockwood: defence, rather than it being a true meeting of
Joanne Lockwood: minds. It's almost too
Joanne Lockwood: staged as an audience. That's how I sometimes feel. Well, as an
Michael Dodd: interviewee, you don't want to be coming across as if you're
Michael Dodd: being staged. There's a nice little expression which
Michael Dodd: I actually got from the BBC, which is
Michael Dodd: all about saying something, but making it
Michael Dodd: relevant at the time and making sure that it doesn't
Michael Dodd: sound like it's pre planned. So the term they use is.
Michael Dodd: It's called planned spontaneity, which
Michael Dodd: your astute listeners will know is an
Michael Dodd: oxymoron. It's a contradiction in terms, but the
Michael Dodd: idea is to be saying what you plan to say
Michael Dodd: when this topic came up, what you planned to say before the interview,
Michael Dodd: and you're saying it, but you're saying it in such a way
Michael Dodd: that it just sounds like, oh, right, yeah, I've just thought of
Michael Dodd: this plan. Spontaneity is a good thing,
Michael Dodd: particularly for people who are inclined to sound
Michael Dodd: like they're a bit too. You
Michael Dodd: know, a lot of the interview is about having emotional punch
Michael Dodd: as well as giving the facts. And if you get good at planned
Michael Dodd: spontaneity, then you can be a much more
Michael Dodd: scintillating interviewee. Hopefully I'm doing this with you,
Michael Dodd: Jo. Give me a Michael.
Joanne Lockwood: Very spontaneous. Spontaneous.
Joanne Lockwood: Where are we now? We're closing out 2023. And I'm
Joanne Lockwood: sure most people who are listening in the UK will have heard
Joanne Lockwood: Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson, et al. If you like,
Joanne Lockwood: talking about COVID and the COVID years and the
Joanne Lockwood: inquiries. And there's been some
Joanne Lockwood: shocking. I'm going to call them untruths
Joanne Lockwood: or misinformation coming out. How does
Joanne Lockwood: anyone manage to lose all of their WhatsApp messages every time they
Joanne Lockwood: change their phone? You'd think that this was really kind
Joanne Lockwood: of phone 101, isn't it? This is kind of like the very basics,
Joanne Lockwood: don't lose my messages, don't lose this. But all of a sudden,
Joanne Lockwood: conveniently, they've gone.
Joanne Lockwood: Do they really believe the public? Believe them? Well,
Michael Dodd: if you ever find yourself giving answers where you
Michael Dodd: don't think the public will believe you, you're probably going to be right on that.
Michael Dodd: You're probably not going to be believed. And part
Michael Dodd: of what you want to be doing as a person answering questions is to be
Michael Dodd: believed, not just because you're telling the truth, but you're saying
Michael Dodd: it in a way which is credible, it's enhancing your
Michael Dodd: credibility. So it's a matter of getting the truth
Michael Dodd: right, getting the structure of how you actually say it,
Michael Dodd: which is why the climax of the front thing is important,
Michael Dodd: because getting to the number of the matter right up front is really important.
Michael Dodd: But it's also a matter of how you look and how you sound
Michael Dodd: as you're giving your answers. And that's where
Michael Dodd: media response training comes in, where you're
Michael Dodd: practising with people, giving them the tough questions in advance that
Michael Dodd: they might get, but playing it back to them so that they can
Michael Dodd: see themselves and hear themselves as other people hear
Michael Dodd: and see them. And that's a great way to teach, because it's a
Michael Dodd: great way to learn, if you can actually see on the
Michael Dodd: camera that you're looking nervous because your hands are shaking, or you're whopping
Michael Dodd: the sweat off your brow as you're talking, or you're
Michael Dodd: trying to project being in control, but your
Michael Dodd: hands are kind of telling a different story,
Michael Dodd: it's really important to have your body under
Michael Dodd: control and have your voice under control
Michael Dodd: so that you not just are telling the truth, you are
Michael Dodd: sounding like someone who is telling the truth. And
Michael Dodd: allied to that, apart from your actual performance, is often I
Michael Dodd: mentioned earlier about getting across a message. When you've got a message to get
Michael Dodd: across, it's typically an abstract thing,
Michael Dodd: but what you want to be doing as a great communicator
Michael Dodd: is putting a picture in people's minds, a real picture,
Michael Dodd: so that they can actually see what you mean. So
Michael Dodd: if you're talking to your media
Michael Dodd: audience, or maybe your own audience inside your own company, and you're an important person
Michael Dodd: in the company, what you want to be doing is getting across,
Michael Dodd: say, you might be saying, well, we're making some changes to make the
Michael Dodd: company better. And your people might think, well, heard
Michael Dodd: other people say that it may or may not be true, but if they can
Michael Dodd: then give a real life example of one of the things that they
Michael Dodd: are doing that paints a picture in people's minds so they can see
Michael Dodd: it, then bang, it's believable.
Michael Dodd: So I'm making this up on the spot here. This is not planned
Michael Dodd: spontaneity, but, I mean, if the company boss
Michael Dodd: is saying, well, we know that workers work better
Michael Dodd: when they're well fed on really nutritious,
Michael Dodd: healthy food, which tastes great as well, and
Michael Dodd: we're going to be putting this into practise. And in fact, we've already started because
Michael Dodd: you've noticed that our company canteen has cut
Michael Dodd: its prices to make the food available for whoever wants it.
