I root for three countries in international soccer – The U.S., Norway (where my mom’s family came from), and England (where my dad’s originated). Rooting for England is a lot like rooting for the Toronto Maple Leafs – because you’re the biggest team in the country that invented the sport, your fans expect you to succeed. And you haven’t, for over 59 years.

The Three Lions’ latest loss was a 2-1 heartbreaker to Argentina in the World Cup semi-finals. England took a 1-0 lead (I hope you read that as “one – nil”) early in the 2nd half. And then decided to play defense, and only defense, for the rest of the game. They switched out scorers for defenders, never attempted to push the ball upfield, and let Argentina shoot at will. And, when you let any team do that, especially one that has arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport (I still say Pele, but I won’t call you nuts for saying Messi), you are doomed to failure. Tying goal went in at the 85th minute, winning goal went in less than 7 minutes later, and England started packing up for the flight home.

Communicators often make this same mistake in media interviews. They only play defense – they answer the questions they’re asked, never adding more or steering over to the points they want to make. And, sometimes they survive doing this – they don’t say anything they regret. But, the BEST you can do when only playing defense is survive.

In our media training sessions, my Dad would say “the purpose of defense is to get the ball back to the offense.” In interviews, this means that you satisfy the question (the defense) and then steer to your key points (the offense). This is the only way to truly win in an interview.

What constitutes winning an interview? We judge it by three criteria: