Great Answers to Tough Questions at Work

The essential guide to turning tough questions into positive opportunities

Difficult questions can be thrown at you from your first job interview through to challenges you get when you’ve made it to the top. If you find yourself on the firing line on a regular or occasional basis this is the perfect go-to guide to help you turn tough questions into positive opportunities.

Great Answers to Tough Questions at Work promotes a confident 'win-win-win' mindset for questioner, answerer and wider audiences beyond. Author Michael Dodd provides golden formulae and proven strategies for constructing inspirational answers—however challenging, vicious, tricky or stupid the question. He outlines simple but successful techniques for dealing with the kind of nightmare questions which all ambitious people in the workplace have to face along their journey, whatever stage of their career.

• Contains critical communication skills for executives, managers, leaders and those aspiring to fill these roles
• Covers a wide range of work place scenarios such as job interviews, performance reviews, negotiations, customer relations, parliamentary inquiries and cross-examination
• Discusses how to see the issues underlying tough questions that you face in a different, more positive, solution-oriented way
• Includes case study examinations of key moments where people in the public spotlight have done something particularly well or particularly badly while answering questions and draws out the lessons for readers.

Introduction: Helping You Thrive On “Blowtorch-On-The-Belly” Questioning 1

PART ONE: THE TOOLS YOU NEED 13

1. Winning Answers Every Time 15

2. Crafting the Right Message to Underpin Every Answer 33

3. Harnessing the Power of Stories 55

4. Finding Out in Advance – Then Planning For It 75

5. The First Golden Formula – Simple as ABCDE 85

6. The Second Golden Formula – What to Say When Something Goes Seriously Wrong 107

7. Maximizing the Impact of Your Examples and Stories 123

8. Getting Your Performance Right 137

9. Conveying Your Answers to Different Personality Types 157

PART TWO: USING YOUR NEW TOOLS 171

10. Great Answers for Prospects 173

11. Great Answers During Price Negotiations 191

12. Great Answers for Clients 209

13. Great Answers in Those Nerve-Wracking Job Interviews 223

14. Great Answers for Your Boss 239

15. Great Answers in Presentations, at Events and in Meetings 253

16. Shining Out Through the Media and at Public Grillings 269

Ongoing Enhancement: Great Answers For Your Inspirational Future 287

About the Author 291

Acknowledgements 293

Index 297