How to Intelligently Reply to Any Question When Your Mind Goes Blank
A video by Matt Huang.
Transcript
Take a second and think about the last time you got asked a question by someone that you didn’t know the answer to. Maybe this was your boss at work. Or maybe this was just a friend or a parent. Maybe you were in an interview and when the question was asked, your mind just went completely blank. And maybe even after the fact, you started thinking about all the different things that you could have or should have said in the moment. If that’s you, then you’ve come to the right place. Hi, if you’re new to the channel, my name is Matt and I’m currently working in strategy and ops at Google. And before that, I was a management consultant. Now, today we’re going to be talking about a very common issue that a lot of people have, which is what do I say or how do I respond when I don’t know the answer and I’m being questioned? And maybe this is a high pressure situation. Maybe there are other people around that are also watching and listening to me and I don’t just want to say I don’t know or I can’t afford to say I don’t know. Now obviously if you don’t know the answer to a question I don’t advocate for acting like you do because it’s very easy for people to sniff out the BS. And so if you, especially if this is a situation where maybe you’re in an interview and your interviewer knows way more than you about that job, then I always advocate against trying to BS your way through that question. Instead, there are ways in which you can tactfully and confidently let the interviewer know that you don’t know the answer. Let’s get right into it. So I’ve put together this flowchart here that I first want to walk you through kind of my thought process whenever I get asked a question. So first thing that should be going through your mind is do I know the answer? Now in an ideal scenario, yes, you know the answer immediately and so you respond. But that’s not what this video is about. This video is about if the answer is no, what do you do then? Well, the first thing I always recommend to people is don’t panic. And if right off the bat you don’t know the answer to something, you should do one of two things. First, you either take a pause, take a moment, take a deep breath. Don’t be afraid to spend one, two, three seconds gathering your thoughts. Or you paraphrase and you restate what you just heard. back to the interviewer or whoever was asking that question. And so what this looks like is when someone says, “Oh, Matt, please tell us about the latest on US China relations. ” And then you respond by saying, “Awesome. Okay, so it sounds like you’re asking me about the latest on US China relations. What I can tell you is based on the research, blah blah blah. ” Another common phrase that you can use to buy yourself a little bit more time is to say something like, “Oh, that’s a really interesting question. If I think about it, what comes to mind is X. ” And so both of these tactics, pausing or paraphrasing, are effectively accomplishing the same goal, which is buying you a little bit more time to think, which is 100% okay. with pausing. I think a lot of people have trouble pausing because we’re uncomfortable with silence. But what you have to realize is silence is actually one of the most powerful tools in your communication toolkit. So when you pause instead of forcing yourself to fill the space because you’re uncomfortable with silence, what you’re actually doing is one, of course, you’re giving yourself more time to think, but two, you’re also coming across as a little bit more thoughtful. And so just think about the way that I’m using pauses right now. Whenever I pause, that space is actually being filled by the audience’s thoughts. It’s being filled by your thoughts. And whether you’re aware of it or not, you are processing what I’m saying in my pauses. And so it’s totally okay to take a pause or you want to paraphrase what you’ve just heard. And then you want to ask yourself the question, now do I have an answer? And in an ideal scenario, the answer is yes. And so you respond. But let’s say that you’ve done this and you still are kind of stuck and don’t know the answer. Or maybe it’s just something that you straight up haven’t had a lot of exposure to and maybe you only know a very surface level understanding of this topic. Well, then this is where we move to the next step which is first of all we do not say I don’t know. Now the reason why you don’t want to say I don’t know is not because it sounds bad or something but because I don’t know is a very loweffort response and it essentially places the burden onto the other person because you’re saying I don’t know go figure it out or you give me the answer instead even though you’re the one that just asked me the question. And so instead, the next time you get asked something that you don’t know the answer to, what you should be doing instead is making a hypothesisdriven assertion. Now, that’s a lot of words, but let’s break it down. A hypothesis is simply an idea that you want to test and a point of view that you take. You take aside fully knowing that you could be wrong, but being totally comfortable with that fact. It’s okay to be wrong. We don’t need to be 100% right 100% of the time. Even the world’s best hedge fund managers are wrong 40 to 50% of the time. They only need to be right more than 50% of the time in order to beat the market. And so the same applies here. You should take the approach that it’s okay to be wrong. