What Wells Fargo C.E.O., Charles Scharf, Meant to Say

This past summer, the chief executive of Wells Fargo said something controversial:

“While it might sound like an excuse, the unfortunate reality is that there is a very limited pool of Black talent to recruit from,” he wrote in a company-wide memo.

If only the C.E.O. had remembered the following scene from Aaron Sorkin’s T.V. show, the West Wing:

LEO

There are people out there.

TOBY

There are not people who... You’re like the guys who say, “Are you telling me you could only find one African-American speechwriter good enough to work at the White House?” I’m amazed I found that many. “Good enough to work at the White House” is a pretty small population to begin with. And guys who can write entire sections of a State of the Union? I’d be as surprised if there were as many as nine of us.

In other words: It’s not what you say. It’s how you say it.

Also, while we’re quoting the West Wing, here’s another fantastic line that Charles Scharf would do well to remember:

TABITHA

I’m sorry, but I tell the truth.

TOBY

Not every minute of the damn day, Tabitha.

How to Prepare for a Deposition

What Donald Trump Can Teach Us About Media Training

Roy Peter Clark explains:

A recent NPR report captured the enthusiasm of Trump supporters at a rally in Cincinnati, where the next president thanked the State of Ohio for his victory, patted himself on the back for getting Carrier to stay put and tossed red meat to the carnivores in the crowd on some of their favorite campaign themes.

In turn, the crowd chanted a series of slogans:

On Hillary: “Lock her up.”

On immigration: “Build that wall.”

On Washington: “Drain the swamp.”

I needed to hear them spoken in close proximity to notice that structurally the three slogans were identical. Each began with an imperative verb (lock, build, drain). Each was three words long. All nine words were one syllable in length. Each verb was transitive, that is, it carried an object. And in each case some unspecified subject was order to do something to something else ...

These three-beat slogans seem to be a special form of battle cry ...

“Lock her up.”

“Build that wall.”

“Drain the swamp.”

They are chant-able like many popular sports chants: “Let’s go Mets!”

Their expression in three words offers a kind of completeness: this is all you need to know. And their brevity rings like the gospel truth.

They show fidelity. They are confident, at times to the point of intolerance. Fact checking and wonkery bounce off of them. They seem silly when spoken by an individual. Coming from an excited crowd they express a collective energy, an army of followers ready to go to war for their king.

Why CEOs Need Media Training

A cautionary tale from Dan Lyons’s must-read new book, Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble. (“Spinner” is the nickname he gives to Hubspot’s PR person.)

****************

In the first week of December Spinner sends around an email informing us that [Hubspot CEO, Brian] Halligan has been written up in an awesome new story in the New York Times. She wants us all to promote the article on our social feeds and drive some traffic to it. Spinner told me a few months ago that a Times journalist, Adam Bryant, had asked to interview Halligan for a feature called Corner Office. That column is usually a puff piece where a CEO gets asked some softball questions, but Spinner was nervous about it, because, as she put it, Halligan has a tendency to stick his foot in his mouth and say stupid things when he gets in front of a reporter.

I offered to help Halligan prepare by conducting practice interviews with him. I’ve interviewed thousands of people, and the ones who do best are the ones who practice. Bryant wouldn’t ask any tough questions, but Halligan should have two or three points he wanted to make and not wander off them. Tech companies often pay journalists to act as media training consultants and help their executives learn to do interviews, but HubSpot already had me working in house, so why not take advantage of this?

I also offered to go to New York with Halligan and Spinner when he was doing the interview. I know Adam Bryant, and I figured it couldn’t hurt for Halligan to have a friendly connection tagging along. Spinner did not want my help. Perhaps she saw the interview as a feather in her cap and didn’t want to share the credit.

Spinner flew solo, Halligan got no media training, and now the article is out and Halligan, predictably, has blown it. The main point of the Halligan article is that Halligan loves to take naps. “Brian Halligan, Chief of HubSpot, on the Value of Naps,” is the headline. Halligan thinks naps are so important that he installed a nap room with a hammock at HubSpot. So far so good. Taking naps is the kind of oddball thing that Corner Office is looking for.

That’s the angle that got Halligan in the door. Now he has a chance to tell people—and by people, I mean investors—what HubSpot does. Most people have never heard of HubSpot. Even people who have heard of HubSpot sometimes think it is a marketing agency or a consulting firm.