Michael Dodd: And also they've upped the nutritional content
Michael Dodd: of what they're doing. And we've got top chefs in there making it particularly
Michael Dodd: tasty. And the audience saying, oh, yeah, that's right, lunch yesterday was
Michael Dodd: fantastic. So what the communicator is doing is
Michael Dodd: ideally not just saying a message, but backing it up with a
Michael Dodd: real life example, which what's in communication terms
Michael Dodd: is hitting a resonant chord. So
Michael Dodd: it's basically activating the brains of the listeners who are
Michael Dodd: saying, oh, yeah, lunch has been really good this past week with this new
Michael Dodd: chef who's come in, and so, bang, what the person
Michael Dodd: is saying is really connecting effectively with the
Michael Dodd: audience. Yeah, I get that. So you're
Joanne Lockwood: signposting these messages that you're trying to follow through on
Joanne Lockwood: and selling a vision, selling a dream as well. But
Michael Dodd: ideally, it's not just a dream or a vision, but you're backing it up with
Michael Dodd: real facts. So that's where the painting of real pictures comes in, which may
Michael Dodd: be real life examples of something which has happened, or it might
Michael Dodd: be a real life example of something which is being
Michael Dodd: implemented now. And so if we're talking about a
Michael Dodd: fantastic new recreation room. Maybe
Michael Dodd: the builders are sort of coming in this morning and you can see them all
Michael Dodd: up there on floor 13 or whatever, who have brought in
Michael Dodd: the new table tennis tables and the new dartboards and the new exciting
Michael Dodd: electronic games. And you've probably seen them this morning, all being
Michael Dodd: delivered just in time for you lot to play them.
Michael Dodd: So you basically always want to make sure that your
Michael Dodd: messages backed up with real life examples which
Michael Dodd: are happening. Or if you're talking about the vision thing, as President George
Michael Dodd: Bush I in America used to say, the vision thing, which he
Michael Dodd: had trouble with, it's actually putting that real picture so
Michael Dodd: that people can actually see the same vision that you're talking about in
Michael Dodd: a way that's real and believable and that makes for good
Michael Dodd: communication. Yeah. One of the things I struggle
Joanne Lockwood: with is having the conversation
Joanne Lockwood: to tell someone I want to have a conversation, because
Joanne Lockwood: if you're trying to tell bad news or challenging
Joanne Lockwood: news, you want to set the scene. Can we have a quiet moment later
Joanne Lockwood: or quiet moment in a minute? And of course, the first reaction
Joanne Lockwood: to that is, so what's wrong? What do I need to know? And you try
Joanne Lockwood: not to signpost too much of the conversation and make it sound too bad or
Joanne Lockwood: too good. How can people
Joanne Lockwood: signpost the need to have a chat
Joanne Lockwood: and feel comfortable about setting that scene without giving too
Joanne Lockwood: much away and losing the impetus of the conversation?
Michael Dodd: There's a great professional speaker called Anthony
Michael Dodd: Steers who you may have come across Jo yourself.
Michael Dodd: We're in an organisation where you, I and him are all in it,
Michael Dodd: and Anthony has this great concept of permission to
Michael Dodd: speak and it's basically like, say, if you're making
Michael Dodd: a phone call and you're going to have that conversation, it's no good just
Michael Dodd: bursting into it. The climax of the front thing I mentioned earlier has to wait
Michael Dodd: a bit because you want to make sure that it's a good
Michael Dodd: time for the person. You've got their attention before you're
Michael Dodd: raising what can be a highly emotional topic.
Michael Dodd: So actually, to be saying at the start of that
Michael Dodd: is now a good time to talk about your glorious future career in
Michael Dodd: this company and getting their buy in on that means that
Michael Dodd: when you've got some points to make, a couple of which may be
Michael Dodd: constructively critical, you've actually got them there
Michael Dodd: and they've committed to giving you the time
Michael Dodd: to go ahead and discuss it. So you're not putting
Michael Dodd: yourself in a position as the instigator of this tough
Michael Dodd: conversation where you're not making it too easy for them to say, sorry,
Michael Dodd: I've got time now, I've got to go home, I've got to pick up my
Michael Dodd: kids or whatever it is you're getting buy in right at the
Michael Dodd: start, before you're raising the big issues. And
Michael Dodd: setting the scene correctly is really helpful for when
Michael Dodd: you're getting to the substance of the issue. So
Joanne Lockwood: kind of. We need to have a chat. When would be a good time for
Joanne Lockwood: you? Is a good lead. Absolutely, yeah. That's so much better
Michael Dodd: than you've got to be in my office right now, when they might be working
Michael Dodd: on something that's massively important for the company or massively important for
Michael Dodd: themselves and they won't be able to focus on it. So, yeah, getting
Michael Dodd: that permission to speak at the right time is a great concept,
Michael Dodd: and so I would recommend it ahead of
Michael Dodd: tough conversations, which could feature blowtorch on the belly
Michael Dodd: questions and even brilliant answers
Michael Dodd: if the scene is set right. It's so much easier for a win
Michael Dodd: win to be established between the two principal people taking part
Michael Dodd: in the conversation. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: I've been naughty in my life, as most of us have, and I've been
Joanne Lockwood: on the receiving end of challenging conversations
Joanne Lockwood: and I've experienced mastery, for
Joanne Lockwood: want of a better way of describing it, of people who are able to
Joanne Lockwood: fit, to be, lead you down this tunnel and there's
Joanne Lockwood: nowhere to escape from it, basically. They're very good at asking the questions, so they've
Joanne Lockwood: obviously got an agenda. They know where they're trying to get the conversation, and all
Joanne Lockwood: you can do is tell the truth, or lie, I guess. And there's the two
Joanne Lockwood: options, and if you want to tell the truth, they just keep honing in.
