A show of vulnerability in an interview speaks to authenticity.
No one ever accused Muhammad Ali of being soft. Eight months after becoming the World Heavyweight Champion, Ali sat down with Alex Haley on assignment for Playboy magazine. The twenty-two-year-old boxer [born Cassius Clay] opened up. He dared to be himself, here we see the essence of the man being mourned today.
Playboy: There was another controversy about the honesty
of your failure to pass the three Army preinduction qualification
tests that you took shortly after the fight. Any comment?
Clay: The truth don’t hurt nobody. …

There are countless examples of what Wired Magazine terms the “indiscreet subject.” That’s a reference to people who say more then they should in media interviews. In the summer of 2010, four-star General Stanley McChrystal was relieved of his command in Afghanistan after he and his staff vented their frustrations to journalist Michael Hastings, on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine.
The article, headlined, “The Runaway General,” was so sensational it put the White House in near-crisis mode for forty-eight hours. Quote after quote was a scathing put-down of the non-military leaders, including the vice …

Why interviews are less about what you know and more about how you present yourself.
Years ago, I sat in on a media training session in while I was a working at Burson-Marsteller in New York City. The client was the head of mergers and acquisitions for a Wall Street investment bank. He was handsome, clever, and as confident as one would expect. The coaching was intended to help him handle media interviews and analysts’ calls with ease. It should have been a no-brainer. But about an hour into the session, after …