Throughout the earlier parts of my charity career, I worked hard to try and master all the different parts of running an organisation. I had moved from a Director of Finance role into operations, before taking on programmes and then fundraising.
But when I started at New Horizon Youth Centre back in 2018 as a first-time Chief Executive, I found myself on a steep learning curve, particularly when it came to comms and the media.
When people see me these days, they assume that I have always been confident and that I love public speaking and being interviewed in the media, but the truth is that it has been a long and sometimes painful path to this point.
But over time my confidence grew and after eight years of leading a charity and countless times in the media, I hopefully learnt a thing or two that might be helpful to leaders who want to feel more confident about getting their stories into the media.
Media confidence is a muscle
I can still remember sitting in the Lotus Room in the centre – barely a few months in – with an ITV journalist to discuss the cold snap underway and rough sleeping. It was the first interview I had done on TV and I was terrified. The footage, I would come to learn later that day, showed it too. “Why didn’t you blink?” asked my partner and the answer, somewhat reluctantly was that I probably felt out of my depth.
But like everything in life and work, practice makes perfect and the more you do something, the more you feel in control when you do. So if you have nerves about being filmed, start with the print press and when you have warmed up on that, try the radio. Pre-record is less stressful than live and everything is less stressful when you have sat down and practised it, learnt key messages and thought through the awkward questions and answers ahead of time.
Be confident to sell your story
If you are a leader in an organisation, then there will not be a better salesperson for that cause than you. You have lived it and breathed it, thought about it from every angle and got the statistics and stories to back it all up. Spoken with authority and passion it makes for compelling listening in any context, and you should view it as a gift to people who haven’t had the privilege to bear witness to the work you have.
But good news doesn’t just sell for the sake of it and the things we are proud of do not necessarily interest others. Your charity turning 30 might be a big deal for you, but it won’t automatically interest the mainstream press. Your work helping people understand something they keep hearing about, however, might.
So, find ways to connect your experience to current events, and help journalists see the human story behind an issue. News has to be new for a reason and so be fleet of foot and be ready to sell in ideas when you think you have something to add to the debate. As I once said on a LinkedIn post, people assume you need huge budgets to land stories but sometimes spotting and seizing the moment is far more powerful.
Be more confident to say no
When I took part in that first ITV interview the journalist kept asking me to say that people would die that night. I did not know if they would and I did not feel comfortable repeating her line even if she wanted me to. I refused to say it, and it is a lesson I have stood by since. Of course, part of the trick of the media round is to give the journalist what they need but you should always hold your own line. If you cannot stand behind the words after the interview has finished then you should never have said them.
But more broadly the more media you do the more you will be asked and before you know it, you will find yourself being asked to comment on all sorts. The “there is no such thing as bad publicity” adage does not ring true here. Before accepting, ask yourself, “is this our subject? What can we contribute? Who is the audience? Do we have time to prepare properly?”
People’s stories come with responsibilities
For charities, media work often involves asking one of our beneficiaries to join us and to share a difficult part of their life. That requires more thought than prepping a CEO and simply finding a willing interviewee.
If you are going to do more media work, then you should spend time exploring what good involvement looks like in advance. You can think of this as following 4 important Ps:
- Have a clear process for assessing the opportunity
- Make sure the person comes before the pressure of the press – their wellbeing is always more important than coverage
- Prepare them for what to expect – good and bad – and be on hand to hold boundaries and support in the moment
- Support them post-interview, including when they first see themselves on TV or in the paper. It could be a life-affirming moment, but it could also bring unexpected attention or difficult feelings. Be there afterwards and, where needed, help them request changes or redactions, while being clear these may not be possible.
People say that the news moves fast but when it comes to the people you support, you always want to move at your own pace.
A helping hand helps
Of course, the reality for me was that none of this was done alone and behind every successful campaign and media appearance is always a little crew of experts spotting opportunities, prepping you, training, discussing risks and being alongside you when the cameras roll.
Some charities have that expertise in-house. For others, agency support can make a huge difference, as it did for us when we worked with Ripple Effect. Most people remember the column inches in the Observer or the Big Issue, but I also know a lot of that was made possible by a small team around our team doing one thing brilliantly and opening doors that otherwise weren’t ours to open.
I’m just glad that when I had my moment on the rolling Sky News feed one Saturday in January 2024, I managed to blink.
