You Can Be a Great Presenter and Still Perform Badly in an Interview
Think about the difference between driving your own car and riding in someone else's. In your car, you pick the route. You know where the turns are. If you want to take the scenic route, you take it. In someone else's car, you're a passenger. They're driving. They are choosing the route, and directions from the back seat are generally not appreciated..
That's the difference between giving a presentation and giving an interview. When you are presenting, you’re in the driver’s seat, but when you are being interviewed, the interviewer is in charge of the wheel and the gas pedal.
This is why leaders who are good at presenting can underperform when being interviewed.
Presenting Is a Monologue. An Interview Is a Dialogue.
When you present, you’re in control of everything; the order, the pacing, what gets emphasized, what gets skipped. You rehearsed it. You know what’s on slide 12. You can ask the audience to hold their questions till the end. All on your terms
In an interview the interviewer decides how things go. They decide the sequence of the questions and when to stay on a topic or move on to another. They may have talked to three other people about you before they met you. They almost certainly have an angle in mind, and it may not be the one you were hoping or prepared for.
In this situation, you aren’t calling the shots. Instead, you are reacting and that requires different skills than pure presenting.
Here’s what many people fail to realize:
The skills that make you a strong presenter are the skills that make being interviewed challenging.
That sounds counterintuitive, so let me unpack it.
Why Your Presentation Instincts Work Against You in an Interview
Good presenters are thorough. They make sure they are clear and cover the relevant details. In an interview, being thorough can turn into rambling, and rambling is where quotes can be taken out of context. The longer your answer, the more raw material your interviewer has to choose from.
Good presenters stay on message. In an interview, staying too strictly on message can be read as dodging or evading the question. Your interviewer hears it and so does the audience.
Good presenters prepare. When being interviewed, preparing too deeply can make you inflexible. If the conversation doesn't go where your prepared points fit, you either have to force them in or you've lost your chance to get them across entirely.
Good presenters are responsible for not allowing too much silence. In an interview, silence is a frequently used technique. A skilled interviewer might stay silent after you answer, just holding your gaze. The tendency is to feel the urge to fill that gap. What comes out of your mouth might be unedited, unfiltered or unguarded, and the interviewer’s got you.
Training That Doesn’t Help
There's a school of interview coaching built entirely around message discipline. It says, learn three key messages. Bridge back to them from any question. Never let the conversation leave your territory.
I understand the appeal. It feels like you’re in control.
But here's the result: you end up answering a question that wasn't asked, then answer it again, then answer it a third time. Anyone listening can hear the pattern. And in a press interview, a journalist who notices you're bridging will start pushing you harder to say what you don’t want to say, because that fact that you are evading is more interesting than whatever you came to say.
You don't earn credibility by evading. You earn credibility by answering the question asked.
A Better Strategy
Instead of creating a rigid script, anticipate what you might be asked and prepare an answer you feel comfortable giving. Every executive has two or three questions they hope won't come up. Those are the ones to work through in advance, practicing out loud until you can deliver the answer coolly and calmly. Not a deflection. a solid answer.
Say less than feels natural. In conversation we equate a long answer with helpfulness. In interviews, short answers play better. A tight, complete answer is far more quotable, in a good way, than a long sprawling one. When you are done, you hand the mic back to the interviewer instead of digging yourself a hole.
And here’s a news flash: it is ok to say "I don't know." which is the most underused sentence in executive communication. "I don't have that number top of mind, but I'll get back to you." is credible. Inventing a number in the moment is how people end up having to correct themselves.
As mentioned above, silence can be used as a weapon. When a journalist goes quiet after your answer, you are not obligated to fill it. Have the discipline and the courage to allow the pause to sit. Waiting can take practice because it's uncomfortable and instinct will fight you every time.
Answer only the question you were asked. If you need to redirect, do it honestly. "That's not my area of expertise, but I can speak to…." Say it directly rather than sliding sideways and hoping nobody notices. People forgive a clear redirect. They don't forget a slippery one.
A Word about Adversarial Interviewers
Not every interviewer is out to get you. Most aren't. But when you are faced with a challenging interview topic, it helps to know the difference between a hostile interviewer and a rigorous one.
A rigorous interviewer is doing their job. They're pressing you because an honest answer matters and your first pass was incomplete. That's not an attack. It’s the interviewing being thorough. If you treat it like an attack, you could end up looking defensive about something that didn't need to be defended.
Genuinely hostile interviews are rare, but they can happen. The way to handle hostility is to resist engaging in combat and maintain your composure. You will not win by matching (or escalating) their energy. You’lll win by being the calmest person in the exchange, which is much easier to be when you've thought through the answers to the hard questions.
Remember:
The goal isn't to survive the interview. It's to be worth interviewing again.
Why This Matters More Than It Used To
Executive visibility has changed in the digital era. It used to occur through quarterly earnings, calls and the occasional article in a trade publication. Now it happens via podcasts, panels, fireside chats, and journalists who will quote you in a piece you didn't know was being written.
This means that being interviewed has become a core leadership skill, not just an occasional inconvenience. And unlike presenting, very few people train for it until they've been burned.
Please don't wait for that to happen!
Ready to Get Comfortable in the Passenger Seat?
If you've got interviews coming up and you'd rather not learn this lesson the expensive way, let's talk. I’ll ask you the hard questions (and help you prepare the answers) before someone else does.