Halligan should have a very simple brief: HubSpot is a cloud software company, selling marketing automation software and run by people from MIT. HubSpot is a leading player in a very hot market space, and the company is growing like crazy. That’s it. That’s all he needs to do. Talk about naps and plug the company.

But during the interview Halligan starts rambling and talking about how HubSpot likes to hire really young people. Maybe he sees the interview as a recruiting opportunity, a way to reach Millennials. If so, he’s wrong. The Times media kit says the median age of a Times subscriber is 50. According to the Pew Research Center, people under 30 make up only one-third of the paper’s audience. The college kids Halligan wants to hire get their news on Facebook and BuzzFeed. That’s where you go to talk about your fun-loving, youth-oriented culture.

Halligan tells the Times that HubSpot is trying to “build a culture specifically to attract and retain Gen Y’ers.” Yikes. I understand what he is trying to say, but he is getting a bit too close to saying that he would rather hire young people than old people, which is something you definitely don’t want to say in public, even if it’s true.

Still, if he leaves things there, he might be okay. I read on. Next, Halligan explains that young people make better employees, especially in the technology industry, where everything is changing so fast that older people just can’t keep up.

Then comes the money quote: “In the tech world, gray hair and experience are really overrated.”

Only an imbecile would say this. Halligan is essentially admitting that Hubspot discriminates on the basis of age. Age discrimination has become a huge issue in Silicon Valley. Halligan is not the only tech CEO who prefers to hire young people; he’s just the only one dumb enough to admit it. Halligan has not just put his foot in his mouth—he has taken his foot out of his mouth and stepped on a land mine.

I don’t know if Adam Bryant included these comments on purpose, knowing how incendiary they might be. Surely Halligan talked about all sorts of things in the interview, and Bryant cherry-picked which comments to publish. That’s why doing an interview is always risky. That’s also why CEOs need media training.

The Best Media-Training Tip Ever

LARA
People remember allegations, not rebuttals.

ORRIN
Exactly. Someone says Charlie fucked a goat. Even if the goat denies it, he goes to the grave, “Charlie the goat fucker.”

—Billions

Carly Fiorina Is a Master Manipulator of the Media

“Clinton and Fiorina appeared back to back on Meet the Press recently. Clinton was challenged on the email issue and tried affably to defend her conduct. Fiorina was challenged on the existence of a Planned Parenthood video she claims to have seen.

“In contrast to Clinton, Fiorina simply refused to adopt a defensive posture. She ignored the challenges and just hit Planned Parenthood harder. The factual issue sort of got lost in her torrent. She was stylistically indomitable even if she didn’t address the substance of the critique.

—David Brooks

Let the Words Carry the Authority

SANTOS
You know, I feel terrible making you do this when I’m not even in the debate.

AMY
You’re not in the Olympics either, doesn’t mean you don’t do some sit-ups now and then.

SANTOS
Well, you know you’ve coached about 50 women congressional candidates to debate wins—so there must be some secret.

AMY
There is. Always keep an extra pair of pantyhose in your purse.

SANTOS
After bombing the way I did in Iowa, I’m not gonna rule that out.

AMY
Congressman, I looked at the tapes. You’re great. You’re quotable cute enough to be a presidential pinup.

SANTOS
Wait until you see my runway work.

AMY
You don’t have the presidential voice.

SANTOS
The presidential voice?

AMY
You don’t have it. And it’s a time of global peril and you’re sharing the stage with two vice presidents.

SANTOS
Or not.

AMY
Congressman, what do you think of the ultranationalist gains in the Russian parliamentary elections?

SANTOS
It ain’t the Litchfield City Council, but Russia makes its own choices. And in a democracy—

AMY
Whoa, whoa, whoa—you just wrote the lamer half of Jay Leno’s monologue. You’re not a House backbencher trying to get a quote on CNN. Sobriety, understatement, let the words carry the authority.

SANTOS
A presidential voice...

AMY
Think filling out a suit, instead of wearing bright orange

SANTOS
Pantyhose.

AMY
I was gonna say neckties, but what the hell.

---

SANTOS
There are whole generations of Russians who were trained by the KGB. Now, when the wall fell, they didn’t all go open pizzerias. Now that’s not to say that

AMY
No, no, no. Bad, bad, bad. If I could pull a lever and drop you through the floor, I’d do it right now.

SANTOS
What, my analysis isn’t right?

AMY
Your analysis is fine. I don’t know how to explain this any better. It’s not a pop quiz and it’s not a late-night talk show. The leader of the free world has to speak in broad concepts, in value statements. “I love America. I will lead the world towards liberty.”