Joanne Lockwood: And I've noticed this as well. They start by describing a big
Joanne Lockwood: picture and then ask you to sort of re
Joanne Lockwood: explain a smaller part of that picture and then a smaller part of that picture
Joanne Lockwood: and a smaller part of that picture, and eventually you get to the end and
Joanne Lockwood: you're focusing on one tiny detail. But you started massive, and
Joanne Lockwood: I found it's a really great way of getting me to
Joanne Lockwood: hone down on the answer they wanted. Well, that's
Michael Dodd: something that I learned to do as a blowtorch on the belly interview on
Michael Dodd: behalf of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Often, I
Michael Dodd: mean, supposing you mentioned someone called Boris Johnson, a british prime
Michael Dodd: minister, who is lovable to some, but
Michael Dodd: critics have said, quite rightly, that sometimes he
Michael Dodd: has an interesting interaction with the truth.
Michael Dodd: And so when you're interviewing someone in that
Michael Dodd: league, it may help to start when you're actually
Michael Dodd: into this conversation by asking that general question
Michael Dodd: like, is it important for prime ministers to always tell
Michael Dodd: the truth when they're dealing with important matters concerning
Michael Dodd: health? Right? So typically
Michael Dodd: what might happen next is they'll say, oh, yes, that's important. And then
Michael Dodd: in that sort of focusing down thing you mentioned there, Jo, you're then saying,
Michael Dodd: well, why was it, when you made this
Michael Dodd: particular announcement about the COVID
Michael Dodd: crisis of the early 2020s, did you
Michael Dodd: say this when the truth was that?
Michael Dodd: And so because they're already locked into a general agreement
Michael Dodd: that, yes, a prime minister should tell the truth when they're dealing with
Michael Dodd: matters of public health, they're kind of
Michael Dodd: bound to give you an honest answer rather than tell a
Michael Dodd: lie at that point when you're focusing it down. And
Michael Dodd: if you play your game right as a question asker, you can do
Michael Dodd: it in such a way that you're seeking the truth as a
Michael Dodd: questioner, and it will become clear to the audience.
Michael Dodd: If someone is not suddenly giving honest answers, that
Michael Dodd: will be obvious. And as an interviewer, it's a win for
Michael Dodd: you. If you can be asking questions in a way where at
Michael Dodd: least the audience can see that the person is not telling the
Michael Dodd: truth, that is kind of like a win that you've achieved on
Michael Dodd: behalf of your audience. I mean, so much better if they do tell the truth
Michael Dodd: and are seen to be telling the truth. But if they're not telling the truth,
Michael Dodd: a good question asker, like a guy who used to work for
Michael Dodd: the BBC called Jeremy Paxman, who was on that news night
Michael Dodd: programme, and he was particularly good at that,
Michael Dodd: Laura Koonsberg, who you've also identified, she can do that very
Michael Dodd: effectively as well. And so there is a skill in asking the
Michael Dodd: questions in the right sort of order to put the person under
Michael Dodd: pressure to answer. But one of the important
Michael Dodd: things from an answerer's point of view is to make sure you're telling the truth
Michael Dodd: at all times. I always say, don't say anything
Michael Dodd: other than an exact truth, because if you're being led down
Michael Dodd: a path of questions which you've mentioned and you
Michael Dodd: suddenly find that the person wants to change from their policy of telling the truth
Michael Dodd: to not telling the truth, it will probably be bleeding obvious to
Michael Dodd: everyone, which is, from the answerer's point of view,
Michael Dodd: not a good thing. So definitely only tell exact
Michael Dodd: truth. And also, someone once told me, it's
Joanne Lockwood: always easy to remember the truth because it's the truth. Everything else
Joanne Lockwood: becomes a story. And then you have to refabricate and
Joanne Lockwood: readjust the story. And no matter how good you are, you can never remember the
Joanne Lockwood: entire story and all the different nuances and all the different interactions.
Michael Dodd: Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I'm always pushing people to tell
Michael Dodd: real life examples, not theoretical examples, real ones.
Michael Dodd: Because when you're telling a story that really happened
Michael Dodd: to you about maybe an interaction with a customer
Michael Dodd: and where your company got it right and did some fantastic things, and the customer
Michael Dodd: thought you were fantastic by telling it as it really
Michael Dodd: is, it's easy to remember because you've got that picture in your mind which
Michael Dodd: you're projecting to the minds of your audience.
Michael Dodd: And if you're sticking to the truth, then that's a great thing. And,
Michael Dodd: yeah, giving real life examples is a way of helping to do that, which
Michael Dodd: is a good thing for the universe. Yeah, I do
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of panels, discussions, a lot of q a stuff, and my approach
Joanne Lockwood: to that would be if someone asks me something like, which company do you know
Joanne Lockwood: that is doing this the best? And I say, well, I don't have specific
Joanne Lockwood: examples of a company doing that myself, but I am
Joanne Lockwood: aware that these organisations are highly regarded
Joanne Lockwood: in that sort of sphere. But I don't have personal real life experience. All I'm
Joanne Lockwood: doing is giving you hearsay or opinion. So I would tend to
Joanne Lockwood: frame it in that way rather than tell it as my truth, if you like.
Michael Dodd: Well, yeah, sometimes you might, on behalf of your
Michael Dodd: company, let's say your company is company x, you might have a
Michael Dodd: fantastic, happy customer, which for various
Michael Dodd: reasons, doesn't necessarily want to put its hand up and be used as
Michael Dodd: an example. And so sometimes you move for
Michael Dodd: what's called the specific to the general when you're telling the story.
