Dealing with Difficult Questions

Dealing with difficult questions. This is something many people are quite afraid of when they contemplate going to speak at any kind of an event. What happens if I'm heckled? Or what happens if people have difficult questions that I have a hard time answering? I can tell you that one of the things that I'm most grateful for in my life is that I overcame this fear very early. And I overcame it quite simply with one very, very, very important trick. Are you ready? Here's what happens. Somebody asks a question for which you do not have an answer, here's what you do. You don't make anything up. You simply tell them the truth that you don't know. Now, I know. I know this is a difficult thing to do. Nobody wants to admit they don't know, but that is what you do. You say, I don't know, but I'll find out for you. Now, if that seems like bad because you're supposed to be the expert, you're supposed to know everything. Well, first of all, no. But secondly, I want to ask you a little thought exercise here. Imagine you came to one of my programs and somebody asked a question from the audience, and I just rattled off an answer. Look how smart I am. I know the answer. And I. And it's a good answer. You may remember me about that. You may give me credit for doing that well. But what if somebody else asks a question and I say, you know, I don't really know, but I'll find out. And then I come back from the break and I remember the person who asked the question, and then I answer the question. Which of those two scenarios is going to give me greater credibility and more memorability? The second one, the truth is, nobody's really impressed about you being an encyclopedia. They're impressed about you being resourceful. And so the best thing to do when you're facing tough questions is just be honest in your answers. That makes everything better. Another skill that can really uplevel this is to understand that anytime you walk on stage, you have a primary outcome to deliver your keynote, to sell your book, to raise money for your campaign, whatever the case might be. But you also have a series of secondary outcomes. Maybe you want to get more podcast interviews. Maybe you're looking for a book deal. Maybe you want somebody to take you out for lunch. Maybe you're looking for a date. But if you know what your secondary objectives are, when questions pop out of the audience, those secondary objectives will help you to answer that. So, for example, let's say I'm trying to get more podcast interviews and somebody asks me a question, they go, well, Eric, can you tell me what the hunter gatherer experience of winter is like? I can say something like this because I have my secondary objective. Oh, that's a great question. I was recently on Bulletproof Radio's podcast talking about that. You can see the whole episode, but the short answer is this. Now you see what's happened is that I've now plugged the podcast episode, potentially got more people to go watch it, let people know that I'm open to podcast episodes, and I've answered the question. So the more aware you are of the the secondary objectives you have of giving your talk, the easier it's going to be for you to answer the questions in a way that gets you the most value. So make sure that if somebody asks you a question that you don't know the answer for, you're honest, you tell them you don't know. And if you know your secondary objectives, it's going to help you to pick better and better answers for every single question you get. And wait, there's one other idea that I really think you should consider. YouTube. What I mean is this. There are countless videos of comedians handling hecklers, and I have to tell you, they're amazing. Look, some of them used a bunch of canned responses that have an entire lack of imagination. But those canned responses are useful, and it might show you what you might want to do if you're faced with that type of thing. But the other thing you'll see is the improvisational technique. How do you improvise an answer that not only can win the heckler over, but but can definitely win the audience over? So little bonus homework for you. Watch hecklers on YouTube. Watch the way comedians deal with them. It. Sam.