Q&A
February 10, 2010 by Jerry
Congratulations to the New Orleans Saints on their Super Bowl victory and to Marques Colston, their talented wide receiver. Mr. Colston, who was the Saints’ leading receiver in the game with 7 receptions for 83 yards, is a four-year veteran who helped his team reach the Super Bowl with 70 catches for 1,074 yards over the season. What makes for a successful wide receiver is a statistic called “Yards After Catch,” or its acronym, “YAC.” It refers to a play in which a receiver catches a pass for a gain of yards and then runs for additional yards.
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December 21, 2009 by Jerry
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said Polonius, the sage royal advisor in Hamlet, in response to the king’s request for his opinion. William Shakespeare had his 17th Century character use “wit” to mean intelligence rather than its current usage to mean clever humor. But just as the definition of wit has shifted over time, so has the definition of brevity. There are far too many presentations—and even more conversations—that go on and on and on, warranting the impatient accusation, “Tell me the time, not how to build a clock!” In presentations, nowhere is verbosity more frequently perpetrated than
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September 9, 2009 by Pearl
In his first television interview since his arrest last February for assaulting his former girlfriend, Rihanna, pop star Chris Brown told Larry King that he didn’t remember abusing her and that he is still shocked that the incident happened. When King asked Brown about his reactions upon seeing police reports, Brown replied, “I — I don’t — like, I’ll just look at it and like, wow, like, I’m in shock. Because, first of all, that’s not who I am as a person and that’s not who I promise I want to be. And so I — I just —
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August 5, 2009 by Jerry
When you don’t know the answer to a question, just say you don’t know—as simple as that. It’s perfectly permissible to admit that you are not the repository of every minute fact known to humankind. No one expects you to be a walking encyclopedia. But also say that you’ll find the answer and get it to your questioner. If only President Obama had followed this advice in this most recent press conference. You read about his control—and loss of control—of his “ums” and “ahs” in that event in two separate posts last week, but I let the dust settle
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June 26, 2009 by Jerry
Sooner or later every human being on the face of this planet is confronted with tough questions. One of the toughest and most common is the infamous loaded question, “When did you stop beating your wife?” which implies that you have indeed been beating your wife. How do you answer without agreeing with the implication? How do you not answer without appearing evasive? Courtroom dramas often include a scene where an antagonistic prosecutor points his finger at a defendant and asks accusatorially, “Why did you kill your partner?” implying that the person—who has pleaded not guilty—did kill the partner.
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June 19, 2009 by Jerry
The presidential election is over, but intense jockeying from all quarters about legislation, issues, rights and wrongs, and errors and omissions has not abated one iota. Contention is a given in the competitive world of politics and is often expressed by spinning, the black art of attempting to influence public perception in one’s favor or against that of the opposition. Spinning can be as harmless as gilding the lily or it can escalate to distortion or even to outright deception; all the points along the scale, however, are of dubious integrity. One of the best examples of political spin
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May 6, 2009 by Jerry
In a prior post I wrote, “email has instilled a drastic decline in the verbiage (as well as the style, spelling, punctuation and courtesy—but those are subjects for another time).” This is the time to focus on the last item, courtesy. See if this scenario doesn’t sound familiar: You are deeply involved in the development of a major business project, and you write an email to a key member of the working group in which you raise several issues that need to be addressed. The person to whom you wrote responds to your email—but answers only the first of
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March 31, 2009 by Jerry
One of the most important qualities for success in business is the very quality that impedes the effective handling of tough questions: rapid response time. Any business man or woman is expected to react quickly to problems, and to come up with prompt solutions. However, in responding to tough questions, speed can kill. Tough questions are a part of the terrain in business and, given today’s tough economy, the terrain is rougher than ever. In every facet of life, people are in search of answers to their problems, and so their questions are loaded with emotion. If a responder answers
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March 17, 2009 by Jerry
In an ironic coincidence, two prominent public figures pleaded guilty on the same day: Bernie Madoff to a judge, and Jim Cramer to Jon Stewart. Madoff, caught red-handed on 11 felony counts of swindling stocks, had to confess; Cramer caught red-handed of hyping stocks, did not. Hyperbole is not a crime—yet. But, if Cramer’s admissions were an effort to tell the public that he intended no malice, he could have done so more positively. Instead, he withered in the line of Stewart’s fire. Jim Cramer certainly had the wherewithal to stand up for himself in a contentious exchange such as
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February 3, 2009 by Jerry
As the Illinois Senate considered the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich, the embattled governor went on an extensive media blitz – 17 interviews in 48 hours—to state his case. Given the incriminating tape of a damaging telephone conversation, the odds of his forestalling the inevitable were slim. But whatever chance of redemption Blagojevich had evaporated when he violated one of the basic ground rules of handling tough questions: answer the question. There’s a lesson to be learned for anyone in any situation by examining the answers Blagojevich gave during his appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” You can see the full
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