Now and then we bear witness to those in business who know how to control the interview with media. On "60 Minutes," Mark Zuckerberg managed that brilliantly, despite his relative youth. And today, in THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE, Abby Joseph Cohen does that in the interview with Deborah Solomon. Cohen is a partner at Goldman Sachs.
As a presentation coach, I recognize that Cohen can stand her ground so stridently with Solomon because of her power in financial services. Most of the rest of us, in trying to turn an interview to our advantage, would do so more smoothly. That could include get-off-the-hook phrases such as "I can understand your readers's interest in that issue," humor, and answering in a way which says little.
Cohen is very direct. For example, she excludes as an issue to address the question "Do you feel any responsibility for the economic meltdown of 2008, which you failed to foresee?"
This interview provides one model of how to manage the media. There are many others. As she matures as a leader in her own right, Hillary Clinton has developed a broad menu of how to respond on television. Today she took the gravitas route in discussing the revolt in Egypt.
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