Presentations in Action - Jerry Weissman [48]
Listen and react. It worked for Johnny Carson, it can work for Jon Stewart, and it can work for you.
65. What Keeps You Up at Night?: How to Handle the Most Frequently Asked Questions
“What keeps you up at night?” and “What is your greatest weakness?” are perhaps the two most frequently asked questions (FAQs) in business—the first in presentations and the second in interviews. Yet both questions, by their frequent recurrence, are traps for glib answers that could derail the person who provides the answers.
Joann Lublin’s career column in the Wall Street Journal offered advice about how to handle the interview FAQ about weakness, starting with what not to say. She provided a long list of common glib answers, ranging from “I am a perfectionist” to “I am a workaholic”—all of which offer a strength instead of a weakness and, therefore, appear evasive. Ms. Lublin recommended better, more candid answers, such as having a “tendency to make decisions too fast.” But then she concluded with the most important piece of advice: that any answer to such a question should “cover your corrective steps.”F65.1
This same advice is also applicable to the “What keeps you up at night?” question in presentations. That question has become ritual in every type of presentation and every type of business. It is phrased in those exact words. Not “What problems do you foresee?” Not “What can go wrong?” Not “What are your threats?” But “What keeps you up at night?”
What should you say in response?
What not to say in reply to this universal question is to make a joke about newborn babies, neighbors’ dogs, air conditioners or the like. Everyone has heard every variation on that lame theme. What to say must be purely candid—a direct answer to a direct question. In business, evasion is not an option. With almost daily revelations of public corruption that are met with denial, evasion, or blaming others, transparency has become more important than ever.
Be frank. Tell your questioner what keeps you up at night, but then immediately add what actions you are taking to correct those issues. “What keeps me up at night is ______, and what I’m doing about it is _____.”
Accountability is all.
66. Spin versus Topspin: The Political World versus the Business World
In the competitive world of politics, jockeying for position is often expressed by spinning, the dark art of attempting to influence public perception in one’s favor or against that of the opposition. Spinning can be as harmless as gilding the lily, or it can escalate to distortion or even to outright deception; however, all the points along that scale are of dubious integrity.
One of the best examples of political spin is the 1998 film Wag the Dog, in which a U.S. president is accused of a scandalous liaison. To limit his damage, the president calls in a Washington spin doctor, played by Robert DeNiro, who proceeds to retain a Hollywood producer, played by Dustin Hoffman, and together they concoct a fictional war in the Balkans.
In this scenario, spin could more accurately be called “slant,” for the tactic diverts attention away from the main issue. Spin is akin to the sleight-of-hand magicians use to misdirect audiences. This is not to say that a politician, a businessperson, a representative of an organization, or anyone in any competitive walk of life—including you—should not do everything you can to defend your own cause and position it in a favorable light. However, before you do so, you must address the issue directly; only then can you go on to counterbalance the negativity by adding your own message.
This additive instead of digressive approach is called Topspin, a subject covered in detail in In the Line of Fire. Topspin is a tennis term that refers to a power stroke that causes the ball to bounce sharply and give a player