How To Sound Good Without Having All the Answers (In Meetings & Job Interviews)
In this solo coaching video, Natalie Fisher debunks the common belief that professionals must know every answer in meetings or interviews. She shares a client story of a project manager who felt pressured to have all the answers, leading to anxiety and blocked leadership. Fisher reframes the mindset: not knowing is normal, and admitting it can demonstrate confidence. She introduces four practical tools: (1) recognizing the impossibility of total knowledge, (2) predicting feared criticism and pre‑planning compassionate self‑talk, (3) using specific, confidence‑building phrases to defer, note, or clarify when you don’t know, and (4) focusing on moving work forward rather than memorizing details. The video provides concrete script examples for both meetings and interviews, explains how to handle self‑criticism, and emphasizes that effective leaders mobilize expertise rather than hoard information. Fisher concludes by urging viewers to prioritize progress, give themselves credit, and adopt the presented language patterns, while promoting her broader training resources.
Chapters
One big misconception people have about succeeding in their job once they get it, or once they're in the role, is that they need to know everything. Feel like you need to know the answers to all the questions. I'm going to give you examples of exactly what to say in the meeting and in the interview when you don't know the answer to something. The example I'm going to share is of a client who was leading meetings and she felt like she had to know the answer to every question that people asked her in the meeting, no matter what the topic, whether it was about IT or an area she had no real knowledge over. She thought she needed to know those answers, and if she didn't, she felt like she should have researched everything previously and she just should have all the answers. This is a huge misconception because you can't possibly know everything. Even if you tried to study it and you crammed and you read every single potential interview answer, or if you're leading a meeting, every single potential document related to the project, or even if you did that, your brain only has a certain amount of capacity. It cannot memorize all that stuff. It cannot know it. Especially if you're a woman, you might have been expected to know everything and have all the answers. The approach in which you go into a meeting Is gonna be really indicative of how you show up and how you handle these moments. For my client, she was leading a project and she was the project manager. She was surrounded by a room of experts and leaders. She was putting a lot of pressure on herself to know everything. And in fairness, she wanted to do a good job and she wanted to appear confident and have the answers. But like I said, it's not possible for you, for her to have all those answers. It's just literally not possible. Putting that expectation on herself made her feel very nervous and created a very tense experience for her and blocks off her leadership skills. She doesn't have access to those when she's putting that insane amount of pressure on herself. So the approach I recommend for this is instead of this, I should know, if I don't know, they're gonna think I'm stupid. I'm gonna be a failure. They're gonna think I don't know how to do my job, right? That's the initial response that most people think. The approach I want to give you is there's no possible way I could know everything. If I need to find something out, I will know who to ask. We have a room full of experts. We have a team here. We can ask certain people because I'm managing the project and I can't possibly know everything. The frame for an interview is this. I can't possibly know everything. And actually not knowing and being able to confidently say, I don't know, shows confidence. I'm going to give you examples of exactly what to say in the meeting and in the interview when you don't know the answer to something. Okay? Because this is not a problem. Take it from me, somebody who has landed multiple 6-figure roles, went from receptionist to HR manager, built a multiple 6-figure business, and didn't know everything. Didn't know the answers to all the questions. Never felt like that was a problem. Kept moving things along and having fun with it. The approach is gonna be changing that belief. There's no way I could know everything. I don't need to. No reasonable human could. If I believe I need to, I'm just gonna put unnecessary pressure on myself, and that's gonna cause me to show up nervous, and it's gonna stifle my real abilities. What I actually need to see is that I have the capacity To move things along. I have the capacity to find things out. I have the capacity to get the results we're looking for, and getting the results we're looking for does not involve knowing every single answer when put on the spot. That is way more helpful than thinking you have to know everything ahead of time because there's no way you ever could. The second tool that you can use here is Predict what you're afraid of. In the meeting, my client was afraid that she was going to get told that she wasn't confident because she had a senior leader message her before saying, you weren't very confident in that meeting, and I really need you looking confident. It was her fear that that was going to happen again in a different way. Here's what I told her. How did you talk to yourself when that happened? And she said, I beat myself up. I didn't feel very good about it. I thought, oh, you're right. I should have been more confident. I should have thought through this better. Basically, she beat herself up and then she felt bad about it and she felt less confident. Then she was having trouble showing up more confidently after that because of the way she talked to herself. The result was she stifled her own leadership skills and basically blocked off her ability to be that strong leader that she wanted to be. So the approach I offered was this. You don't need to be super confident in order to move things along. You did your best. You need to give yourself a break for where you were at. You needed to be able to give yourself some credit for what you did do, for how you did show up, for what you did have prepared. If someone is going to tell you that you're not very confident, that's not a problem because you know that's expected and understandable of someone given the amount of time you had to prepare. Because if you're anything like my client, she was prepared as well as she could be. She rehearsed as much as she could. She was, she was as prepared as she could be. Telling herself she should have done more was just making her feel worse. Then we walk through, if that does happen again, how will I talk to myself? I will be nice to myself. You can choose that ahead of time. If anybody says anything to you, if they're like, oh, you weren't very confident, you didn't do a very good job of this, you can decide how you're going to talk to yourself. You can decide, you know what, you might be right about that. You could be totally right. I could have been more confident, but you know what? At the time I did the best I could. I talk to myself like this all the time. People would beat me up for the YouTube videos that I recorded ages ago. They would say, you're talking from a script. You're not very confident. You don't sound very good. I would say to myself, yeah, you know what? Good job. Because that was hard. Good job for showing up, even though you didn't know really what you were doing yet. That means that person no longer has power over how I feel. They might be right. Those videos weren't