Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [81]
Keep the material in your notebook up-to-date, including information from relevant clippings and current press articles. Your staff can be most helpful in spotting good additions to your book. Include useful statistics, quotes, and results of relevant studies or polls that support your position.
The material in your notebook can be reduced to fit into a book which you can carry in your pocket. You can refer to such a book en route to refresh your memory. You will be able to say unhesitatingly just what you want to say, and no more. You will radiate confidence and control because you know your subject thoroughly, and you will feel comfortable and relaxed with your responses.
Showing Hostility to Others in Public
Be careful when you are criticizing an individual or a group in public or during a press conference. If your comments are later perceived by the press and public as too vitriolic or self-serving, your words could backfire on you. Later they may not remember what you said, but they may remember how “nasty” you were to that person or group.
I heard a man tell the following story on the radio recently. He was running for the U.S. Senate a few years ago and was way behind in the polls. Several weeks before the election, in a desperate attempt to lessen the gap, he began to criticize his opponent severely, even running very negative campaign ads. The attack on his opponent didn’t work, however—he still lost by a sizable margin. On the radio, he noted that the attempt to discredit his opponent had not been worth it and had backfired on him. Years later, he is still trying to live down the reputation he gained as a nasty person, while his former opponent is enjoying himself in the Senate.
When you criticize or embarrass a colleague in public, you are sending a message about your own motives.
Likewise, a colleague who purposefully embarrasses you may be grandstanding, jealous, or in a status contest with you. Airing dirty linen or making false accusations should be avoided because of the adverse consequences for both parties. If it happens to you, try to remain calm and use humor in order to avoid showing your anger in public.
At times you can gracefully avoid public hostility by asking your adversary to discuss the matter with you in private or by issuing a public statement that gives the truth of the matter without criticizing your colleague back.
THE NEWS MEDIA STAKEOUT
What if members of the press are camped outside your house, waiting for you to emerge? They may have come equipped with an amazing assortment of gear—lights, cameras, and amplifying devices. They may wait hours for you, the hapless newsmaker, to bolt through their ranks to the safety of your car.
It may seem as if they are living there day after day, exchanging food and newspapers, swapping stories, interviewing your neighbors, and snapping to attention whenever you open the door to let the dog out.
There are even stories about the subject of a stakeout bringing coffee and snacks outside to the reporters and film crews on cold winter nights, answering no questions, but helping to keep them warm and fed. This sort of thing is likely to happen on nights such as Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Reporters cringe when they are assigned to spend such holidays away from their families, out in the cold and the dark, but they often have to do just that to get the story in the morning edition of the paper or to get a video clip for the next morning’s TV news.
Fairly recent examples of public figures undergoing the close scrutiny of a stakeout outside their personal residences include Colonel Oliver North, of the Iran-Contra Affair, and then-vice-presidential candidate Senator Dan Quayle.
When the media was staking out Colonel North’s home during the Iran-Contra Affair, he was mobbed by reporters and camera crews as he drove up his driveway on the way to work each morning. His response was