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In the Hot Seat: Dealing With Hostile Questions

Upward Directions Newsletter for Managers of Community Associations - Fall 2005

by Debra Stein

Communication between managers and residents often occurs in the form of question-and-answer sessions during community meetings. Too often, however, a productive Q-and-A session breaks down into a grilling by hostile owners. Here’s how to handle antagonistic questions effectively.

Look Away From the Speaker

Americans are taught that it is polite to look at the person who asked the question when giving an answer. In a group setting, however, the key to defusing a hostile question is to move attention away from the individual who asked it. When someone lobs an aggressive comment or question at you, immediately shift eye contact away from the speaker and address your comments to the rest of the audience. Treating every participant equally reduces the emotional rewards to be gained by attention-seeking troublemakers and avoids reinforcing the impression that the toughest critic is a leader who deserves special deference. Don’t look back again at the questioner during your answer and, unless you really want a follow-up question, don’t return to that individual at the end of your response to ask, “Does that answer your question?”
Redirect the Question

As you look away from the hostile questioner, restate the question. This transfers the spotlight away from the questioner, who will be more inclined to sit down quietly rather than continue standing while audience attention is focused on you. All members of the audience may not have heard the question, so your restatement helps enlighten those who may not have been listening carefully. Finally, restating the question give you a few extra moments in which to come up with a good answer.

Never repeat an inflammatory question word for word. Instead, rephrase it in a more reasonable or less emotional way. When a critic snaps, “Why are you insisting on building this ridiculous community center where no one wants it?,” shift eye contact away from the questioner and rephrase the question: “The question is, how did we select this site for the new community center?”

Another technique is to use the question as a springboard for other issues. For example: “This question raises a number of issues, which we should look at piece by piece….”; “Before we go on to that topic, let’s go back to something Mrs. Garcia said a few minutes ago.” Other common transitions used to redirect attention include:

• “The real issue is…”
• “It probably makes more sense to talk about…”
• “Another related question is…”
• “What we should be asking ourselves is…”
• “Another thing is…”
• “A more important issue to consider is…”

Reestablish Eye Contact

Although you don’t want to maintain eye contact with the hostile questioner, it is crucial to make good eye contact with the rest of the audience. Good eye contact conveys interest in what listeners are thinking as well as your concern about whether your own comments are being understood. Moreover, speakers who make good eye contact are much more likely to come across as trustworthy, likeable, and persuasive than those who avoid good eye contact.

So what constitutes good eye contact? For starters, most people use only their right eye to look at another person; the left eye is used only for depth perception. Good eye contact involves using your right eye to look intently into the right eye of the other person. To test this theory, use your left eye to look into the left eye of another person. Feels awkward, doesn’t it?

Select one person at a time to look at. Establish eye contact and hold that gaze until you shift eye contact to another audience member. If you cannot look at every person in the room, then at least make eye contact with every section of the audience: the front, the back, and both sides of the room. Although people naturally prefer to look at friendly folks who are nodding and smiling, you can reduce hostility by making eye contact with persons with unfriendly expressions on their faces. Eye contact with unfriendly people makes it more difficult for them to view you as an impersonal enemy and can help reassure them that you really care what they think.

How long should each glance last? Average eye-to-eye contact lasts a bit more than one second. When one person is looking at another without reciprocal eye contact, the glance lasts about three seconds. Glances that last too long can send inadvertent messages of aggression or sexual attraction; gazes of longer than 10 seconds provoke extreme stress.

The average speaker makes eye contact 40 percent of the time while talking, although a speaker trying to come across as really honest or powerful may engage in more frequent eye contact. The average listener looks at the other person somewhere between 60 and 75 percent of the time while listening. A powerful person will make less eye contact when listening to a subordinate, while a less powerful person might engage in almost continuous eye contact while listening.