Lessons from skiing for media training

I feel very privileged to have close friends who choose to share their lovely chalet in the Alps with us and I recently travelled out for a weekend’s skiing. I have been skiing now for over 25 years and while I had a number of lessons when I first started I have probably only had one lesson in the last 10 years.

But in recent years I have not wanted lessons, nor thought I needed any. And one of the reasons for this is the poor experience I had with French or Swiss instructors when I first started. Inevitably their lack of English vocabulary made the lessons very stilted;  if you were lucky you learnt by observation and if you were more aggressive you pushed yourself right behind the instructor so you began to copy and ‘feel’ what was intended rather than learning through instruction.  

But on our last trip, one of our friends (a very senior HRD) encouraged us to have a group ‘coaching’ session (note coaching, not lesson!), which I decided to sign up for. There were three of us of similar ability – well we can all ski together even if some decide to do the moguls whilst others (yes, me!) avoid them – and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Now you may be thinking, well that is all very well but how does that relate to communications.  I think it has everything to do with communication – my experience was greatly enhanced by the fact that the ‘coach’ was English and could communicate much more clearly and engagingly than the normal French instructors who may be great skiers, but rarely have the depth of language to teach in this way.

What really impressed me was the coach’s ability to take 3 different skiers on a group session and yet completely focus on our own individual needs. He tackled a core issue – balance – and then identified our own particular foibles. He used anecdotes to help us understand what we needed to do and encouraged us to watch him and then to ‘feel and experience’ the desired change.

It was great fun and I discovered two things (apart from the need to transfer my weight better!): that we always need to keep learning; and that effective teaching comes from encouragement and listening, not just telling. And that is something we apply when we undertake media training just as much as it does to ski lessons.

We often encourage our clients to refresh their approach to media interviews; invariably they feel, having done a media training session in the distant past, that they don’t need to do it again. But my experience shows that it really pays to focus not just on the techniques you use in media interviews but on what you are going to say. My colleague Diana Soltmann, who runs our media training, is a business coach and achieves great results by helping clients really understand the media agenda and ‘listen’ to themselves. She gets great feedback from her sessions, so if you think you need a refresher then give us a ring.