CNN’s Nadia Bilchik back to inspire

MOIRA SCHNEIDER

South African-born Bilchik is a CNN International television news anchor and host. Considered a networking specialist, she runs training programmes for the likes of politicians and corporate businessmen.

Based in Atlanta, Georgia, this UCT graduate has interviewed many high-profile individuals such as former President Nelson Mandela and heartthrob movie star George Clooney.

“What is the question that I get asked most?” asks Bilchik as she kicks off as the keynote speaker at a fundraising breakfast held under the auspices of Bnoth Zion – WIZO and Herzlia Middle School. “Do you get nervous before you go on TV?” she says.

“I focus on a positive past experience,” she reveals. “I take a deep breath and go ‘1, 2, 3, Huh!’” she exhales, accompanying the grunt with a simultaneous movement of her elbows backwards.

Bilchik’s journey began in 1997 when she left Johannesburg for Atlanta. “I had an organic network here, people I grew up with and was at university with.

“When you move to a new country, you don’t have that. I had to consciously do some things that I’d never had to do before, like building new relationships.”

Addressing the topic “Kick your business relationships up a notch”, Bilchik asks: “Do we maximise our impact on existing relationships or bring new people in? You have to do both.”

Demonstrating the importance of relationships across the spectrum, she relates how, because she was friendly with the head of security at M-Net, her previous employer, she was able to hand her demo tape to the head of security at CNN who knew him. “You just never know,” she stated. 

Bilchik notes that the first part of networking boiled down to how one feels about oneself – the “F” in her mnemonic. “There were times after I moved, when things were really, really tough,” she remembers.

She recalls receiving a major dressing down from her boss for taking a 10-minute nap in the makeup room, which upset her immensely – just before an important audition. Her coping mechanism was to draw on what she calls positive emotional memory – thinking about validating moments when one finds oneself in such a situation.

“We buy from people who look as if they’ve got it together, we buy from people who have got confidence, we like people who are positive,” she stresses.

Recalling her difficulty in building a career on “total anonymity”, she acknowledged that she was now well-established, “but it hasn’t been without pain”.

Before she interviewed distinguished film actor Anthony Hopkins, she heard that he was in a very bad mood. Her solution was to remind herself: “You really are the world to at least one person.” This ties in with her starting point for building relationships – – Feel good about yourself. “Am I someone I want to be around?”

What stops us from nurturing existing relationships and reaching out to make new ones to take things up a notch? The fear of rejection, she states, which, according to a book she had read, is experienced in the same part of the brain as physical pain.

“Courage is the taking of action despite the fear – you sometimes have to override the fear.”

Next up is “I” – showing genuine interest. To demonstrate, Bilchik got the audience asking the stranger sitting next to them what their biggest challenge right then was.

Afterwards, Bilchik asks: “Is that individual now not just a cardboard cut-out but a real person to you?”

“Just listen,” she urges, “without feeling the need to bring (the conversation) back to yourself all the time”.

“R” is for relax and “E” is for engaging with energy, excitement and enthusiasm. “Be a go-giver as much as a go-getter,” she said, adding: “Giving releases oxytoxin in the brain that makes you feel good.”

Bilchik tells the audience that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is her role model. “She is awesome in the way she conducts herself, in her general demeanour and her principles. She really does own her space.”

She also relates that her tipping point was the moment she accepted that she was leaving South Africa. “I question it every day, South Africa is an amazing place.”

Another tipping point for her was meeting a representative of Coca-Cola at a social event in her new country. “She asked if I could do a programme on relationship building.

“Although I’d never done it before, I thought: ‘How difficult can it be?’” she remembers. “I did the programme and it changed my life – the training business is very lucrative.”

She now works at CNN over the weekends and trains during the week.

Harking back to the theme of her address, Bilchik repeats that lighting the fire in relationships had served her well.

“You really have to be in touch with how you feel about yourself, feel good about yourself and have a genuine interest in others.

“And relax. We’re all resilient. As long as you have a few more successes than failures.”