SANTOS
Oh, I don’t sound pompous enough?

AMY
You sound like you’re commenting on events, not shaping them.

SANTOS
I don’t shape them, and it’s not the way I think.

AMY
Congressman, the prospect of first-strike capability’s gotta change the way you think.

[snip]

AMY
I’m trying to explain the presidential voice. The difference between leading the marketplace and catering to it. The difference between, I don’t know, John Lennon and John Davidson. Sergeant Pepper and the fifth Herman’s Hermits album.

—The West Wing

Donald Trump Explains How to Reframe the Conversation With a Reporter

“When a reporter asks me a tough question, I try to frame a positive answer, even if that means shifting the ground. For example, if someone asks me what negative effects the world’s tallest building might have on the West Side, I turn the tables and talk about how New Yorkers deserve the world’s tallest building, and what a boost it will give the city to have that honor again. When a reporter asks why I build only for the rich, I note that the rich aren’t the only ones who benefit from my buildings. I explain that I put thousands of people to work who might otherwise be collecting unemployment, and that I add to the city’s tax base every time I build a new project.”

How Donald Trump Plays the Press, in His Own Words

Addendum (9/5/2015): And here’s how his reframes the conversation about his competitors:

“Trump is proving to be an extraordinarily powerful orator. The power is not in the arguments he makes, but in the feelings he evokes and the power relations he implies. ‘What went wrong formerly,’ wrote Bertrand Russell in 1952, ‘was that people had read in books that man is a rational animal, and framed their arguments on this hypothesis. We now know that limelight and a brass band do more to persuade than can be done by the most elegant train of syllogisms’…

“We who don’t much read Cicero anymore can forget that contumely, not logic, is the weapon of choice in classical oratory. Trump never mentions Jeb Bush without describing him as ‘low-energy’ (‘a very low-energy person,’ he said in Dubuque). The adjective never varies. Trump does not ever say Bush ‘lacks oomph’ or ‘has no get-up-and-go’ because his goal is not to be smart or varied or interesting—it is to plaster ‘low-energy’ onto Bush as an epithet.

Everything I Know About Media Training, I Learned in This 1 Minute From Gone Girl

NICK
I did not kill my wife.

TANNER
Why don’t you try it again, a little less wooden?

NICK
I didn’t kill my wife.

[Tanner throws a Gummy bear at Nick.]

What are you doing?

TANNER
Every time you look smug or annoyed or tense, I’m going to hit you with a Gummy bear.

NICK
That supposed to make me less tense?

TANNER
Let’s try it again.

Mr. Dunn, from what I understand, you and your wife had some bumps.

NICK
Yeah, we had some tough years. I lost my job.

TANNER
You both did.

NICK
We both lost our jobs. I had to move back home so we could take care of my mother, who was dying of cancer. My dad…

TANNER
Your dad’s scorched earth. Let’s talk about your mom—how close you were. Go on.

NICK
For a while, things had been building up.

TANNER
“Built up” implies that an explosion is coming up. No.

NICK
At a certain point, we got on the wrong track. I had a moment of weakness.

TANNER
Your moment was over 15 months.

NICK
I disrespected my wife. And I disrespected my marriage. And I’ll always regret it.

TANNER
That works.

Related: PR Lessons from Gone Girl

How to Oppose Gay Marriage Without Being a Jerk

Take it away Will Saletan:

If you’re a Republican running for president, prepare yourself. The next reporter who corners you at a diner might pop the question. No, she doesn’t want to marry you. But she might ask whether you’d attend a gay wedding. In the last week, that question has been posed to at least five candidates: Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, Govs. Scott Walker and John Kasich, and former Sen. Rick Santorum. In general, their answers have been weak. Here’s what they’ve said, and how you can handle the question better than they did.

When Hewitt posed the same question to Santorum on Thursday, the former senator flatly said no:

Q: Would you, Rick Santorum, attend a same-sex wedding of a loved one or a family friend or anyone who you were close to?

A: No, I would not.

Q: Well, why not?

A: Because ... as a person of my faith, that would be something that would be a violation of my faith. I would love them and support them, but I would not participate in that ceremony.

Santorum gets points for candor. And he draws the approved Christian distinction between loving and condoning. But for listeners who have gay friends or family, Santorum seems to offer nothing. Compare his answer with this one, delivered by Walker on Saturday night:

Q: Would you attend a gay wedding?