Michael Dodd: So you can say, let me tell you about a real company where we did
Michael Dodd: something fantastic for them. I won't give their name because we
Michael Dodd: don't have an agreement to do that with them. But what happened was
Michael Dodd: this, and you tell the real story as it really was,
Michael Dodd: but you're not invading the privacy of the company. And
Michael Dodd: so you can be telling truth sometimes on
Michael Dodd: different levels, sometimes you can be telling the truth at a more general level
Michael Dodd: to protect confidentiality, but sometimes it's
Michael Dodd: necessary, often when you have got permission to actually tell
Michael Dodd: some absolute nitty gritty details which give
Michael Dodd: credibility to the story and meaning that
Michael Dodd: the listeners can only be concluding, oh, yes, this has to be true because
Michael Dodd: it's so detailed and specific. So there is a
Michael Dodd: plus as a communicator to be telling real life stories
Michael Dodd: with some really good nitty gritty details
Michael Dodd: that add to the credibility of you, the person trying to get across
Michael Dodd: your message. Yeah, I like that. It's a really good
Joanne Lockwood: technique. One thing I also wonder sometimes
Joanne Lockwood: is when you're being coached to give
Joanne Lockwood: great answers or competent answers, I
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes wonder, the echo chamber, if you like, in
Joanne Lockwood: which the people are coaching them in, is everybody caught up in their
Joanne Lockwood: own self truth and their own kind of minority view,
Joanne Lockwood: or they all kind of talk themselves into. Yeah, this sounds believable. When
Joanne Lockwood: you actually take out to the light of day, a member of the public was
Joanne Lockwood: thinking, how could anyone ever believe that? So did the circle of advisors
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes create this problem and this myth of. Belief, if you
Michael Dodd: like, I think there's potential for that. I mean, if you take
Michael Dodd: someone who by sort of universal agreement
Michael Dodd: went on television, I think it was that programme, news night you mentioned earlier,
Michael Dodd: BBC programme, it was a guy called Prince Andrew, known around
Michael Dodd: the world, and he was asked some very tricky, very clever, very specific
Michael Dodd: questions. And I think, and this is
Michael Dodd: Dob's theory, I don't know this for a fact, but that he had
Michael Dodd: some kind of coaching, but it wasn't very good and I suspect it
Michael Dodd: got locked into that circle. So at one moment, I
Michael Dodd: won't give your listeners all the details,
Michael Dodd: but it's still there, I've checked. It's still there on the Internet. If you want
Michael Dodd: to google it, put in Prince Andrew, Emily Maitless, BBC News
Michael Dodd: Night interview. And it's all there. But there's one time where he's trying
Michael Dodd: to show that a witness who's been
Michael Dodd: giving evidence against him in the court of public opinion wasn't telling
Michael Dodd: the truth. And she was saying that when
Michael Dodd: she was dancing with him before various activities
Michael Dodd: which as a prince, he shouldn't have been engaging in
Michael Dodd: with her, happened. She was saying he was sweaty
Michael Dodd: and he was saying because of his heroic actions in the falklands,
Michael Dodd: that he couldn't sweat. And there are pictures all over
Michael Dodd: the media of showing Prince Andrew looking very sweaty indeed in certain
Michael Dodd: circumstances, and it just didn't quite
Michael Dodd: ring, you know, the truth needs to
Michael Dodd: guide you. And if getting back to your circle of
Michael Dodd: advisors, if they did that in practise with
Michael Dodd: him and they say, oh, Andrew, that sounds great, it didn't pass the court
Michael Dodd: of public opinion. So what I typically do when I'm working with a company
Michael Dodd: is say I'm working with the sales team who are obviously trying to make the
Michael Dodd: company's products look great and sound great, but also credible,
Michael Dodd: I will typically get by agreement, the chief
Michael Dodd: executive to pop in at, say, we've been working on it all day,
Michael Dodd: get the chief executive to come in at 330 or 04:00 in the afternoon
Michael Dodd: and have a look at the answers they've been giving. And that's a really good
Michael Dodd: kind of reality cheque, which sometimes doesn't happen. So
Michael Dodd: he might be saying, listen, George, what you're saying there sounds
Michael Dodd: great, but you've got to remember that that particular product
Michael Dodd: has got this particular flaw that you need to be honest about
Michael Dodd: and you're getting that kind of reality cheque to stop that group thing
Michael Dodd: happening. So when you do hear someone giving
Michael Dodd: answers that you think a reasonable person would just
Michael Dodd: say, that can't possibly be true, that circle
Michael Dodd: of sort of incestuous advisors who have got
Michael Dodd: into a group think stage could be happening. So my aim
Michael Dodd: is to typically work with a videographer who plays stuff
Michael Dodd: back and the person themselves can see it and they're often pretty good at saying,
Michael Dodd: yeah, I need to improve that answer, I need to change what I'm saying on
Michael Dodd: that, to make it more credible and to show it to outside
Michael Dodd: people within the circle, but not there for the advice,
Michael Dodd: to give an objective reaction, and that can
Michael Dodd: make them all the sharper and all the better when they have to do it
Michael Dodd: for real. Yeah, I get very
Joanne Lockwood: frustrated at people who fail to recall
Joanne Lockwood: conversations or detail or things that have happened or I don't
Joanne Lockwood: recall, or I'm not sure about that, I don't remember.
Joanne Lockwood: And I wonder whether I really trust a prime minister or a
Joanne Lockwood: cabinet member who can't remember what they did
Joanne Lockwood: a year ago in terms of a big decision. You think, well, hang on a
Joanne Lockwood: minute, you can remember this, this and this, but you can't remember that. It's like
Joanne Lockwood: Prince Andrew. He can remember exactly where he had that pizza,
Joanne Lockwood: which town it was, who he was with, the shoes the waiter was
Joanne Lockwood: wearing and how much the bill was, but he couldn't remember certain other
Joanne Lockwood: details. So it's almost like this specific learnt
Joanne Lockwood: story and everything else is kind of just
Joanne Lockwood: vague, isn't it? Yeah. And as
Michael Dodd: a media trainer, you've just got to be aware of that.
