Attitude!

CNBC's Joe Kernen interviews Xerox CEO Ursula Burns (left); Yahool CEO Carol Bartz

By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

Attitude is key! How you feel about an interview going into it plays a big part in what you get out of it.

Negative feelings find a way to come out. Facial expressions, overall body language, even tone of voice (critical to phone interviews), can sabotage your prettiest words. And, vice-versa, positive feelings emerge the same way and are quite validating to what you say.

Here are two very positive examples of two women, both CEOs, who quite clearly enjoy the give-and-take of the interview.

Established relationships with the media often play a part in your attitude. The new CEO of Yahoo, Carol Bartz, obviously has some history with CNBC and the way she communicates verbally and non-verbally is very much in synch. In this video she has some fun with Squawk Box co-host Joe Kernen during a recent early morning interview.



In a separate interview with Xerox CEO Ursula Burns in this next video, she uses humor to answer a question about the company stock price which provokes some laughter and warms the environment.



Bartz took over Yahoo after founder and CEO Jerry Yang was forced out by a board of directors angered over his refusal to accept a lucrative acquisition offer from Microsoft. Of course, that came up while Bartz was talking to the Squawk Box gang, and her reaction in this next video serves to dramatize further her complete sense of being at ease.



Finally, Burns’ great attitude helps her correct what she feels is an incorrect premise posed in a question from co-host Kernen. Watch the interview and make note of the fact she does not argue or talk down to Kernen. Indeed, she even relates to his world of work in her response.



Because these two CEOs are so comfortable with themselves and the interview environment, they leave a great (and persuasive) impression with audiences they wanted/needed to reach. Both are very articulate, but it’s their body language, reflecting great attitudes, that speaks loudest of all.

When You're Asked About Your Competition

By Eric Seidel, CEO
The Media Trainers®

When your name is both a subject and a verb, you just might find others trying to bring you down to size.

So it goes for Google. The seemingly ubiquitous search engine does have competitors still trying to emerge from Google’s dust. Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing want a much larger piece of the action. The result is intensive focus on the king of the hill and how it will fend off these attacks.

So it’s been for Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Sitting down with Fox Business Network’s Liz Claman recently at his corporate headquarters (click on the video below to hear/see the full interview), the unflappable Schmidt fielded questions about the assault with ease, respect, dignity and more than one clever retort designed to help differentiate Google and its continuing advantage.

Some examples:

Claman: “What do you think about Microsoft’s entry?”
Schmidt: “Well, it’s not the first entry for Microsoft; they do this about once a year.”

Claman: “So you predict that you will hang onto the number one position here.”
Schmidt: “Well, I certainly hope so. Google is about innovation and we’re not done with search.”

Claman: “I look at Google and I say, well, it’s really hard to knock the top entity off, but Google did it with Yahoo many, many years ago.”
Schmidt: “But you earn that. You don’t buy it with ads, you earn it and you earn it customer by customer, search by search, answer by answer. We believe today we beat our competitors because we’re so focused on comprehensiveness, speed, freshness and having the depth that people really care about.”

The entire interview (below) contains these and additional concisely articulated responses from Schmidt, who welcomes the competition but makes it understood Google’s hold on the hill remains solid and long term.