How to answer a boss’s tough questions

in the 30 years of my work life i’ve had strong bosses and weak bosses. the strong ones never suprise the employees. each meeting went with a set agenda and related issues. weak bosses think they need to ambush the employees from time to time for whatever reason.

what that happens, always state that you aren’t prepared to discuss it but will be prepared in a day or two and ask to set a follow up meeting for that. a professional does not give a seat-of-the-pants anwer to business matter. if the boss presses, then tell him you’re just following his shining example of methodical, thorough thought process.

In reference to the slow thinker, I am curious to know if there is any type of professional help to improve on answering and thinking more quickly. I share this same problem and am much more reflective and come up with a great responses when the moment has passed. There are a lot of hard, reflective employees out there that are don’t get awarded as quickly so if there is away to be trained to improve on this, I am also all ears.

Many of us are methodical without being slow thinkers; the two are not synonymous. To the point, your boss deserves an immediate and honest answer if that is what he seeks. The only honest reply should be, “Based on the information before me at this time, I think…” Boom! Done.

My boss is always asking me different questions than the ones I prepared for and it so stressed me that I became tongue-tied. So I joined a Toastmasters club and practiced speaking under stress! Now I can answer in such a way that he no longer feels insecure about my answers. Toastmasters has a great educational program where you can practice many kinds of talks in front of peers.

I used to be slower as well, it’s just a natural feature of introverts to prefer to take in more information before giving output. But anymore I don’t think that asking for a delay is the best answer. Over time I found that saying something like “That’s an interesting question, let me get back to you when I’ve thought about it some” is an invitation to some people. You might as well be saying, “Go ahead and browbeat me and embarrass me, I’m an easy target. If you just pressure me imperiously then you can control me.” The real answer is you have to get better at rhetorical tactics yourself. Join toastmasters, read Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, practice your skills in online forums. There’s a method to the madness, learn it and it won’t take you so much effort to get yourself off the spot. It’s not to become a shark yourself, it’s more like training to fight so you don’t have to. When you’re not one of the easy ones to pick on, the schoolyard bullies tend to just choose someone else. I’m not picking on his boss, heck the boss may be doing this deliberately to try to challenge him to think on his feet better.

There was a Q&A about sharing a hiring referral bonus with the person who got hired. Annie forgot to mention that bonus is taxable. So if it’s a $1000 bonus, it would be really bogus to have to give away $500, after paying maybe $200 on taxes on the whole $1000!!!