Reaction

TL; DR - To be able to react immediately, it doesn't need communication skill. It's all about the ability to handle and solve a problem. Preparation is your good friend to answer challenging questions and good for relaxing yourself.

Why do people question your thought?

People question others when your thinking is not deep enough or lack of confidence

Shallow thinking

Usually people who don't think deep enough is because they trust whatever they heard. They don't challenge the content they receive, what even worse is they convinced by the mistaken information. When you don't have the right knowledge, people won't trust you.

Practice

Try to explain what you have thought to a third party as a practice. Discuss they points that they think are not comprehensive to confirm what you've missed. Repeat this process a certain times, then you will be able to understand which type of questions you have neglected.

When doing this practice, you need to find people who can explain their opinion clearly, if you don't, you will probably get the responds like: umm yea, that is probably right or maybe your thought works which are not beneficial to discovery the blindspots of your thoughts.

Lack of confidence

People who lack confidence usually because they weren't complimented by parents/teachers or always were reprimanded. If people who don't have parent's affection in their childhood, it's different to use a positive or affirmative way to look at themselves. Even worse is after graduated, you got beat down your at work

There are lots of ways to rebuild your confidence, but in term of having the confidence to let the people listen and trust what you said. The solution would be

Solution

Be prepared yourself and be able to construct a strategy when people challenge you. If you can do only this point, you will be able to avoid the situations where you are stunned by the others.

• Learn things in-depth. It is all about determination
• Think deeply. If you think deeply about what you say, even the challenger may question the authenticity of their questions.
• Simulate the questions the audience may ask based on their mindset and situation

Develop the habit of thinking at all times

• The first thing to develop the habit of thinking is to find a topic that you feel interested in
• Accepting all the information without thinking makes you shallow. Try to verify the information in various ways to check the opposite ideas, it helps you to make your own decision.
• Through the iteration of giving your own opinion, your own idea will be quenched. From a vague ideas to be a more solid one. In each iteration, you can reinforce your memory and confidence.
• The attitude of leisurely answering questions means dealing with questions in a neither humble nor arrogant way.

Jot mindset notes (Important)

• Don't need to overthinking, jot down the things come to mind within one minute.
• Because you don't have the time to think, you will jot down the things intuitively.
• It helps organsining your mind and venting emotions. After venting emotions, thinking will become easy and less stressed.
• Without doubt and anxiety, confidence will be grown naturally

1 - When will my mind go blank

• When I was questioned by my boss, my mind went blank.
• When people talks too fast, I will unconsciously some strange behavior while clarifying what they said.
• I am afraid of being forced to ask, "Is it this way or that?"
• Is the any way to do some preparation in advance?

2 - Why ABC, who joined the company a year earlier than me, don't afraid of being asked questions?

• ABC, can always answer calmly.
• The preparations he made didn't look the same as mine.
• The written information he prepared was similar to mine, but he was unlikely to be questioned.
• Why can he answer the question so easily?

3 - Try to ask why ABC can calm down

• How did he prepare?
• When a supervisor asks a question, how does he think and answer?
• Why is he not speechless and overwhelmed?
• What does he think I should do to be like him?

Establish your own opinion, train tha ability to response when giving a speech

• Don't say 'this topic is not my expertise' as an excuse to not thinking. Try to think about everything even when the topic is not what you are good at.
• Intentionally make a situation where you can exchange ideas from the others to train the ability of spontaneous response.
• When reading information, try to decide immediately whether you agree or disagree with the arguments of the information with reasons.

Share ideas publicly

Jot the speech notes (Important)

Usually people who don't have confidence and have a sense of inferiority tend to make speech complicated . Remember people won't look down you because your idea is concise and easy to understand. The only thing that will be look down is the thinking is shallow.

Steps to prepare your speech:

• Jot down your speech in 4-6 lines in 20 to 30 seconds. Doing so can greatly reduce the mental burden of participating in a meeting
• Temperately leave your knowledge aside and pretend you are the audience to read the speech
• Get the feedback from the others to see if it's easy to understand
• Modify the speech and reiterate the steps from step 2

Notes

• Bear in mind, if the audience doesn't understand what you say, it means you haven't said anything
• Speaking while thinking what message you want to give to the audience, if he/she can understand completely
• Observe people who are good at share ideas and learn the speaking skills from them

Example - What to present at the hiring meeting

• The quality of transferees is low.
• The number of applicants has decreased.
• We have to think about a different way of recruiting from the previous gold.

