Many have written about the “flubbed” Betsy DeVos interview on 60 Minutes. No doubt there are quite a few takeaways from that 12 minutes of airtime.
I don’t want to repeat what’s been said, but hope to further the argument. My take on why Ms. DeVos did a less than stellar interview is that at heart, she is a people pleaser.
The problem with people pleasers is that unless they are mentally prepared to take a very deliberate approach to a dicey situation, they fall into the trap of trying to create a relationship that pleases the other person. In this case, Ms. DeVos trying to please an unappeasable Leslie Stahl. I used to use a media clip of Leslie Stahl saying to an interviewee, “I’m a reporter not your friend.” One can NEVER forget that reporters aren’t your friends and trying to win them over with personality can actually reduce your effectiveness. You may leave feeling like you have a new friend, but that’s not the point of an interview!
Someone should have reminded Ms. DeVos to get her head in the 60 Minutes game before that interview. She wasn’t there to please Leslie, but to provide insight into why her take on education makes her the right person (or the wrong person??) for this job and how her expertise makes her someone our country should trust with our collective kids’ education.
She didn’t do that. Her giveaways included her constant smiling, as though that will cover up for her lack of depth (smiling by the way isn’t a bad thing, but it’s especially complicated for women and she just overdoes it.) Her other giveaways were that she always answered the actual question. While everyone appreciates someone who answers questions, sometimes some finesse is needed. She could have used the questions as a means to get a point across – to pivot and own the conversation. She just didn’t have the tools or training to pull it off.
I wiggled in my seat watching some of this. Interviews on 60 Minutes are never a cakewalk. And being interviewed over a period of days or weeks, as this seemed to have been done, can be even more daunting. Talk about having to be on your game.
But she is a cabinet member. We expect more. Is she capable of more? I always give people the benefit of the doubt, but she shouldn’t be practicing her skills with someone as skilled of an interviewer as Ms. Stahl. She will need to work hard behind the scenes to coalesce her stories, experience and messages to come across as a strategist, leader and quick study on one of our country’s most pressing issues.
