CEO Media Training: How to Speak Your Stories

SUMMARY: Media training for CEOs involves more than just scripting speeches—it’s about rehearsal, riffing, and refining stories to engage audiences authentically. By creating outlines and then speaking spontaneously, fresh ideas emerge, enriching the narrative. CEO media training sessions focus on embodying a strong presence, role-playing stories, allowing for variations that bring media interviews and speeches to life that resonate with audiences. Through this process, CEOs can build confidence and effectiveness in delivering compelling messages on stage or in media appearances.

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CEO Media Training: How to Speak Your Stories

I was just media training one of my clients who’s the CEO of a company that just got $50 million in Series C funding and is expanding worldwide. We were practicing for a very short, eight-minute talk on stage with one thousand people in the audience.

And one of the things that we were doing was workshopping his talk. I said, “What would make you feel most comfortable?” He said, “Rehearsing. I feel like I can get it into my bones, I’ll feel so much more comfortable.” Then we can work on blocking, pausing, voice variation, and how to use the stage and interaction and all of those other things.

Do This One Media Training Secret Before You Script Your Speech to Speak Your Stories.

One of the things that he had wanted to do ahead of time is he really wanted it more tightly scripted before he practiced.

What I recommended is that we actually speak it right there on the spot, because it’s in the doing of it, that you see what happens and new ideas and fresh ideas come up, lots of times that weren’t scripted.

That was a proven point because the other CEO of that same company who ran a different branch, whom I had also media trained, he had his signature story that he typically told about how the company began (Their origin story or signature story).

But he told it in a different way when I asked him to tell it to me and his PR person who was with us said, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve never heard that version.”

And the very next media appearance and print interview they had, they used that version instead. The new version got printed. And stuck.

CEO Media Training is About Rehearsal, Riffing, Refining.

It’s in the play. It’s in the variation. It’s seeing what’s coming up when you’re actually speaking it, not what’s on the page, that’s when things come alive, oftentimes, and new things come in.

Because you’re not thinking, because it’s actually in situ. You can allow new kinds of inspiration to come in and inform your talk or your media appearance, whatever that’s going to be and it becomes better because of it.

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