One of the things I learned in music is that if you want to be able to improvise in a style, you have to know the vocabulary for that style first… I realized I needed to have the vocabulary for the things I tend to say about these kinds of topics.
In this action-packed episode of the Humanizing Work Show, hosts Peter and Richard break down the art of delivering thoughtful, articulate responses to unexpected questions. Whether you’re a coach, nonprofit leader, or professional looking to enhance your communication skills, this episode offers concrete strategies you can start using today.
Learn five key techniques to master impromptu speaking:
1. Develop your “vocabulary” through daily writing exercises
2. Use recording and transcription to refine your thoughts
3. Practice in low-stakes environments to build confidence
4. Employ mental models to quickly analyze complex situations
5. Shift your focus from self to others by getting curious about what they really need
Richard shares his personal journey of developing these skills, offering relatable examples and actionable advice. You’ll also get a preview of an upcoming workshop designed to help you put these techniques into practice.
Don’t let unexpected questions leave you speechless. Tune in now to gain the tools you need to speak confidently and effectively in any situation. Transform your on-the-spot responses from a source of stress to a powerful professional asset.
Learn More and Register
On the Spot: Strategies for Articulating Answers Under Pressure – Sep 2024 (virtual)
Episode transcription
Peter Green
Welcome to the Humanizing Work Show. I’m Peter Green, and today’s episode explores a skill that I’ve always admired in others. And Richard is particularly good at this skill. You can ask Richard a complex, nuanced question, and without preparation, he often crafts a really elegant, deeply reasoned answer. He sounds kind of like he hit the pause on the timeline the rest of us are on, and writes three or four drafts of an answer, edits it, gets it just right, and then reads that back after he hits “resume” on our timeline. So today, I’m going to interview him about that skill, how he developed it, and what advice he has for others on how to develop it.
To demonstrate this, I’ve got a question that I haven’t shared with him ahead of time, and we’ll see how he answers it. I suppose this could go really poorly. Maybe this is the one time I ask Richard a hard question and he totally trips over his words. But I bet that won’t be the case.
Before I bring him in and ask that question, though, just a quick reminder that the Humanizing Work Show is a free resource sponsored by the Humanizing Work Company where we help organizations get better at leadership, product management, and collaboration. Visit the contact page on our website, Humanizing Work.com and schedule a conversation with us if your organization wants to see stronger results in those areas. And if you want to support this show, the best thing you can do if you’re watching on YouTube is like and share the episode, subscribe to our channel, click the bell to get notified of new episodes and drop us a comment with your thoughts or questions about today’s topic. If you’re listening on your podcast app, the best thing you can do is rate and review it in your app and share the episode along with your thoughts and questions on your social media.
All right, back to the content of today’s episode, Richard, welcome to our show!
Richard Lawrence
Hey, Peter, it’s good to be a guest on my own show for the first time
Peter
All right. So, I’ve been lauding your skills at responding extemporaneously to kind of challenging questions, I’ve seen you do this over and over again when we’re working with clients, and just in sort of day-to-day conversation. And I thought I would test this out by asking you a question about our current United States political parties. I’m curious, Richard. How do you see the current political parties, Republicans and Democrats in the United States, as having drifted from their original values? Sort of the traditional “what it means to be conservative, what it means to be liberal.” Easy one, right? Softball.
Richard
Ya, Thanks for the softball, Peter. This is hard in different ways from the hard questions I would typically answer.
Peter
Yeah, I wanted to actually put you on the spot. And see what you did.
Richard
Yeah. I feel that, and the stakes feel a lot higher than questions I typically answer, and distracting in a lot of ways.
Peter
Mm hm. Well, let’s work through it, and then we can cut it if we want.
