Book Summary Preview : In the Line of Fire

The Big Idea

There are but a number of people who are able to take on challenging questions head on, without faltering.  However, there are even fewer people who will go through life without being asked one single challenging question.  How do you deal with this?

More than knowing what to say, it is just as important, if not more so, to understand how to handle tough questions.  Learning how to deal with them will bring you way ahead of the game. 

Best selling author Jerry Weissman, in his book In the Line of Fire, provides practical and useful tips one can master to handle the most difficult and toughest questions in the smartest way possible.

Introduction
Whenever you even attempt to try to answer a question, always remember that your answers have to be honest and clear-cut.  Do otherwise and you might as well disregard all the techniques. 

But before you can begin your learning process, you have to understand first why people ask tough questions in the first place.  This is because most people are resistant to change, even if everyone has to face this more than once in their entire lives.

Because most people are resistant to change, they fight.  Or they run away.  This is the instinctive and intuitive Fight or Flight reaction.

The best equivalent of the techniques is the martial arts, wherein a skilled individual can take on someone superior, because of the involvement of these mental and physical skills: concentration, self-defense, balance, agility, discipline, and self-control.

Always remember that whenever you answer a challenging question, make sure that you don’t answer in a defensive, evasive, or contentious manner, lest you want to lose your credibility.  Instead, respond promptly and concisely.

Chapter 1: The Critical Dynamics of Q&A
Before you can understand how it is to handle difficult questions, it’s necessary to understand how it is when people lose control, what happens when the individual lets the situation control him instead of the other way around.

Each individual reacts differently to varying situations, so it’s understandable that each person deals with challenging questions in different manners.  The normal reaction is for the person to become defensive.  However, some people have the tendency to become evasive.

Other than being evasive and defensive, another negative reaction that must be avoided when faced with a challenging question is contentiousness.  When you verbalize anything that makes you seem controversial, you are setting yourself up for a more tangled-up situation, which will most probably be more difficult to get out of.

The human body’s instinctive response to any sort of stress is either of two extremes—Fight or Flight—whether you are being defensive, evasive, or contentious.

When a person shows signs of negative behavior, then the same type of attitude is given back to him.  So when a speaker or presenter exudes a negative vibe, the audience receives a negative impression and, in turn, gives back the same sort of negative feel.  This works not only during face-to-face encounters, either in a small or big group, but in any other type of communication setting.  If you want to receive a positive reaction, then you have to make sure that you give a positive impression on your audience.

Chapter 2: Effective Management Implemented
In order to prepare yourself to handle challenging questions once you open the floor to your audience, it’s important for you to assume the worst possible scenario, wherein every single question that you will be asked will be the most intimidating series of questions you can ever come up with.

As soon as you deem yourself ready to handle that kind of scenario, then you can handle any sort of question.  To increase the level of difficulty so to speak, picture yourself having a Q&A session in a large group.  If you’re able to emerge victorious under these circumstances, then you’re ready for any encounter.

Whatever the setting, make sure that you are always in control.  Once you lose that control, things will start going downhill.

In a large group, there is usually a standard presentation cycle: (1) Open the floor, (2) Recognize the questioner, (3) Yield the floor, (4) Retake the floor, and (5) Provide an answer.

When you open the floor for questions, make sure that you’re in control of the time as well.  Before anything else, explicitly say how much or how little time you have for Q&A, in order to control the traffic of questions.

When recognizing your questioner, never point at the person; instead, use an open hand.  A ground rule you must follow 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.

Be wary of your non-verbal communication as well.  Make sure that what you’re saying and how you appear to your audience jive with one another...

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