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to make a hypothesis driven assertion. Now this last part here, assertion is really critical because an assertion is more powerful than something like a question. So what do I mean by this? Let’s say you’ve been asked what is the lifetime value of our customers? Meaning across the entire life of a customer before they leave us, how much are they spending across all of their purchases? Let’s say you don’t know the answer to that upfront. Now, one thing you could do is you could say, I’m not sure off the top of my head, do you have any data that I can use to calculate this for you? Now, that’s not necessarily bad, but you’re still asking them instead of making an assertion. You’re asking them for data instead of making an assertion like for example, okay, yeah, we can definitely calculate the lifetime value. I think the way that we should go about this is first we’ll need to track down the average life of a customer at our company and then we’ll need to look for the dollar value that people are spending across their lifespan and probably average that out as well in order to get the lifetime value. Now I think for that first piece we can get the average life of a customer from our product team and I think also with the dollars spent maybe we can go to sales and understand how much people are spending across their entire life cycle. Do you see how the second way that I spoke about the problem is much more prescriptive and takes a perspective? And I could be wrong about the ways that we should get this data, but it at least proposes a path forward instead of dumping the onus and all of the stress back onto my manager or whoever gave me that question. And so, why do we want to make an assertion? Well, because it’s the best approach when we have incomplete information and we don’t know what the correct answer is, but we still want to propose a path forward. Making an assertion demonstrates a few things. One is that it demonstrates second order thinking, meaning that you’re thinking beyond just the immediate effects. And you’re thinking more than just one step ahead. You’re thinking two steps ahead. So instead of just thinking, okay, I need to find this data. Where can I get it? You’re thinking, okay, maybe I can find this data from here. Maybe I can find that data from there. And if I can’t find it from there, then maybe I’ll try this other group. So, you’re thinking not one, but at least two steps ahead. The second thing is it’s demonstrating that you have a can do attitude and that you’re just overall a more proactive and initiative taking person, which is always a benefit, especially in the workplace. And so it’s a very simple and small adjustment that you can make but will go a long way in terms of your reputation among other people like your co-workers. The third thing is that the reason why an assertion is so powerful is because when for example the question is something that nobody knows the answer to the assertion is inherently valuable because it’s providing a path forward. So instead of everyone sitting on their hands and being upset because they don’t know the answer to some problem or they can’t figure out the solution, you are at the very least taking a hypothesis driven approach and you are at least saying, “Hey, I think we should go in this direction and look at these things to lead us to a solution. ” Instead of just bringing problems to the meeting, you are bringing a problem, but you’re also showing that you thought about a way to potentially find a solution as well. And that is extremely valuable when nobody else has an answer. And it’s very easy for everyone else in the room to just bring problems and expect that their boss will figure everything out for them. This leads me to the second part though, which is now that we’ve established why assertions are so important and why we should make an assertion when we don’t know the answer, but maybe we have an idea of how we might find an answer is how do we do it and what are the key principles that we should keep in mind when we’re making an assertion. Well, there’s three that I want to highlight today. The first is that the assertion should be actionoriented. And so like the example that I gave earlier with looking for the data required to calculate the lifetime value of your customers, the assertion should always include some kind of next steps or proposed next steps that you or someone else on the team can execute on pretty much immediately. And so that’s going to be very powerful because you want to move things forward. Second is it has to be logical. So even though you might not have the right answer or you might not know if for example the that data that you’re looking for is the right data to look for it is at least logical because you’re demonstrating that you understand okay in order to calculate lifetime value you’re probably going to need two types of data. One is going to be time related and the other is going to be dollar value related. And so maybe the specific metrics you picked