In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions... When It Counts

by Jerry Weissman

  His back against the wall, Perot fought back.

  Well, you're so general I can't pin it down! [1.3]

  The adjectives defensive, evasive, and contentious are synonymous with "Fight or Flight," the human body's instinctive reaction to stress. In each of the cases above, Fight or Flight was the response to tough questions: Ross Perot became as pugnacious as a bare-knuckled street fighter; Trent Lott danced around as if he were standing on a bed of burning coals; and Bob Newhart's jumping jack antics looked like a man desperately trying to eject from his hot seat.

  Presenter Behavior/Audience Perception

  While Bob Newhart's words and behavior produced a comic effect, any such response in business or social situations would produce dire consequences. A presenter or speaker who exhibits negative behavior produces a negative impression on the audience. This correlation is a critical factor with far-reaching implications in any communication setting, particularly so in the mass media.

  Pedro Martinez's behavior produced reams of caustic cynical reaction in the press, and even stronger criticism on the Internet. The day after his press conference, the fan chat boards lit up with vituperative messages, several of which referred to the pitcher as "Paydro."

  While Martinez went on to join the Mets unaffected, Trent Lott did not get off so lightly. His behavior on Black Entertainment Television had a profound effect on public opinion. The week after his appearance, with the furor unabated, a disgraced Lott resigned his position as Senate Majority Leader.

  Ross Perot's behavior on the Larry King program also had a profound effect on public opinion. Figure 1.1 shows the results of polls taken on the day before and the day after the debate.

  Figure 1.1. 1993 NAFTA public opinion polls. (Reprinted by permission of Business Week.)

  In the 48 hours between the two polls, the only factor with any impact on the NAFTA issue was the debate on the Larry King program. It had to be Ross Perot's contentious behavior that swung the undecided respondents against his cause.

  One final example of negative behavior in response to challenging questions comes from that most challenging of all business communications, an IPO road show. When companies go public, the chief officers develop a presentation that they take on the road to deliver to investors in about a dozen cities, over a period of two weeks, making their pitch up to 10 times day for a total of 60 to 80 iterations.

  The company in this particular case had a very successful business. They had accumulated 16 consecutive quarters of profitability. Theirs was a very simple business concept: a software product that they sold directly into the retail market. The CEO, having made many presentations over the years to his consumer constituency, as well as to his industry peers, was a very proficient presenter. At the start of the road show, the anticipated price range of the company's offering was nine to eleven dollars per share.

  However, the CEO, having presented primarily to receptive audiences, was unaccustomed to the kind of tough questions investors ask. Every time his potential investors challenged him, he responded with halting and uncertain answers.

  After the road show, the opening price of the company's stock was nine dollars a share, the bottom of the offering range. Given the three million shares offered, the swing cost the company six million dollars.

  The conclusion from the foregoing harkens back to David Bellet's observation that investors are not seeking an education; they are looking to see how a presenter stands up in the line of fire. Investors kick the tires to see how the management responds to adversity. Audiences kick tires to assess a presenter's mettle. Employers kick the tires of prospective employees to test their grit. In all these challenging exchanges, the presenter must exhibit positive behavior that creates a positive impression on the audience.

  The first steps in learning how to behave effectively begin in the next chapter.

  Chapter 2

  Effective Management Implemented

  Worst Case Scenario

  Soldiers prepare for battle by conducting realistic maneuvers. Athletes prepare for competition by practicing with extra resistance or weights. Politicians prepare for debates by staging mock rehearsals with skilled stand-ins for their opponents.

  In preparing you to step into the line of fire when you open the floor to questions, let's assume the worst case scenario: that all the questions you will be asked will be the most hostile possible…like those Ruth Corley flung at Bob Newhart or like those Mike Wallace fired at thousands of interviewees. If you can learn to handle that caliber of ammunition, you can learn to handle any question.

  To raise the bar even further, let's assume that all your Q&A sessions will be conducted in large groups: the one-against-many dynamic. If you can survive those odds, you will be able to handle any question in any encounter…even one-to-one.

  Maximum Control in Groups

  In most large group settings with 50 or more people in the audience, the presenter usually has a microphone, and the audience does not, which allows the presenter to deliver the full presentation uninterrupted. In this situation, the audience members usually hold their questions to the end. In small group settings, the opposite is true; because of the informality and immediacy, the audience members freely ask questions at any time during the presentation, which usually turns the presentation into discussion. Nevertheless, in each setting, the presenter must always remain in control whenever a question is asked.

  Let's start with the large group. At the end of a presentation, the presenter opens the floor to questions and then proceeds to step through the following inflection points:

  Open the floor

  Recognize the questioner

  Yield the floor

  Retake the floor

  Provide an answer

  After the answer, the cycle starts again and continues on to another member of the audience, and then another, in recurrent clockwise cycles.