A: Well, in terms of—that’s certainly a personal issue. For a family member, Tonette and I and our family already had a family member who’s had a reception. I haven’t been at a wedding. But that’s true even though my position on marriage is still that it’s defined between a man and a woman, and I support the constitution of the state. But for someone I love, we’ve been at a reception.

Doesn’t that sound better? Substantively, Walker gives no more ground than Santorum does. He opposes legal recognition of same-sex marriage, he’s never attended a gay wedding, and he isn’t saying he ever would. But for people who disagree with him, he can say—and does say—that he’s been to a reception. Apparently he’s referring to his wife’s cousin, who married another woman last year. According to the New York Times, “The governor was away on business when the wedding occurred, but he later attended a reception for the newlyweds.”

See how nicely that works out? Schedule your travel to miss the wedding but make the reception. Then you can sound like a decent guy without losing support on the religious right.

The 2 Secrets of Media Training Every Politician Must Master

1. Repetition Is King

One day, while sitting in traffic between meetings, I left 10 virtually identical voicemails for potential donors, each nearly two minutes in length, and each performed with the requisite conviction, spontaneity and touch of humor in just the same spots.

2. Values Before Policy

Mattis taught me always to lead with values before getting into policy, a key lesson in my evolution from commentator to candidate. It’s what Bill Clinton always did. “Don’t be a pundit in your own race,” Mattis coached. “People don’t want analysis—they want a leader.”

—Adapted from Matt Miller

The 6 Secrets of Releasing Bad News Under the Radar

Step 1: No News

“If there is more information that is new, get it out the door before the hearings begin,” Dreyer wrote. “We do not want new revelations at the hearings. The hearings must rehash old news.”

Step 2: Keep ’Em Waiting

“We should make the hearings expensive and inconvenient for the networks to cover; boring and inconvenient for the press to follow. The hearings should start late, never on time. We should encourage votes on both the House and Senate floors. The Committees should adjourn to vote, never have a relay of committee members to keep the hearings going.”

Step 3: Put ’Em to Sleep

“We encourage detailed opening statements by every Democrat on both Banking panels. We want detailed statements by our opening witnesses. We advocate starting the hearings on Thursday, so that the weekend forces a premature media judgment on whether the hearings are worth watching. An early technical or procedural battle over, for example, scope would also suit our objectives.”

Step 4: Spin

“It is in our interest to dominate the news, and that will require a strong overall message and an even stronger tactical approach. Though their numbers may dwindle, reporters will be in those hearing rooms gavel-to-gavel. We need a two-cycle spin operation in the hearing rooms interpreting events for the reporters as they decide what is news.”

Step 5: Misdirect

“Anything we can do to move the focus from the issues inside the hearing room will be worthwhile. The president should be scheduled in ways that show him to be engaged in his serious work. He needs to be confident and self-assured in public appearances.

“Members of Congress should be programmed to do one-minute speeches and addresses in morning business talking about the political choice made by the two parties between health care and Whitewater. DNC and White House press operations should circulate overnight Arbitron ratings for the daily hearings.”

Step 6: Attack!

“Can we float some political analysis about the Republicans having as much to lose as the Democrats? We should be raising the heat on Senator] D’Amato, ’96 Republican presidential politics, and negative campaigning.”

—Adapted from a memo by White House communications adviser David Dreyer to Lloyd Cutler, special counsel to the president, in June 1994, in preparation for congressional hearings on Whitewater and the death of Vince Foster.

The 6 Principles of Media Training

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY

How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue 10 points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission—sound bites are not the ideal. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS

How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We can use surprise—an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus—to grab people’s attention. But surprise doesn’t last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. How do you keep students engaged during the 48th history class of the year? We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge—and then filling those gaps.

PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS

How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions—they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images, because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.

PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY

How do we make people believe our ideas? When the former surgeon general C. Everett Koop talks about a public-health issue, most people accept his ideas without skepticism. But in most day-to-day situations we don’t enjoy this authority. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves—a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas. When we’re trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach. In the sole presidential debate in 1980 between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Reagan could have cited innumerable statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead, he asked a simple question that allowed voters to test for themselves: “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.”

PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS

How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness. For instance, it’s difficult to get teenagers to quit smoking by instilling in them a fear of the consequences, but it’s easier to get them to quit by tapping into their resentment of the duplicity of Big Tobacco.

PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES

How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.

—Adapted from Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath