If you surveyed people who do media interviews, you’d discover that one of their most common fears is freezing up during a live TV or radio interview. Losing their train of thought and drawing a blank while the seconds tick agonizingly by. It’s truly the stuff of nightmares. Here are my top 5 tips to help you avoid becoming the deer in the headlights during your next live media interview:

1. Write better messages (and less of them) - You don’t need endless pages of content, stats and numbers for a media interview. You just need three or four great points that speak to the topic in a compelling way and which will resonate with your audience. Fewer messages = less to remember.
2. Do a practice interview - Your first interview will be your worst interview. Makes sense, right? So, instead of doing the first one on live TV or radio, like most people do, try doing one in the boardroom with a media trainer or someone on your communications team. A practice interview only takes 10 minutes or so and can help you get those butterflies under control and allow you to road test your messages in a risk-free setting. Make your mistakes in the practice interview, get honest feedback, make the appropriate adjustments and THEN do the real interview.
3. Picture it going well - Not to get too Tony Robbins on you here, but there's a lot of research to suggest that visualization works. Prior to your interview, close your eyes for a few moments and see/hear the interview play out in your mind. Imagine the questions they’ll ask. Visualize yourself delivering a media interview Obama or Steve Jobs would be proud of.
4. Less defense/more offense - During my media training sessions, I’ve noticed that most people who freeze up during an interview are focusing almost exclusively on not making a mistake. Of course you want to avoid messing up. But trying to tiptoe through an interview in full defense mode is going to make a spokesperson too tentative. Think of your media interview like fielding a hockey team. Yes, you need a goalie and two people on D to help avoid missteps. But you're not going to win without your forwards and, in an interview, that offense means making a concerted effort to tell your story in a compelling way.
5. Make it more about the audience and less about the reporter - If the idea of speaking to a journalist is getting in your head, there’s a subtle mental game that can help. Instead of talking ‘to’ the reporter during your interview, imagine you’re talking ‘through’ the reporter, directly to your audience. Keep a clear picture of your audience in your mind throughout the interview and the interaction becomes less about performing during a media interview and more about conveying important information to your ultimate audience.

Make these tips part of your media interview prep and you’ll greatly minimize the chances of a deer in the headlights moment.

If you're ready to level up your media interview skills, join nearly 400 people in my online course, ​The Art of the Great Media Interview. It's a deep-dive into my best media training tips and features videos, case studies and checklists. And until 11:59 pm on June 30, it's available for a one-time purchase of C$199. Use discount code JUNE23 at checkout.