  The Q&A Cycle

  Each of the steps in the cycle provides an opportunity to exercise control, and as you will see, those control measures are applicable to both large and small groups.

  Open the Floor

  Control the Time

  When the presentation is done and you open the floor to questions, say, "We have time for only a few questions," "I've got to catch a plane and don't have time for questions," "We'll take all your questions in the breakout session," or "I'll be here for the rest of the afternoon to answer any question you might have." It doesn't matter what you say. It matters that you say it up front and set expectations.

  Then, as you get closer to the end of your Q&A session, fulfill your forecast by starting to count down: "Three more questions," "Two more," "One more," "Last question." Exert time management.

  Exert time management.

  Control the Traffic

  In what is very likely a carryover from grade school, most people in large groups almost always raise their hands when they want to speak. That practice often carries forward in small groups. You can leverage that custom by raising your hand when you start your Q&A session, implicitly inviting your audience members to raise theirs if they want to be recognized. When you open the floor, raise your hand and say, "Who has a question?" Your audience might not comply and launch right into a question, but you have a better chance if you establish this signal. Of course, this tactic is only appropriate in audiences where there is a peer relationship. Do not raise your hand when standing in front of a group of potential investors or the Board of Directors.

  In small groups, all bets are off. The informality of these sessions makes these suggestions null and void. In these cases, skip the first step and advance to the second.

  Recognize the Questioner

  Let's say three hands go up at some point either during or after your presentation. You get to choose which one to recognize. Use an open hand and do not point. All too often, presenters or speakers point to indicate their selection. This is perfectly acceptable in a bakery, but not in presentations. To avoid this unconscious
tendency in your Q&A sessions, exercise a simple arithmetic equation: one plus three. Extend your forefinger, but roll out the other three fingers to create an open palm. Receive your questioners openly.

  Use an open hand and do not point.

  In presidential press conferences, tradition has it that the president addresses a few select reporters by name. You are not the president of the United States. You might be the president of your company, but you do not have the same privileges.

  For instance, let's say you know John, but you don't know the man seated behind him. You recognize John first and call him by name. Then you recognize the man behind John and call him "Sir." The second man will feel the outsider.

  Take the same circumstances but reverse the order. The first person you recognize is the man behind John, and you call him "Sir." No problem. Then you recognize John, and call him "Sir," too. Because you know John, you are not offending him.

  The ground rule is: If you know the name of every person in the room, call everyone by name. If you do not know the name of every person in the room, call no one by name. If you call the names of only selected people, you run the risk of implying favoritism at least and collusion at worst.

  Yield the Floor

  Let's say that you recognize the gentleman or the woman in the middle of the back of the room, and you now yield the floor to that person. This is a very big moment. Your motor has been running at full speed delivering your presentation. During that entire time, that audience member's motor has been idle. You step on the brakes and screech to a halt, and that person's motor suddenly lurches into motion.

  How do most people ask questions…clear, crisp and succinct? No, most of the time their questions are long and rambling. Why?

  Is it because your audiences are not very bright? No, it is because they have just taken in a great deal of information and are still processing your ideas, most of which are new to them. Furthermore, all this mental activity occurs primarily in the right hemisphere of the brain, which happens to process data in a non-linear sequence. Finally, by suddenly becoming the focus of attention for the rest of the audience, the questioner becomes nervous and exhibits the harried symptoms of Fight or Flight. That person's ill-formed thoughts then come tumbling out in a disjointed, run-on statement, which may or may not even take the form of a question.

  In the meantime, you, who are very knowledgeable and very clear about your own subject matter, receive your questioner's discursive statement in heightened state of alertness and perceive it as confused. All these diametrically opposite dynamics can produce dramatic results.

  How to Lose Your Audience in Five Seconds Flat

  Try this exercise: Stand up and ask a seated colleague to ask you a long, rambling question on any subject. It can be about the weather, the news, or your business. Ask that person to keep their eyes fixed on you as they ramble. Shortly after they start, thrust your hands into your pockets and settle back onto one foot. Watch what happens. Usually, the person's ramble will start to sputter and slow down. Ask the person how your slouch felt to them, and they will very likely say that it felt as if you weren't listening.

  I do this exercise in my private sessions with my clients, and they tell me, "You look like you weren't interested," "You were bored," "You were being impatient," or "You could care less."

  When a presenter sends that kind of message to an audience, the effect can be devastating. That moment arrests all forward progress. All communication stops. You cannot even contemplate proceeding to the next two vital inflection points in the Q&A cycle (Figure 2.1): Retake the floor and Provide the answer. In fact, we will defer any consideration of these points for two entire chapters until you learn what to do when you yield the floor: Listen effectively.

  Figure 2.1. The Q&A cycle.

  Chapter 3

  You're Not Listening!

  Falstaff: "It is the disease of not listening, the malady of not marking, that I am troubled withal."

