CorpComms Magazine

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late JFK, hit the headlines for all the wrong  reasons in December after her campaign to claim Hillary Clinton's Senate seat was knocked off course following a flurry of interviews. In a 30 minute session with The News, Kennedy punctuated her answers with 'you know' at least 200 times while in an interview with The New York Times, she used the phrase 142 times - prompting the newspaper to print the transcript. Kennedy subsequently pulled out citing personal reasons.

If your boss has a repetitive phrase injury, CorpComms Magazine has three potential remedies.

Roddy McDougall, editor-in-chief, Cantos 

Your chairman is booked for television appearances around your next set of results. He's a lovely guy but has a tendency to waffle. Or he gets nervous and keeps 'umming.' Fear not, a few simple and easy to master rules can prevent him doing so on air.  Here are three that help senior executives when they're facing the Cantos' cameras.

The first thing to do is simple - prepare. Work out what is you want to say, anticipate what you're going to be asked and come up with some short, to the point answers that you and your team are happy with. You don't want to sound over-rehearsed but being ready for what's coming is crucial and helps your performance on the day.

Secondly, know when to stop. Just because you've been told the interview's going to last two and a half minutes doesn't mean you have to fill all that time with one answer. You'll lose track of what you're saying and the audience will too. Keep it short and the 'you knows' and 'ums' will disappear.

Finally, think of the three main points you would want someone listening to your interview to take away. That's three - not 23 or 223. You may know the main points but your job is to make sure that whoever's listening to the interview knows them too. So don't be afraid to repeat them. Far better they remember your main points than the fact that you said 'you know' 142 times, don't you think?

Laurence Lee, director of media, Porter Novelli

Poor Caroline Kennedy. In her attempt to become a Senator she surely had everything going for her. Her name, for one thing, the family she comes from. She stood in front of Barack Obama and Ted Kennedy to announce her backing for Obama's campaign, read off an autocue in front of thousands of students, and she was absolutely fine - everyone cheered.

But without an autocue, she's, you know, a little less articulate. The New York Daily News ripped her to pieces. Adding up the times she said 'you know' during a half hour interview, the paper opined Caroline Kennedy, you know, might need, you know, a speech coach, um, if she, you know, wants, um, to be a senator. 

The problem with, er, not being entirely concise during interviews, is, um, that people think you don't know your subject. And she must, surely, already have had speech coaching. The clips doing the rounds on YouTube of Kennedy have attracted many tens of thousands of hits, and all the associated vitriol. 

The interesting thing about the clip is that it's audio, rather than video. I suspect that when she did the interview, she didn't actually realise that she was being recorded. After all, print journalists write things down, don't they? But it's no good assembling your thoughts in front of a TV camera and not being equally articulate when you're speaking to a newspaper - they both carry equal weight. You have to say the same things all the time. If in doubt, keep it simple. Keep the sentences short. It's the Ladybird guide to public speaking. 

Yet Caroline Kennedy comes from the most auspicious political clan in the world, and she was trying to stand next to Barack Obama, who has more charisma than any American leader since, well, her father. How ironic is that? In the States, in the age of Obama, the presentation stakes have been raised. If she couldn't articulate relatively simple Democratic policies in a way that sounded convincing and seamless, she had no option but to give up. 

Andrew Caesar Gordon, managing director, Electric Airwaves

There are around 230,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary: 'um', 'er' and 'you know' are not listed. As Caroline Kennedy has discovered, these so called 'spurious spacers' are at best annoying and at worst damage your credibility and dilute your message. 

One of the best ways to eliminate them is to take a good look at yourself on video (or, if you can't face that, listen to an audio recording). You will swiftly identify your own (bad) habits. If you're brave, ask a colleague to count your spurious spacers during your next interview or presentation. Some find the spoken judgment of a colleague to be an effective stimulus for correction.

Many people find that if they focus on reducing the use of a single word or phrase (perhaps substituting a pause, which can be very powerful since it demands that the audience pay attention for and are expectant of the next word) they can make excellent progress by themselves. 

Hillary Clinton, whose seat Kennedy wished to fill, was the subject of an essay by Berkeley linguist Robin Lakoff. He noted that Clinton's own liberal use of 'you know' might signal vulnerability, adding: 'Senator Clinton keeps using you know, whether hopefully or desperately, as a plea Please see it my way - because we share the same world-view.'

If so, it hasn't worked for Kennedy. The media took a dislike to her because they perceived her as being disrespectful. When her name was first linked to the Senate, she refused to talk. And when she did, she was insulting. When asked to describe the moment she decided to run, the New York Times reported: 'Kennedy seemed irritated by the question and said she couldn't recall. Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman's magazine or something? I thought you were the crack political team.'

Its original headline read: As a Candidate, Kennedy is Eloquent but Elusive. By its second edition, the newspaper realised the real story and changed this to: Forceful But Elusive.  

share me: del.icio.us | digg | reddit | Tweet