Welcome back to Skills 360 for today’s lesson on receiving feedback with a positive attitude.
How do you feel when you hear something like this from your manager: “Listen, I really need to talk to you about the work you’ve been doing on that big project.” If you’re like most people, your heart starts beating a little faster and your mind starts racing. In fact, this is a common reaction to the idea that we’re about to receive feedback. We naturally don’t like it. But it’s important, so we need to learn how to receive feedback constructively.
Welcome back to Skills 360 for today’s lesson on giving feedback.
Say “feedback” and a lot of people will immediately think of a performance review. You sit down with someone you manage and explain what they’re doing well and what they need to improve. It’s a situation we’ve all been in, on both sides of the desk.
However, feedback is much more than what we do in a structured and scheduled situation. Feedback is an ongoing process, and we give feedback to everyone around us, not just those who report to us. That includes colleagues and co-workers, and our managers or superiors. Feedback happens every day, between everyone in a company.
Have you ever delivered a presentation to a quiet and happy audience that accepts everything you say and applauds at the end? Probably not. It doesn’t matter whether you’re presenting to a possible client, at a staff meeting, to a group of senior executives, or during a professional development event. Your audience will likely ask you questions throughout your presentation.
No matter how well you prepare, you’re going to have to think on your feet. That means you’ll have to step outside what you’ve rehearsed and deal with the questions as they come. You might know the answer, but then again you might not. The question might be about something you planned to talk about, but it might not. Your presentation will succeed or fail not just on how pretty your PowerPoint slides are, but on how well you handle the audience and their questions. And that’s what we’re looking at in this lesson.
The techniques we’ll hear today include clarifying a question, using a question to jump ahead in your presentation, and evading a difficult question. We’ll also learn how to separate multiple questions into parts as well as how to admit we don’t know the answer to a question.
In the dialog, we rejoin the publishing company where Amy is giving a presentation to senior executives, including Brenda and Dennis. Amy is explaining a potential overseas partnership with two Korean companies. Brenda and Dennis are asking her plenty of tough questions.
Listening Questions
1. What exactly is Brenda worried about at the start of the dialog?
2. How does Amy respond to Dennis’s question about licensing rights and terms?
3. Which question does Amy say she doesn’t have enough information to answer?
So you’ve planned your presentation carefully and you’ve rehearsed it in front of the mirror. You walk into the room, you bring up your first slide, and you begin. But you’ve hardly finished your introduction when someone throws out a question. How do you deal with it?
You’d better be ready for this situation, because you know it’s coming. How often do people actually wait for you to finish before politely raising their hands and asking you questions? It just doesn’t happen. So you need to learn how to respond on the fly. You need to read the situation and react accordingly. Your presentation isn’t ruined if you know the right things to say and do.
Today we’ll look at some of the techniques we can use to handle questions and keep our presentation flowing. These techniques include anticipating questions before they’re asked, using a question to transition to another point, and buying time. We’ll also learn about dismissing a question that you’ve already answered and redirecting a question to the entire group.
In the dialog, we’ll hear part of a meeting in a publishing company. Amy is giving a presentation about a potential overseas partnership. Brenda and Dennis, two senior managers, are asking Amy some tough questions along the way.
Listening Questions
1. What does Amy anticipate that the audience might be wondering about?
2. Which topic does Amy have to ”˜buy time’ for before talking about it?
3. When Brenda asks about priorities, how does Amy deal with the question?
Imagine you’re in a meeting. You are expressing your opinion about something, when a colleague across the table interrupts you. He disagrees with what you’re saying, and he’s determined to make his point. What do you do? Do you sit back and smile? Or do you accept the challenge and defend what you’re saying?
This situation plays out every day in every office. Sometimes the discussion remains calm and the people remain diplomatic. But other times the conversation becomes more heated. At a certain point, it doesn’t seem like a conversation any more but an argument. People interrupt each other, they criticize and accuse, they defend themselves, and they become emotional.
Arguments are a normal part of working life. You can’t avoid them, so you’d better be prepared for them. In our last episode, we looked at several techniques for holding your own in an argument. Today we’ll look at several more key skills, including how to defend yourself against an accusation, how to correct someone, and how to dismiss trivial points. We’ll also learn about rephrasing another person’s words in an argument and bringing an argument back to a reasonable place.
We are going to rejoin Paula, Gavin, and Matt, who have been talking about a promotional event put on by their department store. The event wasn’t as successful as they had hoped for and Matt, Gavin and Paula’s boss, wants to figure out the reasons why the event failed. However, Paula and Gavin seem more intent on arguing about who is responsible rather than why the event was a failure.
Listening Questions
1. What does Paula think Gavin could have done to give input on the planning of the event?
2. What does Paula think is not worth discussing?
3. What does Matt want to figure out?
