What we’re thinking

Handling the challenging questions

February 11, 2014

Handling difficult questions in front of an audience is a consistent theme raised during our 1-1 work and our leadership programmes. When and how do I encourage people to challenge me? How do I make it possible for people to ask me the difficult questions – particularly when I’m more senior – in a way that will ultimately prove beneficial? Can I use questions to generate interaction and provide me with the opportunity to give more context? Perhaps make my argument in a different way? Achieve greater clarity? Give me a sense of where my audience is at? Provide a personal perspective?

Without knowing the technical ins and outs, I was intrigued to watch this old clip of Steve Jobs in action and to reflect on what I can take from how he handled this situation. He had recently returned to Apple as an adviser to the CEO, Gil Amelio and was taking Q&A at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in 1997. There’s a tangible, collective drawing of breath from the audience when the challenging question – even insult – comes. You can hear the gasps! There’s some initial smiling. Plenty of changes in body language. He takes a moment to sip his water, collect his thoughts and resist what must have been a temptation to get into a 1-1 battle. He decides to sit down. He then talks to the whole audience and doesn’t insult the questioner. And in 2 or 3 minutes he widens the scope of the subject, reinforces his call to arms, throws in some additional facts and anecdotes, and seems to me to come out stronger, clearer and more inspiring. See what you think.