Michael Dodd: And I generally find most people, and it's
Michael Dodd: partly influenced by the fact that they might be going on tv,
Michael Dodd: where everybody can see what they're saying, including people
Michael Dodd: in their own team who know where the bodies are buried, and that
Michael Dodd: normally concentrates the mind. And generally, when I'm training people, I find
Michael Dodd: them overwhelmingly very
Michael Dodd: honest, which is very good, which is what you're trying to get to, honest
Michael Dodd: and credible. So
Michael Dodd: what you want to be doing in the training is to be subjecting
Michael Dodd: them to when they've got the thrust, or what they're going to
Michael Dodd: say worked out, to be throwing in as the trainer
Michael Dodd: surprise questions which they weren't exactly expecting.
Michael Dodd: And typically, if they're talking straight,
Michael Dodd: they find that you will find they will be telling the truth. They
Michael Dodd: may have to make some adjustments on some occasions, which is important before
Michael Dodd: they get out there and do it for real. Generally, I find people
Michael Dodd: are sort of concentrated by the occasion
Michael Dodd: and the actual process of recording,
Michael Dodd: playing it back, critiquing it, actually helps the truth process and
Michael Dodd: helps them to be very comfortable and confident when they're doing it for
Michael Dodd: real. But I will tell you one story where
Michael Dodd: happens to be from the real estate industry, where I was training a group of
Michael Dodd: people in a real estate company, all but
Michael Dodd: one, who seemed to be scrupulously honest, and they
Michael Dodd: realised that they knew there was going to be some interviews about something
Michael Dodd: dodgy that the company had done, which the company agreed was wrong,
Michael Dodd: and they were being trained to say how it was wrong, why it was wrong
Michael Dodd: and why they'd be committing never to do it again. And we
Michael Dodd: had one person on the training and
Michael Dodd: I think he was a person who just couldn't tell the truth. And there are
Michael Dodd: people like that out there. And the sort of climactic moment of the
Michael Dodd: day was our press conference at the end, where they had to.
Michael Dodd: If this story got really big, which there was a danger of, that
Michael Dodd: a number of them had to appear together and face the press, which
Michael Dodd: means getting questions, not just from one journalist, but a whole bunch of journalists.
Michael Dodd: And so we actually planned a bunch of journalists asking
Michael Dodd: questions and everyone stuck to the script, which
Michael Dodd: was the truth, which was, yes, they'd made this mistake and they'd
Michael Dodd: done it wrong, but this one guy just couldn't bring himself to do it. And
Michael Dodd: there he was at the press conference and he was denying that the whole thing
Michael Dodd: had ever happened, which made everyone else look like liars
Michael Dodd: and didn't work. So the day ended. Normally, immediate
Michael Dodd: training day ends on a real high, where people are thinking, yes, we know what
Michael Dodd: we're to say, we know how to tell the truth in a way that stands
Michael Dodd: up to scrutiny. But this one was very different because they just all ended up
Michael Dodd: hating on him. And it was quite clear that the
Michael Dodd: higher ups in the company were not going to get let this guy loose before
Michael Dodd: the media, because he just couldn't do it. That's extremely
Michael Dodd: rare, but as a trainer, it's your job is to
Michael Dodd: make a company aware of that. If they've got someone on the team who's like
Michael Dodd: that, make sure they're never put anywhere near the media
Michael Dodd: or in any other occasion where truth matters, which is a lot of
Michael Dodd: occasions. In government or
Joanne Lockwood: somewhere like that, maybe. Yeah. That person
Michael Dodd: in real estate, as far as I know, he's not in government, not in politics.
Michael Dodd: But if the occasional person does get into politics, is
Michael Dodd: like that, it's up to their peers to
Michael Dodd: scrutinise them and make sure they're not put in a position where
Michael Dodd: they can be let loose to say whatever truth they manufacture
Michael Dodd: themselves at the time. Beware. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: we see this recently. I mean, there's a couple of other car
Joanne Lockwood: crash interviews that I can recall in the recent times. One is
Joanne Lockwood: the Captain Saton Moore foundation,
Joanne Lockwood: the building of the Aquaspa, aka a
Joanne Lockwood: swimming pool, and the misappropriation of lots of money
Joanne Lockwood: and syphoning off expenses, for a better word.
Joanne Lockwood: And then we had the Baroness moan PPE
Joanne Lockwood: interview, which, again, was another car crash. And
Joanne Lockwood: for me, both of those had an element of privilege and
Joanne Lockwood: arrogance and inhibition around them, where
Joanne Lockwood: they believed their own pr and they believed that
Joanne Lockwood: people would believe them. And
Joanne Lockwood: clearly, the public opinion
Joanne Lockwood: was completely opposite. And I think you mentioned earlier about
Joanne Lockwood: telling this story and painting these pictures of the
Joanne Lockwood: truth, and they're filling that in. And these people didn't do that, did they?
Michael Dodd: Yeah, clearly not. And in the case of Baroness
Michael Dodd: mode, during the course of the interview, there
Michael Dodd: were remarkable moments of honesty, which I believe, which
Michael Dodd: was that she was saying that she had repeatedly told
Michael Dodd: lies to the media,
Michael Dodd: which give her some marks for honesty
Michael Dodd: about being dishonest. But in terms of the
Michael Dodd: whole context of how the public viewed that, they
Michael Dodd: absolutely turned on her. I know this for a fact, because I put up a
Michael Dodd: couple of posts on social media at the time, and my aim is
Michael Dodd: always to just. In those sorts of posts is, I'm a
Michael Dodd: professional communicator. I want to focus in this post
Michael Dodd: on the communications issues, not anything beyond
Michael Dodd: that. And in her case, I couldn't control
Michael Dodd: it, as the poster. And while I was saying, I want to sort of
Michael Dodd: discuss how well she did in the interview and what lessons
Michael Dodd: can be drawn from it. It was an amazing amount of vitriol from
Michael Dodd: ordinary members of the public who were wanting all sorts of
Michael Dodd: terrible things to happen to her as a result. Now, it probably was
Michael Dodd: a result of her communication strategy, but fundamentally,
Michael Dodd: they were wanting her to be taken out of the House of Lords, for example,
Michael Dodd: which a right thinking person might well, think. But for me, trying to
Michael Dodd: marshal the conversation on just the communications issues was a bit of a
Michael Dodd: fail. And the test she didn't pass
Michael Dodd: was the social media test in terms of people believing her.
