Why Some People Handle Tough Questions Better Than Others? 7 Tips for Improving Your Speaking Skills

You don’t have to be a celebrity, business leader, or politician to get tough questions. It can come up in a meeting at work or even talking to your kids. So how do you respond to a tough or challenging question?

Before we get into the techniques on how to answer tough questions, let’s look at an example first. One of the most common questions people get asked is how do they compare with someone else. Recently, former 49er Hall of Frame quarterback Joe Montana was asked “Who does he think is greater, him or Tom Brady” during an interview with NBC Sports. Here is his answer.

I don’t think you can answer that question. Because the game’s so different. You can talk about when I played, but even before I played. There are guys back there where you could basically almost tackle a guy off the line of scrimmage … I don’t know how you can compare guys of my era to that era, and how he would have played in this era. And how does a guy like Marino — holy crap — how does he play in this era?

A lot of people would get very competitive and jumped right into the comparison. Rather than saying he or Tom Brady is the greatest of all-time quarterback, Joe just said one cannot answer the question and explained why.

Two simple techniques we can learn from Joe are: re-frame the question and then provide an explanation. Read More...