weren’t the right ones, but at least logically it made sense why you were proposing to look after those pieces of data. The last thing though is you want it to be backed by your own personal conviction. And again, this is where you need to be confident in your approach. And even if you know that you might be wrong, it is you that is the one proposing it. And so it’s very important when you make an assertion that you deliver it with confidence and personal conviction because if you don’t even seem like you believe what you’re saying, then how can you expect that other people are going to also believe in what you’re saying, right? It just doesn’t make sense for them. And so remember, actionoriented, logical, and backed by your own personal conviction is going to be key when you are making a hypothesisdriven assertion. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is different ways to actually respond when you don’t know the answer to something. And we’re going to talk about an example from an interview when you get asked a question that you don’t really know the answer to. I already talked about an example from a work context. And then we’ll also talk about an example from maybe a more personal context. And so starting with the interview context, let’s say for example that you got asked by someone, what might be the reason that sales of our product are declining? And right off the bat, they haven’t really given you any information. And so you’re a little bit lost. It’s a very vague question. And you don’t really know what the right answer is. And realistically, they’re not going to expect you to know the right answer either. but they’re still expecting you to think through some kind of a structure and an approach to how you would get to the bottom of that problem. And so one way that you could answer this by giving a hypothesisdriven assertion is to say, “Hey, so I think given that we don’t have a ton of background information, but we know that sales are declining. I’d need to look into anything that influences the price of our products, as well as anything that influences the quantity of our products because sales at the end of the day is price times quantity. ” And so underneath price, I’d like to understand first of all, has the pricing of our products been consistent throughout the years or are they coming down for some reason? If so, why? Um, also, what are our competitors pricing their products at? Is there some kind of a price war going on? Are they cutting their prices dramatically to try and undercut us? Things like that. On the quantity side, I want to understand X, Y, and Z. And you continue talking about different things that you would propose looking into in order to figure out what the actual problem is. and ultimately get to a solution. And so you see how even though I don’t know what the answer is, I am answering in a way that demonstrates that I’m being thoughtful and I’m thinking about potential root causes and I’m also proposing ways in which we can go and figure out whether or not this is actually a problem or what’s driving that problem. And so now let’s take an example from a personal context. So, let’s say, for example, that someone is asking you, “Hey, what’s the deadline for submitting applications to get your visa approved? ” And let’s say right off the top of your head, you’re like, “What the heck? Of I don’t know. I’m not keeping track of the the deadlines here. ” But instead of just being like, “Oh, I don’t know. ” which doesn’t really help your friend or whoever was asking you that question out. What you can do instead to be a little bit more helpful is to say, “Look, I’m not really sure, but given that historically I know people get their visas approved in the fall, I would assume that the application deadline is somewhere a few months before that, maybe in the summer. And so I know that ex person or our mutual friend who recently applied would probably be a better person to talk to. Why don’t you go talk to them and I’m sure they can help you out. ” So even something as small as that is very solutionoriented as opposed to being a problem oriented. And you’re giving that person a way to go figure out the answer to the problem. Even though you don’t know the answer, you’re still providing value to them. And so you see the difference here between being problem oriented and solutionoriented in your responses. If you do, this is going to be a huge unlock for you. And if you can just apply this solutionoriented mindset to your life and all your interactions with people, what you’ll find is that people are going to find you very helpful as a person. They’re going to appreciate you more and ultimately you’re going to have a better reputation and get what you want out of life in general, not just your career. But all that is to say, today we’ve talked about how to answer a question that you don’t know the answer to. and still provide value. And if you can apply the practice of making hypothesisdriven assertions and solutionoriented answers to any situation, whether it’s an interview or whether it’s a conversation with your mom or your dad or your friend or if it’s a conversation with your boss, you will just be so much better off. That’s all I got for you guys today and I’ll see you in the next one. Peace.