Michael Dodd: And I suppose, having set it up, saying, well, yes, I told all these lies
Michael Dodd: to the media, and then she made a point which wasn't really very endearing
Michael Dodd: about, it's not a crime to lie to the
Michael Dodd: media. The court of a public opinion may agree with that.
Michael Dodd: That's not a crime on the books, but, yeah, you can't be
Michael Dodd: sent to jail for that specifically. But what does it do to
Michael Dodd: your own credibility? In her case, not very much. And
Michael Dodd: a price has to be paid for that. Yeah. As
Joanne Lockwood: a baroness, as a peer of the realm
Joanne Lockwood: responsible in the House of Lords for law setting
Joanne Lockwood: governance, arbitration of right and wrong,
Joanne Lockwood: lying to the media is actually lying to the people.
Michael Dodd: Yes, absolutely. Not the media. That's a really
Michael Dodd: important point to make. And that's one of the virtues of media training,
Michael Dodd: where ideally, you can play it back on a big screen
Michael Dodd: and, like, we're a very modern big television set and people can sort
Michael Dodd: of see that. Well, if I said that and I didn't get it
Michael Dodd: quite right, it's there on the big screen for everyone to see, and
Michael Dodd: everyone I know will be telling me that what I said wasn't
Michael Dodd: accurate. And the shame of that, and
Michael Dodd: it's a great process in a way, because it actually
Michael Dodd: encourages this fundamental principle of only saying
Michael Dodd: exact truth. If Baroness moan had been through that
Michael Dodd: process properly, and maybe I don't know what she had in the way of advisors,
Michael Dodd: they clearly weren't collectively very good. Yeah, she
Michael Dodd: may well have taken a different approach. And as you say, sometimes there is a
Michael Dodd: kind of arrogance in people who have
Michael Dodd: put a false picture in their head and they think, well, if I believe it,
Michael Dodd: I can make everyone believe it, and it tends to come unstuck.
Michael Dodd: So a good media training process picks that up and helps them
Michael Dodd: before too late it is.
Joanne Lockwood: I did a tv documentary several years ago on
Joanne Lockwood: Channel four and we spent a lot of time being interviewed.
Joanne Lockwood: And always in the back of my head was, I call it kind of like
Joanne Lockwood: the mum test. Would my mum be proud of me? Would I be proud
Joanne Lockwood: if my mum was watching this? So that was kind of my moral
Joanne Lockwood: compass around telling the truth. Not over
Joanne Lockwood: sharing, sharing the right amount, but knowing my mum was going to
Joanne Lockwood: watch it was always my kind of benchmark of
Joanne Lockwood: understanding of the world, if you like. It's probably a very healthy
Michael Dodd: approach. So, yeah, I might be
Michael Dodd: guilty of using the same principle with people that think
Michael Dodd: about someone who is in the company who knows really well
Michael Dodd: because they've been in the company for as long as you have and they know
Michael Dodd: all about the good things the company's done and a few of the bad things
Michael Dodd: as well. And I suppose if I go back to
Michael Dodd: the real estate person who wasn't telling the truth
Michael Dodd: if you could get them to be thinking, well, what would person x in the
Michael Dodd: company be thinking when he sees you on that tv screen
Michael Dodd: saying something that he knows is not true and you know is
Michael Dodd: not true? Wouldn't it be best not to say that? That may prove to be
Michael Dodd: persuasive. So think about this hypothetical
Joanne Lockwood: company. So something's gone badly.
Joanne Lockwood: PR disaster. We can call it a kind of
Joanne Lockwood: a me too moment. Some sexual misappropriation. The
Joanne Lockwood: CBI. Sorry, let's dive into the CBI. There something so
Michael Dodd: theoretical, but yeah. No, no, it's not theoretical. Their entire
Joanne Lockwood: reputation was. Incredibility was
Joanne Lockwood: undermined in an instant. So
Joanne Lockwood: did they do well? Did they do badly? I mean, what's your interpretation of
Joanne Lockwood: what the correct step should have been to limit
Joanne Lockwood: risk, manage the communications and deal with that aftermath? Because
Joanne Lockwood: it seems to me they got it wrong as well. The fact that you're
Michael Dodd: mentioning it quite some time afterwards
Michael Dodd: probably underlines the point that they didn't do everything right.
Michael Dodd: And I think people now at the top of the
Michael Dodd: CBI would probably be tending to agree with you that they didn't get it
Michael Dodd: all right. So often you go beyond in
Michael Dodd: training about a particular situation and you're dealing
Michael Dodd: with the fundamental principles of a company.
Michael Dodd: And people who talk about values, values of people
Michael Dodd: and values of companies. Quite when they do it
Michael Dodd: well, they're typically doing it well for the company
Michael Dodd: because if the fundamental values are there and they're
Michael Dodd: ingrained in the dna of the organisation then the kind
Michael Dodd: of situation that you mentioned there is much harder to happen.
Michael Dodd: And, I mean, when it does happen, absolute honesty is
Michael Dodd: important, as is when
Michael Dodd: something happens. And people, the question
Michael Dodd: askers are aggrieved because they've been hurt in
Michael Dodd: some way, maybe physically, maybe reputationally. One
Michael Dodd: of the important principles in that kind of situation is to make sure that
Michael Dodd: people talk to the heart before they talk to the head.