Richard
So, in my education on this, I’ve studied conservatism much more than I’ve studied kind of progressivism, and so I can’t give a really comprehensive answer to this; but the thing that immediately came to mind is that the history of conservative political thought– and I’ve studied this in grad school all the way back into the medieval period– was very much focused on, “You have inherited unchosen obligations to the people before you. Your family, your community, your religious heritage, the place that you’re in, whatever, sort of imposes obligations on you that you’re not free to choose. And because of those obligations, you are meant to take your inheritance, and then empirically, see if there are better ways to do things, and evolve from what you inherited. But you have this starting point that you’ve picked up, with this whole collection of obligations that you think about as you experiment with what’s better for us. And it feels like the modern version of conservatism in America is maybe more self-centered and focused on individual liberty and not so much focused on these obligations to others in family, community and place; and not so much focused on iteratively and empirically improving things on the inheritance we have received. So it almost feels like we don’t have a conservative party in that sense.
Peter. Interesting. As you have studied that, I’m curious how that contrasted with more traditional definitions than of progressive or liberal approaches.
Richard
I think there are two different threads in progressivism that I see. One is a kind of collective thread. Which is often sort of utopian and making a better world from first principles which you see in a lot of the enlightenment heritage of progressivism: like we should have a better society– Let’s reason about how to do that and let’s kind of create that top down. And you see that in a lot of the government centric social programs, a desire to make a better society. And “impose” sounds pejorative, and that’s not the way people would reason about it. It’s like make that happen at a large scale so it has a lot of benefit for people. And we can talk about side effects and unintended consequences and all of that, but trying to put it in the best light, I think there’s that thread of “lets create a better society from first principles at whatever scale we can.” And then I think there’s a second thread of individual liberty and freedom, and you see this showing up in a lot of ways too, and sometimes in conflict with each other. Because once you start thinking about a better society, you bump up against the limits of individual freedom, and that feels like a tension in that thread right now.
Peter
Yeah. It’s interesting. The way that I would describe you contrasting the traditional definitions of these things and the way that current political dialog happens, is that you describe different starting points—this ideal versus that ideal, but you’re able to frame it, when you speak of it that way, in a way that acknowledges the benefit that each ideal is attempting to create, and current political dialog seems to do the exact opposite of that, which is build up a strawman of the worst characteristic of each one, and try to tear down the strawman
Richard
Yeah. And I think it’s important. This is one of the mental models I use when I’m thinking through how to answer a question. If I assume that everybody involved in this is well intentioned, and wants to do the right thing, how did well-intentioned people end up believing something different from me or end up doing something that doesn’t make sense to me, and so, as I’m processing the question, I’m trying to think through things like that so I can answer in a useful way.
Peter
Yeah. This is a skill that you seem to have developed over the years, and I’m curious when you first recognized that you had a talent for it, or maybe you failed miserably at it in some situation. What was the genesis for you starting to develop this skill?
Richard
I think I probably experienced some early bright spots with it, where systems thinking and objectivity is a natural strength of mine, and a weakness, in terms of distance from what’s actually going on. I can kind of be too objective and disconnect from the people and the feelings, especially earlier in my life; but that did allow me to think about what’s going on here, and reason quickly about it. So I can process pretty quickly, and there’s some natural talent there and I can also think of a lot of occasions early on, the thing that made me want to systematically develop this, was where I would give an answer that might be true but not be useful, like “Here’s a glimpse into what I’m thinking,” and I wasn’t thinking enough about the people involved, I was thinking much more about “ooh, this is an interesting problem! Let me play out all the things that might be going on here,” and I’d give an answer that was packed with nuance and detail and different models, and not really be in service of somebody who was asking me a question, So reflecting back on those things where I may have thought I gave a good answer, and I recognized in the middle that it had gone off the rails, and I reflect back on it and think “How could I be more useful in that situation?” So it wasn’t usually being speechless, although my wife will tell me that when we first met, I would give painfully long pauses before answering questions some times. And I may still do that while I’m processing things. But apparently, twenty-five years ago it was a lot worse. So, there’s probably some awkwardness there, but I didn’t have the sense of “I have no idea what to say.” It was more like “Let me sort out the thing I’m going to say.” But then it wasn’t always the most useful thing. So I wanted to get better at that.
Peter
What are the things that you did as soon as you realized you wanted to develop the skill?
