Introduction: Helping You Thrive On "Blowtorch-On-The-Belly" Questioning

At some stage it happens to nearly all of us.

We're asked a question by the boss, a job selection board or a potential client - and we say something really stupid.

Or wrong.

Or self-defeating.

Maybe, on a bad day, it can even be a combination of all three.

And then you realize a short time afterwards what you should have said.

This human experience is so common, the French have an expression for it.

They talk about the annoying phenomenon of thinking up the perfect thing that should have come out of your lips all too late - while you're on the stairs leaving after that bruising verbal encounter: "L'espirit d'escalier", otherwise known as "the spirit of the stairs" or "staircase wit".

This book contains solutions to this and related problems.

It guides you on what you should say and how best to say it in challenging situations throughout your working life.

Whether you're asked "Why should you be promoted?", "Why aren't there any pens in the stationery cabinet when I asked you to get some last month?" or "Why should I invest in your billion-dollar project?", this book helps you formulate answers that are set to be more impressive, more reassuring and more inspiring than the ones you're giving now.

It gives you the techniques and the amazingly effective golden formulae for dealing with hard questions, nasty questions and stupid questions.

Drawing on my background as a broadcast interviewer, with training by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in the art of putting business leaders, politicians, officials and others under pressure, this book will show you how to stand up to what have been described as "blowtorch-on-the-belly" questions.

This is a technical term from the world of Australian politics - reputedly the place where dialogue is the most vicious in the democratic world.

It applies to situations where interrogators subject you to sustained, rugged, painful questioning - the kind you could expect in the most ferocious of media interviews for instance.

"Blowtorch-on-the-belly" questioning can also be deployed against you in the boardroom, in a career appraisal and anytime something's gone wrong and the finger of blame is pointing at you.

Doing badly when subjected to this kind of questioning can damage your career and even lose you your job.

Doing well through decisive, positive and uplifting answers can help propel you towards outcomes you want in the workplace and beyond.

As a media interviewer, I've watched some business leaders, officials and politicians set fire to their careers and public image by losing their tempers, their nerve and their dignity when put under pressure by myself and others.

I've also seen some of them do what the front cover of this book suggests and successfully put the fire out - sometimes seemingly with very little effort - and then inject powerful, positive ideas and visions into the conversation to move things in the direction they want.

One particularly memorable incident was when Britain's highly controversial Margaret Thatcher came to Sydney in the earlier years of her prime ministership. At the time she was administering harsh and unpopular cost-cutting medicine to the struggling economy of the UK. Our star tough-guy interviewer at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation couldn't land a glove on her as she gave him and our audience a stern lecture about the importance of the principle she called "sound money".

There was much to throw at her about the initial negative side-effects of the medicine - and the tough-guy interviewer didn't hold back from this. Yet the aptly named Iron Lady steamed through the interview as if a battle ship were being harried by the smallest of mosquitos.

I noticed the same phenomenon - of some politicians, business leaders and officials doing remarkably well in challenging interviews and some doing remarkably badly - when I became a foreign correspondent.

Shortly before the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe, I got to subject the Polish Vice-Minister for Nuclear Energy in Warsaw to blowtorch-style questions about the dangers of communist-designed Chernobyl-era nuclear power stations in his country and the risk of another nuclear catastrophe in what was then the Soviet-dominated "Eastern Bloc". These questions resulted in a string of nervous, bumbling answers that were put to air on the BBC World Service, making him and his reactors appear dangerously inept.

In contrast, amidst the anti-communist "Velvet Revolution" in 1989 in Prague, I and other foreign correspondents got to ask the leading revolutionary Václav Havel about whether he would seek the presidency of what was then Czechoslovakia. We were swept away by the smoothness and power of his impressively thoughtful and eloquent - though sometimes artfully non-committal - answers, which raised his standing and made it all the more likely that he would become president. He swiftly did.

When planning this book I have looked back analytically over all the interviews that I've been privileged to do around the world. It became clear that there was a massive difference between the way various people reacted to "blowtorch-on-the-belly" questioning.

Some would metaphorically collapse in a quivering heap under blowtorch-style questioning.

Others would sail through the interrogation as they might steer a yacht in a gentle breeze.

Eventually I discovered what made the difference.

It was largely down to planning, preparation and practice.

With the benefit of hindsight it was clear that some politicians, business leaders and officials had been successfully trained to deal with tough interview questions and had worked at perfecting their replies and their delivery style in advance.

Those who shone out in rigorous interviews had typically done some training or had effectively trained themselves.

It eventually became public knowledge that Margaret Thatcher had had intense coaching - on the recommendation of the Hamlet-playing acting maestro Lord Laurence Olivier no less. This was most evident in the way Mrs Thatcher lowered her voice to sound more authoritative as her career progressed. In fact, one coaching session was - embarrassingly - recorded, leaked and publicly broadcast in Australia, Britain and elsewhere. But it showed what a dedicated communications student she became.

As a playwright and one-time stage hand, Václav Havel was surrounded by actors and clearly appreciated the value of rehearsing for those big moments in the spotlight. No wonder he was so impressive when I and my fellow foreign correspondents sought to test him out while he was holding a press conference on the stage at one of the Czechoslovakian theatres that became a focal point during his theatrically choreographed revolution.

The more I looked at it, the more I discovered that the art and science behind giving great answers is a learnable skill - and that those who shone out worked in advance on their content, their structure and their delivery style.

There are ways of combatting the hottest of blowtorch-on-the-belly questions and turning them to your advantage. The methods for successfully dealing with challenging questions from media interviewers can also be adapted to the tough questions you can get in the workplace from all kinds of sources - prospects, clients, colleagues, shareholders and financiers.

And if world leaders can train to improve their answers, then so can everyone else in the workforce.

When I started working as a lecturer in broadcast journalism in British colleges and universities on my pathway to being an international professional speaker, I was invited into the fascinating world of media and communications training.

Public Relations (PR) firms and training companies would ask me to come in and rough up their clients in mock blowtorch-on-the-belly media interviews and other challenging professional conversations to see how they coped - and then work with me to help their clients perform more confidently at a higher level.

I got to witness how the PR experts equipped their clients to answer emotionally-charged questions, horrible questions and tricky questions. And I could utilise my own particular area of expertise coming from Down Under - really ignorant questions . . . the kind that can cause some people to explode with rage.

I began teaching and developing the methods and golden formulae myself in one-to-one coaching sessions, master classes and conference speeches - sometimes even to audiences of PR people themselves.

The techniques work with apprentices seeking to change jobs, sports professionals being interviewed ahead of their next match, and sales teams and business leaders wanting to grow their empires across a vast range of industries.

And I found the techniques highly useful when facing questioning myself, as I increasingly did in my role as an international broadcasting commentator and newspaper critic.

Having been interviewed hundreds of times as a newspaper reviewer and commentator on Sky TV, the BBC and Al Jazeera, I have found the techniques to be especially useful when I have...