Michael Dodd: So often mixed in that is
Michael Dodd: like a real apology that's effective is
Michael Dodd: very early on introduced into the conversation
Michael Dodd: and the sorrow that the person speaking on
Michael Dodd: behalf of the company is feeling because of the way they got something
Michael Dodd: wrong in the company and realising that people have been adversely
Michael Dodd: affected by that and acknowledging that the
Michael Dodd: company needs to do things to make up for that, whether it's paying
Michael Dodd: compensation or whatever it's doing, is really
Michael Dodd: important. So when I'm teaching people to answer
Michael Dodd: tough questions, I've typically got two formulas, or formulae,
Michael Dodd: as we say in Latin, and the first formula you can use
Michael Dodd: in most cases, which are cases that are not especially
Michael Dodd: emotional, and then there's a second formula for when they're
Michael Dodd: really emotional. And in the second formula, which
Michael Dodd: sometimes needs to be incorporated into the first, needs to
Michael Dodd: acknowledge that you're talking to real human beings, some of whom
Michael Dodd: have been hurt or they're professionally angry, if they're lawyers, perhaps
Michael Dodd: on behalf of people who've been hurt. And it's really important
Michael Dodd: to get people to talk about to other people. Talk from
Michael Dodd: the heart first, before they get into all the technical
Michael Dodd: complications of the situation. So
Michael Dodd: heart before the head, when something's gone wrong, is a really important communications
Michael Dodd: principle, because you're talking to real people and they will react
Michael Dodd: like real people do, and you've got to be aware of that.
Joanne Lockwood: So pathos before logos.
Michael Dodd: Yes, I was going to say, I was talking Latin there, but not for one
Michael Dodd: word. The Greeks probably had that.
Michael Dodd: Right. Yeah. Perhaps we should bow to a greek scholar
Michael Dodd: such as yourself. So you want to define audience. The
Michael Dodd: pathos is with empathy and sympathy, is that right?
Joanne Lockwood: Empathy and sympathy are different sides.
Michael Dodd: Is a logic element. Yeah. You're saying talk to
Joanne Lockwood: the heart, not to the head? Yeah. So you
Michael Dodd: do need to get around to talking head. But typically, if someone is worked up
Michael Dodd: about, and they're questioning you about something which has affected them, maybe they've
Michael Dodd: been injured in a company explosion, which should have been prevented on the production
Michael Dodd: line or something, and they're really angry that they haven't been properly
Michael Dodd: compensated and they're in a discussion with the managing director, probably the new
Michael Dodd: managing director, then the new managing director needs to talk
Michael Dodd: to their heart first, before the head, because once
Michael Dodd: they've actually got across the emotional points they're trying to make,
Michael Dodd: then the human brain, on behalf of the aggrieved person, can
Michael Dodd: then cope with the logos, as you say, the logic of the situation,
Michael Dodd: and listen to it in a more calm, peaceful state of
Michael Dodd: mind, having had their emotions touched first. That
Joanne Lockwood: can be difficult, though, when you got litigation and lawyers and people like that.
Joanne Lockwood: Radical candle. Absolute honesty
Joanne Lockwood: is admitting liability. It's saying sorry
Joanne Lockwood: is admitting liability, and many organisations,
Joanne Lockwood: probably their chief executive, is probably not empowered by the
Joanne Lockwood: shareholders or by the board to make a statement like I'm
Joanne Lockwood: sorry. Without. And then the COVID up is. It just reeks
Joanne Lockwood: of a cover up. And I think what we find sometimes is that
Joanne Lockwood: the immediate apology to the heart takes the heat out of
Joanne Lockwood: it, rather than a holding position,
Joanne Lockwood: which sometimes you end up creating a lie or creating a story. And people
Joanne Lockwood: are more upset and more angry about being lied to than they probably
Joanne Lockwood: were about the original act. You can diffuse a lot
Joanne Lockwood: by being open straight away. Absolutely. It's
Michael Dodd: so long ago. I haven't got the details at the top of my head, but
Michael Dodd: I can remember enough about a company called Thomas Cook,
Michael Dodd: which was a very successful travel company for a long time.
Michael Dodd: And they had. Something went wrong on one of their holidays, and there was
Michael Dodd: a child who was, let's say, adversely affected
Michael Dodd: by something that they did. And they didn't
Michael Dodd: talk to the heart before the head, they didn't sort it out. And they had
Michael Dodd: to wait until the old boss got kicked out and a new
Michael Dodd: boss was brought in who was prepared to tell the truth and talk to people
Michael Dodd: emotionally as well as logically, and acknowledge what the company had
Michael Dodd: gone wrong. A lot of bad stuff happened
Michael Dodd: to the company between the two bosses, because the first
Michael Dodd: one, just as you say, wasn't getting the company
Michael Dodd: to admit to the truth and to the sort of emotional
Michael Dodd: impact of what their bad holiday had
Michael Dodd: done. And they paid the price. So
Michael Dodd: having chief executives who are empowered by their shareholders, or
Michael Dodd: who make sure they're empowered by their shareholders when they've got something to say,
Michael Dodd: that's important for the public to hear beyond just the company share
Michael Dodd: price, that's really important. And so
Michael Dodd: getting it right in terms of human interaction,
Michael Dodd: as well as in terms of the rights and wrongs of the situation,
Michael Dodd: is very important right at the outset. And you can build good
Michael Dodd: communication on that foundation if you get it right.
Joanne Lockwood: It's so much easier for the new person to come in and
Joanne Lockwood: just dump all of the problems on the person who just left, isn't it? When
Joanne Lockwood: you think about football management, the football manager leaves, new
Joanne Lockwood: person comes along. All the reasons everything was bad was that other person.