Richard
One of the things I learned in music is that, if you want to be able to improvise in a style, you have to know the vocabulary for that style first, so you start by learning other people’s songs, by learning sort of the words and phrases that people say in that style. So early on, for me, that was Blue Grass and Celtic music. I grew up going to jam sessions, and the first time that I had to try to solo on guitar, I had no vocabulary, and it was awful. I think the only vocabulary I might have had was the song that’s in Deliverance.
Peter
Dueling Banjos?
Richard
Yeah. Dueling Banjos! That’s what it was. Like the only phrase that came to mind, and it was totally useless for the song I was in. So, I just didn’t have any words to say. It was like “You should join CrossFit!” Like, wait. Nobody’s asking about fitness right now. The only thing I knew to say. And that didn’t work. And then eventually you build up vocabulary and you’re able to say things on your own. And that pattern came to mind when I was thinking about how to develop that skill, and I realized I needed to have the vocabulary. But in this case, the vocabulary needed to be, “What are the things I say about these kinds of topics?” So I wrote out a list of questions that people had asked me or might ask me, and every morning I would write about or try to answer one of those, as a way to just figure out, in the quiet of my own workspace, what do I even say about this thing? And over time I started blogging some of that stuff, and at this point I’ve probably written—I don’t know– a couple of million words on the kinds of topics that people ask me about, and I think I’m drawing from a lot of that when I answer questions.
Peter
Yeah. Besides writing, what other things have you found useful?
Richard
I’ve recorded myself answering questions out loud. I never go back and listen to it, because, especially before we had a show, and before I had recorded a lot of music, I really didn’t enjoy listening to my own voice, and didn’t have the patience for it; but even having to say it to the recorder was a way to get clear on it, and then once speech to text became a thing, I would go out for a walk with a question in mind, and then I would just ramble to myself, recording into like Otter or something, and it would transcribe it, and I would come back and I would see what I said, and how do I feel about that, and what’s a clearer way to say that, and kind of edit it a little bit.
Certainly, having conversations with people is useful, in safer settings, and so going to conferences and having, like, open space style conversations about things allowed me to think out loud and work through some of those as well.
Peter
One pattern I notice there is that, when you’re journaling to yourself, that’s incredibly safe, nobody will see it, nobody will criticize it. As you explore these other ways, each of them raises the stakes in some way, but not so much that it’s anxiety producing, I’m guessing; so as soon as you hit the record button, the stakes are higher. The conversations with people you trust, the stakes are higher because now you have to pay attention to how they’re responding to it, and even if it’s a close friend, you do know that the stakes are a little bit higher, so each of those raises the stakes a little bit.
Richard
There are some people that I have conversations with where I feel like I can say something that I’m not even sure I believe yet, just to see how it sounds when I say it and how they respond to it, and we can talk our way into what I actually think. You and I obviously have that relationship. We work out our thoughts together a lot of times. And that’s akin to what I would do when I’m writing. I’ll sometimes write something I’m not sure I believe, and see, once I’ve written it, do I actually think that, and what do I actually think?
Whereas, if I’m doing this in a conference session Q and A or a meeting with a client, the stakes are definitely higher, and I’m probably not going to float something that I don’t believe and talk my way into what I actually think.
Peter
Yeah. I find the same to be true of writing. That, as I write, I learn what I actually think about the topic
Richard
Which is probably a good reason to write a lot before you publish. The first thing you write probably should not be the first blog post that’s going to appear on your website or LinkedIn post or whatever. Give yourself the freedom to write a lot of things that will never see the light of day.
Peter
Or at least do multiple drafts of that thing. You’ve been interviewing folks that are in coaching roles for a while now. Do you want to talk a little bit about those interviews and what you learned?
Richard
Right. One of the themes that has come up in the interviews that I’ve been doing with coaches, largely people who would consider themselves agile coaches, and typically internal agile coaches; and a theme that came up in interviews a lot is this sense that they know a lot more than they are able to share. And that might be that they don’t have the settings in which they could share it, but a really common example of this that came up was that people ask me a question in a meeting, maybe it was in a meeting when I was prepared to talk about something completely different and then, now that they’ve got me, they want my input on this situation that’s happening with their team; or how we should do things in this part of the organization; and I know I have opinions about this–I have useful thigs to say– but I can’t think of them in the moment.
