Parliamentary Committees
Coaching for your Parliamentary Committee appearance
If your business is appearing before a Parliamentary Select Committee, regulator or public body, either in-person or virtually, we can help prepare and coach your spokespeople to be effective communicators.
Select Committees are filmed by Parliament Live TV, which is available to everyone including colleagues and shareholders. What you say and do, could have a big impact on you and your organisation. Your appearance at a Select Committee may also make it to the main news bulletins, particularly if there is something newsworthy about it.
Whether you have volunteered, been invited or summoned, you need to ensure that you have done everything you can in advance to give evidence effectively. You will want to feel confident to face the scrutiny of a Select Committee, because they can be stressful and adversarial in nature.
If you’ve been requested to appear before a Parliamentary Committee, regulator or public body, it’s important that you take it seriously and invest time in being thoroughly prepared. For many witnesses, it is the ultimate in public scrutiny, and you need to be ready, both practically and psychologically.
Preparation is key
Thoroughly prepare for the hearing with us, with tips and techniques for a powerful performance
Rehearse the Select Committee with an experienced panel
We prepare individuals and teams to understand what to expect and the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ for committees, regulators or public bodies.
We also replicate and role-play the hearing with an experienced panel. This panel is led by us and often made up of ex-MPs, QCs, Barristers, Journalists and Communication Experts. We record and play back for analysis. We ask challenging questions, scrutinise and help structure your answers. We advise and help shape the language & tone, strategies and techniques that will enable your spokespeople to be fully prepared and perform at their best.
We want your spokespeople to feel confident and good about themselves and, as always, we rehearse in a realistic, supportive and encouraging environment.
In some cases, and if appropriate, we may recommend coaching on a one-to-one basis, to prepare you for your public appearance.
Respect the process and prepare in advance to make the right impact
Select Committees which can be more adversarial in nature, don’t pull their punches when they make conclusions about your actions.
It’s really important to think through the process and experience in advance. In this way you are in a position to build rapport with the panel, and give a favourable account of you and your organisation, along with a thorough and coherent explanation of your strategy and actions.
Those businesses who respect the process, often find that parliamentary hearings and public inquiries represent a unique opportunity for business leaders and management teams to state their case.
The prospect of appearing in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was very nerve-wracking and something we hadn’t done before as a business. Babaco Media ensured that we were fully prepared to successfully respond to the likely questions we were going to be asked.
They gave us the confidence and skills to view our appearance as a positive opportunity to represent the business and the wider industry, rather than just thinking of it as a challenge and something to be feared.
We are really pleased we prepared with your team in advance of our Select Committee session, because we were able to rehearse our approach, anticipate difficult questions, and revise core messages and answers.
We particularly liked the very thorough and rigorous role-play aspect in front of an experienced panel. By practising our replies, we clearly understood that MPs can sometimes ask hostile questions to grab headlines for themselves, and so rather than take it personally, we recognised the value of responding courteously.
Babaco Media helped us project a positive image for our organisation at a Parliamentary Select Committee recently. With their help, our evidence was conveyed in a confident and effective way.