Can We Please Make Media Training Sessions Evidence-based?
Jo Detavernier, SCMP, APR
Throughout the nation, every year many thousands of executives attend media training sessions that are meant to help them prepare for future important media engagements. The trainers are mostly external consultants who are committed to helping their trainees as best as they can, but more often than not fail to keep pseudo-science (completely) out of the course material.
Communication consultancy is a young field in which not everything that has been proven to work is codified in a body of knowledge that anyone who enters the field needs to master. In medicine, if you have three general practitioners that are confronted with the reading on a blood test they will most likely come to identical conclusions on what the issue at hand is (without necessarily knowing the cause to be sure). In communications consultancy, companies are diagnosed in many different ways and what people read into those diagnostics diverges greatly.
As a subfield of communications consultancy, today media trainings are still not as evidence-based as they could be. The behavioral sciences have a lot to teach us about how messages should best be designed and delivered. Alas, these findings rarely find their ways in the decks of media trainers.
So it happens that trainees hear that they need to repeat a message three times for their listeners to process what is said (not true), that they should never speak in negative terms (not true) and that words only account for seven percent of the impact of what is said (non-verbal communication matters of course, but not to such degree). Together with the Institute for Public Relations I researched the three aforementioned myths and discussed in this article in detail why they need to be debunked.
Media training sessions should not only teach proven techniques, their design should also be evidence-based meaning that the trainers should make good use of proven teaching techniques such as peer learning in how they conceive of and manage their workshops.
Executives who are in need for media trainings do well to guard themselves against trainers who do not apply evidence-based insights in their training sessions. There are different ways the can apply due diligence. One approach is to consult the blog of the vendor and read up on what he or she shares about the subject matter. Is any scientific research referenced in what is said? Is there mention of the myths that I discussed earlier? Asking the vendor directly about the techniques that will be taught and the scientific claims that buttress them will also yield insightful answers (and any reluctance to share information will by itself provide a useful answer!). Finally, potential buyers can inquire about references and ask former trainees about what they heard during the training.
About the Author: This post is written by Jo Detavernier, SCMP, APR, an Austin, TX based communications consultant. Visit his website for more content on corporate communications, public relations and content marketing.