A couple of people I interviewed described it as waking up in the middle of the night after the meeting thinking, “Oh! I know what I should have said,” but of course it’s too late at that point, and coming back and saying, “Let’s have a redo,” probably isn’t going to work most of the time. So, this was a theme that showed up over and over again: that “I should have said” feeling. So it wasn’t that they wanted to be able to talk about something that they didn’t know or wanted to be able to bluff or seem smarter than they were. They were objectively capable of providing a useful answer to that question but not in that moment when they needed it on the spot
Peter
And so, we decided to put on a workshop to help coaches develop this skill, and I guess really anybody who has that experience. I think most of us have had that experience of “Oh I wish I had said that in this conversation.” So tell us a little bit about what– you know– Give us a preview. I guess we don’t want to give away the whole show, but give us a little preview of some of the things that you’ll focus on in that workshop
Richard
I think there are several parts to being good at this. Weve already talked about just figuring out what you have to say about things, so that you have that vocabular of words, phrases, stories, models for things, even visuals. Often drawing a picture of somethings helps you get your thoughts clear; and being able to jump up to the white board and visualize something sometimes is a great answer to a question.
Peter
I appreciate you putting that in the third person, because that is certainly the case for me. I always feel like if I can’t draw it, I don’t understand it.
Richard
Right. And I’ve done a lot of that over the years too, and it’s helpful. So, that’s looking at the content part of it, but I think there are a lot of skills around this. One of those is getting yourself into the right internal state to actually be present and helpful. Sometimes the impediment to be able to have a good answer is just you’re nervous, you’re insecure about whether you can bring something useful, you’re maybe too aware of yourself, and so you miss what the person is asking; so getting yourself in the right state is part of it. So how you listen to questions, and hear what’s being said or not being said, how you pull together the information and think about what would be a useful answer or ask a follow up question to get more information, so everything that leads up to your answer I think is important, and then there’s just how you deliver a useful answer. So stories, checking whether you’re actually producing understanding and insight versus just soap boxing, and then I think an important thing to talk about, which we’ll address in the workshop, is what do you do when you don’t have an answer that you feel like is polished and useful, but you still want to be helpful in some way?
You don’t always have to have the hum-dinger of an answer that somebody’s going to want to record and carry around with them. There are still other ways to be helpful in those moments. And that’s ultimately what I think this comes down to. It’s people are asking you questions because they perceive that you can help them with something. So, how do you show up in a way that’s helpful?
Peter
It reminds me of the advice from Ben Zander, which is just be a contribution. And as soon as you shift from “I have to perform” so the stakes are high, reduce the stakes and just say “How can I be a contribution right now?” Maybe I have a mental model I can share, or maybe I have a clear answer to that question, maybe just a follow-up question to help them think more clearly about what the problem is. It also occurred to me as you were sharing that, that what you’re trying to do when you’re getting your mental state right, is reduce the stakes to match the level that you have practiced.
Richard
And you know, as a musician and speaker, that you don’t want to reduce your anxiety all the way. When I get on stage for a music performance or a speech, or record a show, or whatever, I need a level of mental and emotional arousal that is going to lead to a good performance. And I can harness some of the anxiety, some of the stakes, toward that end, if I feel like I’m just sitting on a couch with a bag of chips watching YouTube when I’m up on stage, that’s not going to lead to a good outcome for the people who are there with me.
Peter
A) I cannot picture you laying on a couch eating a bag of chips watching YouTube, and B) Yes, and I think most people that I talk to have the opposite problem, not that they can’t keep the anxiety around at all, but the anxiety is so high that it becomes paralyzing–.and I found as a musicians that there were some situations where the anxiety was high enough that it was decreasing my level of performance, and I needed the mental skills to drop the anxiety. And being a contribution is one idea, there: How can I just be a good member of the band.? How can I just make a difference for one person who is listening to this music? Those thinking skills were able to bring it down.
Richard
The last one is close to what I often use. It’s like “I wonder what they need from me right now?“ I’m more curious, more focused on them than I am on myself.