very good. I was brand new. It's funny, I got comments about how my voice was really boring, how it was monotone, and how it was putting people to sleep. And then somebody else said, you have a really calming voice. I really enjoy listening to you. People just have different opinions, and you can't take any one of those opinions to mean the truth because you are the one who decides the truth about who you are. If you are doing your best, you have to give yourself the credit because sometimes nobody else will. Sometimes everyone's going to be pointing out what you did wrong, and you have to have your own back. If you predict what they're gonna say and you anticipate how you'll talk to yourself if the worst thing happens, then there's really nothing to be afraid of because you don't have to feel the way that you're afraid of feeling. I'm gonna give you 4 examples of what to say in the situations. So if somebody says, what's the answer to this question? Why aren't we doing this? Or why don't we have this ready? If you immediately assume Oh my God, I should have that. I don't know. Then you're going to be in trouble. Here's what I want you to think instead. Hmm, that's a really good question. Who could we defer to to weigh in on that? And you might know if you're the project manager, my client had a really good idea of who she would talk, and, and also she might have thoughts on it. Option 1 is, that's a really good question. Is there anyone in the room that has thoughts on that or would like to weigh in? That is taking leadership energy. It's saying, yep, that's a really good question. We do need to get that dealt with. Let's get somebody on it who knows. If nobody knows what they're talking about, you could say, this is totally neutral. If you don't know, it's not a problem. You could say, okay, great. I'm going to write that down. I will find out who we need to talk to and I will get back to the group on that. I will note that as a line item. And this is if you really don't know. Secondly, if you have An idea, you have a thought, you wanna share something, but you're not quite sure if what you're thinking is right. You can say, these are my thoughts, and then you can share your thoughts, and then you can say, but I'd like to confirm with Michelle that that's correct. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. Michelle, do you have thoughts on that? That gives you best of both worlds. You can say what you're thinking, open it up to the floor, the person you think is the right person to speak to, and then give the opportunity for you to be wrong. A lot of this just comes from Not having a problem being wrong, not knowing everything, just completely just loosening that whole belief system up that you have to have that and being like, yeah, I am here to move this project along to get the results we're looking for. I am not here to memorize every nitty-gritty detail like a textbook because that's actually not the best use of my time. In an interview. If you are asked a question that you don't know, you can actually say, that is a really good question, and off the top of my head, I don't know what the answer to that is. And here's the thing, in interviews, when people ask you questions on the spot, you would never be expected to know questions on the spot in the job. When you're in the job, they're going to give you training. They're going to have people you can ask. You're just not going to need to know everything. In any real situation, exactly how I'm talking about. If you're in a meeting, you won't need to know everything on the spot. Your life and your career do not ride on you having a single correct answer. It's not like you're trying to win a spelling bee and you, if you spell the word wrong, you lose. It's, it's a misconception that we have. We are allowed to not know stuff. We might want to go and learn it afterwards because we realize, I would like to know that. I would like to. make a point of answering that better. I'd like to make a point of knowing, you know, more about that, but you're not expected to just go and spend your whole time trying to cram information into your head to then regurgitate it. That is a misconception that we learned in school. You can confidently say, you know, that is a really good question. I do not know the answer to that. If I was on the job, these are the steps I would take to find the answer. And I don't believe that I've ever actually run into an obstacle that I didn't solve because I couldn't find the answer to something. I'm really good at finding the answer. When I have the opportunity. That's a confident answer. Instead of trying to BS your way through something, instead of trying to pretend you know something you don't, it's better to just be honest. That's the third example. The fourth example that you can give if you do not know the answer to something is you can ask a clarifying question. You could say, yeah, that's a really good question. Could you clarify on that? Or what makes you ask that? Could you let me know why that question might be coming up for you? So this is useful in a meeting, um, like I was using the example of my client, or it could be useful in an interview if you think that you could get to an answer, but you do need a little bit more information. So it's okay to say, oh yeah, so that's great. I'm just wondering what's making you ask that, or why is that coming up? Lastly, what is really important? Now we put way too much importance on trying to memorize things, on trying to cram information, on trying to memorize all the interview answers and trying to memorize and rehearse everything we're going to say ahead of time and trying to research all the documents and all the paperwork for the project that we're meeting. What is really important is that we are moving things along, that the project or the discussion or the tasks, that things are getting moved along. That is what we get paid for. You'll watch the most successful players in companies you've worked for. They have a tendency to just get things moving. They're not the people who know everything. If they do know a lot, it's because they have been navigating their work with the help of other people. They'll be the people who are like, who do we need to ask about this? Who's going to ask that? Let's get that moving. When can we get an answer on that? They're not thinking in their head, oh my God, I need to know the answer to that right now. They're thinking, how do we move it along? They're not thinking, I need to know the answer. There's a big difference there. Your job is to move things along. It's not to memorize everything. There you have it. Give me a thumbs up if you liked the video. Give me a thumbs down if you did not like the video. Subscribe to the channel for content on landing the job you want and thriving in the job you want. And if you'd like to sign up for any of my trainings, we've got links below. I've got free guides for interviewing and a free masterclass on how to get the job you want, A to Z. I will be posting more videos on how to be more confident at work, how to manage work situations, how to navigate your life once you have the role, because my clients have been landing the roles and then they start to run into more challenges. And then sometimes they have trouble keeping the role. There's a lot of people who have quantum leaped and then gotten freaked out because the role paid them too much, or they felt like they had taken on something greater than they could handle. I want to speak to those scenarios and help people who have gotten into the role really thrive in the role. A lot of the times it is a good fit, but they panic because they're not used to making that big change.
