40+FAB Blog

How do you respond?

I was listening to a debate the other day and a question was asked to one of the panel which had all the connotations to be confrontational and put him in a defensive position.

He then said, “I have to be careful when I am asked a question that I am not just answering the question, but I am actually answering the questioner.”
That statement took away any need for the panelist to be defensive in his response and let the person asking the question know that he saw him as a person with a valid view who needed to be engaged in a respectable way as an answer was given.

It made me think about how I have handled questions thrown at me in the past. Was I just eager to answer those questions and let the person know how smart I was and that my view was the right one, or did I really listen and see the other person and try to understand where they were coming from?

How do you respond to people? Maybe it’s time to start answering the person rather than just the questions.