Peter
That’s great. I was going to ask if you have one practical tip and that sounds like a great one, which is to get curious about what they need and be a contribution, even if it’s just for that one person. What other tips do you have?
Richard
Let me extend that one a little bit. And then maybe I can offer a couple more. The mental model kind of behind that one: like “be a contribution,” I wonder what’s going on for them, is show up curious. I wonder what’s really going on there. I just get myself in a state where I am more curious than anything else, because that just gets me outside of myself. Like “I really wonder what’s behind that question. I wonder why that feels so hard for them right now. And I just become interested in them and forget about myself. And, in the process, I’m going to share what seems like it might be useful. So that’s one tip, and another tip is think about your thinking. Start to become aware of your mental models. I think a lot of people just think, and don’t really know why they think about things in certain ways; and I’ve discovered that having a toolbox of mental models that I can try on quickly, allows me to make sense of what’s going on.
I’ll give you a couple of easy ones. One is “assume positive intent.” Like, I’m going to try that on a little bit. It may or may not be true that everyone has positive intent, but what insight do I get when I think about, “If all the players in this painful situation somebody is asking me about are well-intentioned, what does that tell me?”
Or another one that I think is widely applicable is this idea of trade-offs or tensions. What are two things that people value here that seem to be in conflict, and is there a way we can thread that, or get both of those at once? So, when I’m listening to a question and the story around the question, I’m often plugging the facts into these different mental models, and seeing “What gives me insight here, that might unlock something for the person that I’m talking with?” So, I’ve got my set of mental models that I use. But they’re not the same set as the ones that you use or that somebody else uses, and as you become conscious of the ones that you have, instead of just having tacit knowledge (where you use them but you don’t know they’re there), you become more conscious about them. You’re able to plug them in and unplug them faster, I think, I think that’s what’s going on a lot of time, where it feels like I’ve thought through something a lot before I answer, it’s because I have this bundle of shorthand that I can use to think through something quickly, and then stick with the one that gives the most insight.
Peter
That sounds a lot like having the vocabular for an improvising musician. When I’m improvising, I’m not thinking “What note am I going to play next?” No, I get a general shape in my head, and that shape is so under my fingers in every key, that I just go play it; and it sounds like mental models are functioning the same way for you in these types of conversations.
Richard.
Yeah, they chunk the information for you in that way.
Peter
The maiden voyage of this workshop, which we’re calling “On the Spot: Strategies for Articulating Answers Under Pressure” is happening on September 19, 2024. You can get more details and register on our website, Humanizing Work.com and go to the events page. If you’re checking out this show after that, A) I bet the future’s awesome, B) check our site anyway, maybe we’re running it again, or contact us. We often bring workshops like this inhouse.
Richard, is there somebody you would really hope to see (I’m not talking about a name—a type of person that you really hope..) [laughs] Yeah. You, so and so. We want you to be there. We notice you stumbling on your answers a lot… No: Who do you really want to be there? What describes somebody that would really benefit from this?
Richard
I think in general, it’s anybody who has things they know that other people would benefit from, and they end up having to talk about those without warning. But a couple of categories where I see that a lot, obviously coaches we’ve talked about, find themselves in that situation all the time.
But the other group that I would love to see well-represented at this workshop is non-profit leaders. I think there are a lot of people that are doing things that matter, that can have a big impact in the world, and they are good when they have their prepared speech, but when they’re on the spot, they may not have the words to bring somebody else along and explain why what they’re doing matters, and how somebody else might contribute; and so I would love to see nonprofit leaders represented here as an example of people who need to bring their knowledge to bear in the moment, to have a meaningful impact.
Peter
All right. So if you fit into any of those categories, or if you found this discussion helpful, we invite you to join us on September 19 for the workshop. We also invite you to join us in our mission to make work more fit for humans, and make humans more capable of doing great work. Visit our website at humanizingwork.com for more resources, articles, and training opportunities. And don’t forget to check out our other episodes – we cover a wide range of topics to help you and your team work more effectively.
Thanks for tuning in, and we’ll see you next time on the Humanizing Work Show!
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