  —2 Henry IV, Act I, Scene ii by William Shakespeare

  Breathes there a man or woman who has not accused or been accused by their significant other of not listening? Highly doubtful. The opprobrium of not listening ranks high among the causes of failure in human communication; it spans interpersonal, business, political, and even international relations. To the perpetrators of what troubled Falstaff, listening is merely a matter of waiting to speak.

  For the reductio ad absurdum of this universal truth, think of a time when you were in a restaurant where you have given your waiter explicit instructions to exclude garlic, bacon, or butter from your meal, only to have your meal arrive reeking of garlic, littered with bacon bits, or swimming in butter. The waiter will suffer, at best, a return trip to the kitchen or, at worst, a diminished tip.

  Notch the stakes up to interpersonal communications, and the consequence can be an argument at best or a severe strain on the relationship at worst. In business, the consequence can be failure to close the deal, gain approval, or get the investment. Remember the example in Chapter 1, "The Critical Dynamics of Q&A," of the lower share price of the Initial Public Offering due to the CEO's poor handling of questions.

  Why would anyone in a mission-critical communication setting risk such a fate? The paradoxical reason is that most people in business, being results-driven by nature and nurture and culture, respond promptly to questions with answers. With good intentions, and seemingly efficient behavior, they rush to bring an open question to resolution. To further their cause, they often retain professional communication consultants, public relations advisors, or media coaches to help them prepare to open the floor to audience queries by compiling a long list of tough questions and a parallel list of canned answers in what is known as "Rude Q&A."

  A more apt name is "Wrong Q&A," for if your answer is formulated before the key issue in the question as asked is crystal clear to you, your prepared answer might not match. This very likely will propel you into a desperate mental scramble to find a match and result in a wrong answer. Your wrong answer will then result in an audience reaction that virtually shouts, "You're not listening!"

  A dramatic case in point of this vicious cycle occurred on October 15, 1992, in the second presidential debate among George H. Bush, the incumbent president, and his challengers, Bill Clinton, the then-governor of Arkansas, and H. Ross Perot, the billionaire businessman with a reputation for arrogance and belligerence. The leading contenders were each struggling with challenging issues: President Bush with a down economy and Governor Clinton with recent revelations of an extramarital affair, marijuana use, and anti-Vietnam war protests.

  All three candidates gathered in the Robbins Field House at University of Richmond in Virginia to engage in the first-ever town hall format in which they were to answer questions posed by ordinary citizens. Carole Simpson, an ABC Television journalist, was the moderator, and one of the citizens she recognized was a twenty-six year-old black woman named Marisa Hall.

  A technician brought a hand microphone to Marisa Hall, who asked:

  Yes. How has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?

  As she was asking her question, President Bush looked at his wristwatch, as seen in Figure 3.1.

  Figure 3.1. George H. Bush looking at his watch during a presidential debate.

  Marisa Hall continued:

  …And if it hasn't, how can you honestly find a cure for the economic problems of the common people if you have no experience in what's ailing them?

  President Bush began his answer:

  Well, I think the national debt affects everybody. Obviously…

  Her microphone still open, Marisa Hall said:

  You personally.

  She said "You personally." George H. Bush, said "everybody." He wasn't listening. Stopped in his tracks, he tried to recover.

  …it has a lot to do with interest rates. It has…

  The moderator interjected:

  She's saying, "you personally."

  Marisa Hall tri
ed to clarify her question.

  You, on a personal basis…how has it affected you?

  Carole Simpson tried to help.

  Has it affected you personally?

  President Bush replied:

  I'm sure it has. I love my grandchildren. I want to think that…

  Marisa Hall's soft voice, amplified by the live microphone, rose above the exchange to resound through the Robbins Field House public address system, out along a vast network of coaxial cables to television transmitters, across the United States into millions of television receivers and into banks of video tape recorders that captured her word for posterity.

  How?

  This was the second time that she asked the question and President Bush still didn't understand. He tried to answer again.

  I want to think that they're going to be able to afford an education. I think that that's an important part of being a parent. If the question…maybe I…get it wrong. Are you suggesting that if somebody has means that the national debt doesn't affect them?

  Three times and he still didn't have it. The young woman tried to clarify again, her voice rising ever so slightly.

  Well, what I'm saying is…

  President Bush finally gave up.

  I'm not sure I get…help me with the question and I'll try to answer it.

  It took four attempts until he admitted that he didn't understand her question. The young woman tried to help by elaborating.

  Well, I've had friends that have been laid off from jobs.

  Despite a fretful expression on his face, the President tried to sound attentive.

  Yeah.

  The young woman continued.

  I know people who cannot afford to pay the mortgage on their homes…their car payment. I have personal problems with the national debt. But how has it affected you and if you have no experience in it, how can you help us, if you don't know what we're feeling?