The world of business is changing faster than ever before, which means…
…tough new questions can be thrown at you and your team – and members of business leaders’ groups that you run or belong to – more quickly and more often than ever before.
The answers given by you and your team – from impressive ones through to pathetic ones – can be conveyed around the office, around the business community and around the planet more speedily than ever before.
This happens with answers conveyed through mobile phones, email, social media and – with answers to big scary monster questions from journalists – on 24-hour news as well.
Business leaders from Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and others find that when something goes terribly wrong, their answers to tough questions make it big on 24-hour news.
Chairs of business leaders’ groups – and those near or at the top of companies who belong to these groups – are in an excellent position of observe how the toughest questions for any organisation typically rise to the top.
These questions can be painful enough to explain why – in the robust world of Australian journalism where I hail from – they’re known as “blowtorch-on-the-belly” questions.
BEING READY FOR THAT BLOWTORCH-ON-THE-BELLY
My ongoing surveys among members of business leaders’ groups show that the toughest of “blowtorch-on-the-belly” questions tend to come in this order: from prospects, from clients/customers and from those within the business leader’s own team.
In line with this, the toughest questions for the chairs of business leaders’ groups often come from hesitant prospective new members.
A typical question for a chair of a business leaders’ group is: “How can I possibly afford to give up a day a month of my time running my company to spend it with you and your members?”
(I regularly help the chairs come up with their own individual dazzling answers to this question.)
But in the immediate world of business leaders’ groups in the United Kingdom, the toughest questions for group chairs are likely to come from their existing members.
This follows the acquisition of one highly successful business leaders’ group organisations in the United Kingdom by another – larger – highly successful business leaders’ group organisation which is more globally spread.
So this is, and will continue to, prompt questions from existing members of both groups and those in other business leaders’ groups as they digest news about the acquisition.
These questions to the chairs of business leaders’ groups include:
- Why should I carry on my membership of a group which has suddenly changed hands and changed name?
- Why do we need to be joined by all these other new members and groups?
- How different will our group be in the future as a result of this acquisition?
- What’s the significance of the fact that the two different organisations involved in the takeover charge members different amounts to belong?
- Does this reduction in competition mean that membership fees will be higher and less affordable in the future for all business leaders groups?
GOOD NEWS ABOUT GIVING GREAT ANSWERS
At the heart of giving great answers to these blowtorch-on-the-belly questions is an honest, positive approach.
To help you maintain your positivity, here are five pieces of good news:
- 1) Giving great answers to tough questions in the working world is a learnable skill
- 2) There’s a methodology that can be applied to giving great answers to tough questions
- 3) When you know the methodology and become skilled at putting it into action, you can apply it to ALL your tough questions
- 4) The learning-by-doing approach which takes place within business leaders’ groups – where members and chairs are used to helpfully but robustly challenging each other – are amongst the best places to carry out such experiential learning
- 5) Learning the art of giving great answers is also ideally suited to company off-site days
FREE GUIDANCE YOU CAN GET NOW
When it comes to giving great answers to tough questions your mindset is hugely important.
If you’d like some guidance on getting your mindset right, the additional good news is that the first chapter of the audiobook version of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work” can now be read to you free.
And it can be read to you in a charming Australian accent by a top international professional speaker!
The free chapter is called “Winning Answers Every Time”.
The company that produced the audiobook – Amazon’s Audible – has just put the chapter on “Soundcloud” which means you can listen free instantly without having to download anything.
If you prefer read the words yourself – in whatever accent you wish – from the written version of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work” you can look at the same chapter here:
If you’d like to have a chat about how sessions of “Great Answers To Tough Questions At Work” can run within your business leaders’ group or organisation call: 44.7944.952835.
There’s more about all the communications-boosting sessions for business leaders’ groups and companies to help participants become inspirational business communicators at:
http://www.michaeldoddcommunications.com/workshops-for-business-leaders-groups/
IF A SOFTY LOOK-A-LIKE CAN DO IT, SO CAN YOU
In this column, I traditionally draw attention to examples TV interviews where someone does very badly in the face of blowtorch-on-the-belly questions.
But today I’ll point you to a challenging interview that involved some surprisingly impressive answers.
They were answers by the rising political star, British MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is frequently asked about business matters to do with Britain’s exit from the European Union.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is normally a pretty serious chap, as you might expect from a potential future Conservative Prime Minister.
But his challenge in this particular interview was to demonstrate that he has a sense of humour.
In a publicity stunt by the magazine “Beano” – which you may be young enough to remember from its heyday – Mr Rees-Mogg was accused of masquerading as the comic character “Walter The Softy” who has similar glasses and hair parting.
Around April Fools’ Day, but not quite on it, the magazine accused Mr Rees-Mogg of a “clear infringement” of copyright and claimed he was being issued with a “cease and desist” letter.
You can check out the resulting BBC interview here:
I should stress that I did not media train Mr Rees-Mogg to give his uncharacteristically colourful answers.
But I can run master classes to show members of your business leaders’ group – or company team – how they can give better answers they do now.
And they can certainly be shown how to give answers that don’t sound as though they’ve come from someone called “Walter The Softy”.