Joanne Lockwood: So you can just demonise, throw them under a bus and
Joanne Lockwood: bury all the communications issues, all the problems you ever had, and
Joanne Lockwood: saying, I'm the new person, it's different under me. They were the bad
Joanne Lockwood: person. I guess that's why we see companies hanging people
Joanne Lockwood: out to dry sometimes, because it's easier to lose that news that way, isn't
Joanne Lockwood: it? Absolutely. And shockingly enough, Jo,
Michael Dodd: it even happens in politics. I mean, there was a british prime minister for
Michael Dodd: a couple of weeks called Liz Truss. And, yeah,
Michael Dodd: she made some very bad decisions in her limited time in
Michael Dodd: office. And exactly what happened to the football manager there happened
Michael Dodd: to. Well, she ultimately saw that it was time
Michael Dodd: for her to go and she went very quickly. And then the new prime minister,
Michael Dodd: a guy called Rishi Sunak, who at the time we're speaking, is still the british
Michael Dodd: prime minister, he's come in as the new person to
Michael Dodd: try to sort of fix up some of the economic problems
Michael Dodd: caused in those chaotic two weeks of trust prime
Michael Dodd: ministership. So it happens in politics, happens in business, and
Michael Dodd: making sure things pass the truth test early on for any
Michael Dodd: organisation, political or business wise or other, is
Michael Dodd: really important when you're trying to communicate your way to success.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I don't know if it's canny by design or just
Joanne Lockwood: by coincidence that the trust
Joanne Lockwood: intervention of, what, 45 days or long, less than 50
Joanne Lockwood: days, created a firebreak between Rishi
Joanne Lockwood: and Boris. So if Rishi had taken straight over
Joanne Lockwood: from Boris, he couldn't have
Joanne Lockwood: escaped that regime because he was part of it. But the
Joanne Lockwood: trust created all that confusion which allowed Rishi to come along,
Joanne Lockwood: buried everything under trust and almost ignore Boris and
Joanne Lockwood: come out the other side as being a new think. I don't know whether that
Joanne Lockwood: was design or just good luck for Rishi. Yeah, well, if there was
Michael Dodd: a great machiavellian mind in the british conservative party who actually planned
Michael Dodd: that, with hindsight, you might be saying, well, that set them up better than
Michael Dodd: they would have been without those chaotic trust
Michael Dodd: days as prime minister. But
Michael Dodd: I suspect politics being what it is, it wasn't quite as planned,
Michael Dodd: deviously as that, and hasn't been quite as
Michael Dodd: successful when you're trying to
Michael Dodd: replace one regime with another, having a short intervention
Michael Dodd: from someone else in the meantime can be successful. I mean, you'll notice
Michael Dodd: sometimes in the business world, sometimes you'll
Michael Dodd: get the chair of the company, will become the chief executive
Michael Dodd: for a short period of time before handing over to someone else. I think that
Michael Dodd: happened with BP once and they got themselves in a media mess over
Michael Dodd: a massive disaster to do with leaked oil
Michael Dodd: on the beaches of the coast of America.
Michael Dodd: And the chair stepped in and was bossed for a little
Michael Dodd: while before handing over to someone else. And that same
Michael Dodd: kind of firebreak effect, which I'm not sure how well that was planned, it probably
Michael Dodd: wasn't, but it did ultimately get the company in a better position
Michael Dodd: and a better position to tell the truth to the public.
Michael Dodd: Having got a sort of
Michael Dodd: a not so credible person at the top, out of the way, not in one
Michael Dodd: bite, but in two. I think it's
Joanne Lockwood: probably true to say that the ideal candidate
Joanne Lockwood: to take the business forward is not necessarily the ideal person
Joanne Lockwood: to deal with the problem you've got right now. So that fire break,
Joanne Lockwood: putting an interim in to deal with that situation
Joanne Lockwood: better at talking to the press, better at being in that environment,
Joanne Lockwood: is not necessarily the person who's going to take over. And I think that's probably
Joanne Lockwood: a very good strategy to find the person you really want for the future and
Joanne Lockwood: then deal with the problem now differently. Yeah, I mean, just
Michael Dodd: in individual terms. There's a saying which you hear a lot these days, which is
Michael Dodd: very. You hear it a lot because it's true. I think what got you here
Michael Dodd: won't get you there. And so your skills as an
Michael Dodd: individual, which got you to your standing today, may
Michael Dodd: not be great for you for the next 20 years. So you need to improve
Michael Dodd: and learn and change. And I think we can apply the same thing to
Michael Dodd: companies in a way where what got the company success
Michael Dodd: and the people who mastered that success may not be the
Michael Dodd: people to take it into the future. And sometimes you need that interim little
Michael Dodd: change in order to put you on the right track. Michael, it's been
Joanne Lockwood: absolutely fascinating talking to you, and I know we could keep talking and talking,
Joanne Lockwood: and no doubt we'll bump into each other at PSA meeting
Joanne Lockwood: sometime in the next month or so. So thank you so much. It's been an
Joanne Lockwood: absolute honour to have this conversation with you and learn a bit more
Joanne Lockwood: about challenging conversations in the media
Joanne Lockwood: or elsewhere. Thank you. That's great. Well, hopefully in your next media
Michael Dodd: conversation, Jo, with the mainstream media, it'll work out. All
Michael Dodd: for the good. Yes, I hope so. I hope
Joanne Lockwood: so. Well, thank you for listening. You, the
Joanne Lockwood: listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for getting to the end,
Joanne Lockwood: and hopefully you've taken lot to it of inspiration from this. If
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Joanne Lockwood: jo.Lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and
Joanne Lockwood: finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood and it's been an absolute
Joanne Lockwood: pleasure to host this podcast for you. Today. Catch you next
Joanne Lockwood: time. Bye.