Chief executives can personify their firms, which makes their media image vital, writes Eoghan McDermott

WHEN IT comes to dealing with the media, bosses seem to fall into one of two categories, both of them worrisome. The first is the managing director with way too much personality - lots to say and little subtlety about how they do it. The second is the chief executive who is not keen to reveal anything but is happy to take up plenty of airtime or newspaper print to do so.

This wouldn't be a significant problem except that - arguably since Henry Ford and certainly since Lee Iacocca, the former boss of Chrysler - those at the top of the organisation tend to personify it.

This leads to companies that seem to be run by and for the egos at the top or, worse, by grey individuals you couldn't remember if they were standing in front of you. Both can lead to problems with recruiting staff, building partnerships and engaging customers.

There is a happy medium between the Technicolor and the monochrome, one that allows the head of a company to be interesting and to embody some of what makes that company unique and wholesome. The key is preparation.

Most good personality profiles are made up of four fundamental pillars: quotations, descriptions, biographical details and judgment.

Now, the judgment belongs to the journalist: it will be the sum total of their impressions of the managing director. The boss has no control over it and shouldn't think about it. However, you have enormous control over the other three categories.

Quotations are the statements the interviewee hopes will end up in print or remembered on air. When you're preparing for your company annual general meeting with shareholders, ask yourself what headline you would love to see the following day in the papers. It focuses the mind in an oddly productive way.

Once you've articulated the headline you want, you begin to gear your communication to introduce that statement into your speeches and answers to journalistic questions.

The same goes with a profile interview. Figure out the key insights you'd love to see between quotation marks in the final profile. If you verbalise your thinking, you hugely increase the chances you will repeat that in interview.

It's why regular interviewees develop what is known as a "legend". They tell the same stories so many times they simply default into them when questioned. You don't want your chief executive to develop a "legend", but you do want them so verbally familiar with their thinking and quotes that they're top of the mind during the interview.

The second category is description. A good journalist will want to establish, even if the feature is illustrated with a picture, what you're like in person. Not in the style of Garda descriptions of missing persons but to give the reader a sense of what it's like to be in the room with you.

You should dress how you would like to be perceived. Michael O'Leary wears an open-necked shirt - cool and relaxed. Sir Anthony O'Reilly wears a suit, shirt and tie - smart and sophisticated. If an interview is done in your office or home, check the room as if it were an extension of your personality: does it say about you what you want said? Remember, if your desk is littered with Mont Blanc pens and leather-bound Italian hand-crafted notebooks, that gives an indication of your personality.

Of most importance, in this regard, is to remember that, although the chief executive is centre-stage in their life, the journalist is centre-stage in their own life as well. Find them interesting. Register them as an individual. Make sure you look at earlier samples of the journalist's work. See whether there's anything you like within it and say so.

The third category within your control is the one headed biographical details. This is also the one most amenable to preparation.

Be clear. You are not presenting a CV. You are not delivering chronology. It's not about sequence. It's about triumph and failure, setback and success. It's about who influenced you and what changed or developed you. Most of all, it's about stories. Work out in advance how, if you were a third party you wanted to make interesting to someone, what would be the stories you'd tell about him.

Be careful of privacy. Work out in advance precisely how far you'll go in talking about your family.

Finally, be trusting but not reckless. Don't say anything to any interviewer that they don't want to read in print or hear on radio or TV.

Final point. Be positive. Peter Ustinov once remarked that, although TV and radio are highly technical media, they love nothing more than human enthusiasm. The same goes with print media.

Journalists are jaded and they hate meeting jaded people. An interviewee who is an expert, who is eager to offer, who enjoys their work and who doesn't give out about anybody else is always a welcome surprise.

Eoghan McDermott is a consultant with the Communications Clinic