How to score points in media interviews
Rhetorica Update Vol. 4 Iss. 3 May 2013
Tonking it for six is the cricket equivalent of responding to interview questions and getting your message across well.
An important part of this challenging and complex art is effective conversational structuring.
A technique I use to guide this is RAM: Your Response to any question is to first Acknowledge the question, then reasonably and likeably proceed to your Message.
Concise, reasonable acknowledging of questions is crucial to authentic conversation. It’s about listening and obeying the rule of topicality, even if only for a moment or two. You don’t ignore questions you don’t like, you pass through them, even if you don’t really answer them. You have limited time to get to and cover core interview content, i.e. Messages, and you keep moving in that direction.
A common novice mistake in media interviews is to acknowledge questions and stop without proceeding to core content. Skilful bridging, dovetailing, elevating, etc., helps — and this will sound strange — but the best guarantee of getting a message across is having a compelling point in mind, backed with illustrative detail.
Stepping effectively through structured verbal increments takes poise and practice to make it flow naturally. Done poorly it costs wickets. Done well it works like magic.
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