During the speech

• Don't mind if you can express your thought in an organized way
• Putting on an act doesn't work. If you truly believe in what you said, you will be able to explain your idea fluently.
• Only emphase 3 points in your speech. You can start speaking even if you have 2 points only and you can think about the third point during your speech though it's difficult.

Stay away from people who are toxic

Stay away from people who like to say.

• 'Your speak is unorganised'
• 'If I say that in the organised way, it should be ...'
• 'How can I understand such unorgainsed speech?'

The reasons are..

• A good manager should encourage the team members to work energetically, instead of the other way round
• These people usually protects their self-esteem by pointing the other people are unorganised.
• If you know the problem is not about unorganisated information, the most wised choice should be taking these word like a passing wind.

What to do when people question your ideas

One rule of thumb is, when you've tried your best to answer people's question. Don't need to regret what you've replied or keep thinking a better way to answer it. Instead, change your mood and prepare the next tough question.

Deal with trouble maker

If someone keep thinking only their ideas are correct and other's are wrong. These people are the one who holds the company back. To deal with them, you can..

• Do more preparation. So even when they refute what you said, you will only think 'I know you will ask such question' and even use their point to strengthen your argument.
• They just want to make people think they are smart. You can reply them like 'your opinions are great, then can you help to handle xxxx?' To praise their idea while doing things on your way.

Clarify questions

• When you don't understand the question, don't share your opinions before you understand the question.
• Questions that you can humbly ask when you don't understand
  • In case I make it wrong, are you saying xxxxx?
  • Sorry I don't understand this, can you confirm xxxxx?
  • Could you mind to say that again?
  • Are you asking the xxx?

Answer immediately

• Answering questions immediately (not even a few seconds) can let the questioners feel your energy and boldness, thus people will think you're reliable due to your confidence. Thus the meeting will be from query mode to confirmation mode, then it will becomes acceptance mode
• Answer the question with the result first when it's possible. The benefit is it prevents the questioners loses their patience.
• If you've prepared the question already, answering questions immediately is a habit really.
• If you can achieve establish your own opinion, then you will be easily achieve answering questions immdeiately and Answer the question with the result first

Understand the meaning behind a question

Sometimes people ask questions in a unconstructive way. Thus, understanding the meaning/intension behinds a question is useful to decide how to answer a question.

• They want to get praised
• They want to impress senior colleagues
• They want to blame the problem from the other department
• A competitor want you to be looked as a fool

Try to use below 3 layers to analyse the meaning or intension behind a conversation. Then think about the position of the questioner and yourself, how other people look at such situation and try to use the third party's point of view to ponder what you should answer.

• What is the literal meaning of the question?
• What is the context of the question?
• What are the intension based on above 2 conditions?

Train the way how you to solve a problem

3 Steps to master problem solving skills

1. Learn how to realise the real problem before anyone else does and organise it
2. Based on what you've found, giving the direction of how to solve the problem with a few different options.
3. Build consensus and let people accept and agree your solution. Then consign to team member to execute the solution.

Hypothetical thinking

The benefit of hypothetical thinking is you can give your opinion with limited information. The benefit is to speed up the process of solving a question before you have all verified information.

• People who think hypothetical thinking is not practical, but that is not true.
  • Even hypothetical thinking only use limited information to infer the real issue, but it's still practical. Because you can verify your hypothesis during inferential period.
• People who are afraid of using hypothetical thinking, because you don't have confidence of their ideas.
  • Try to use the jotting notes technique to increase your confidence. Also, tell yourself, your can verify the thinking later.

Return-to-origin thinking

The benefit of this thinking is your thinking won't be bounded based on the current constraints. Thus, it's easier to come up with new ideas to success.

• Try to ask yourself, if our organisation doesn't have such rules, what will happen?
• Try to question about the norms. E.g. even people's wallet is so packed already. Why do they still put more cards in it? Can we create a new service for them?
• Try to have return-to-origin thinking with few different people to verify if your thinking is already back to the origin or not?