Four Major Tips on How to Answer Tough Questions

The Major Four

1. Be Calm
The cardinal rule—the number one concept to remember in any Q&A session, no matter the topic or the people—is to be calm. Keep your cool, no matter what. Control your emotion—manage the dialogue.

2. Be Honest
The second rule is to be honest. Honesty doesn’t require work on your part. You say what you know within the bounds of what is legal, ethical, and appropriate. This way, you don’t ever have to strive to remember what you said.

3.Be Available
The third principle for handling Q&A sessions is availability. As CEO, you can’t answer the questions or manage the dialogue if you don’t show up. One CEO makes it a point to hold town meetings at each of his company’s four regional headquarters at least once a year. He speaks for about thirty minutes and then stays as long as several hours to answer employees’ questions. There are a lot of benefits to this practice.

4. Be Open-Minded

The fourth and final guideline for addressing audience questions is to be open-minded. Genuine curiosity will help you win over any audience. Curiosity gets you thinking about other people and allows you to really hear the question. You want to hear not just what they are saying but also what they are feeling. Listen for emotion. Pick up on the question behind the question. Get to the heart of the matter.

More Tips for Answering Tough Questions

 Be gracious. Tough questions are meant to test how you manage pressure. A leader must always be calm, cool, and gracious under pressure.

 Be positive. No one wants to be around a negative person. The job of a leader is to be honest, but do look at the bright side whenever possible.

 Be brief. Too many details can be dull. It’s better to give a short answer—and read the audience to see if they want more—than to talk too long and lose them.

 Be complete. Don’t commit the sin of omission. Omitting facts or important elements of the answer is just as bad as not telling the truth.

 Be specific. Give examples if necessary. If you’re too vague, you sound evasive. You can be specific without giving too much detail—the detail should be relevant.

 Be strategic. Think about how you can turn a negative into a positive, or how you can use a question to promote a value that is important.