During the presidential debate on September 10th I didn’t expect to hear a baseless claim from Donald Trump about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio eating pet dogs and cats

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a YouTube video at Jimmy Kimmel Live on September 10, 2024 titled Jimmy Kimmel breaks down the presidential debate between Donald Trump & Kamala Harris. Of course, the ABC News moderator fact-checked Trump. And on September 11, 2024 an article at BBC News by Merlyn Thomas & Mike Wendling agreed that Trump repeats baseless claim about Haitian immigrants eating pets. And yet another article by Kayla Epstein and Sam Cabral at

BBC News on September 12, 2024 titled Ohio leaders dismiss claims of migrants eating pets described how:

 

“‘This is something that came up on the internet, and the internet can be quite crazy sometimes,’ Ohio [Republican] Governor Mike DeWine told CBS News, the BBC's US partner.”

 

Still another article by Adam Shaw at Fox News on September 11, 2024 titled Focus group reacts to Trump claim that migrants are ‘eating the dogs’ in Ohio town discussed how when Trump made the claim, approval from all groups — Republicans, independents and Democrats — dipped, with the strongest dips coming from independents and Republicans [~75% to 50%], while Democratic approval remained low.

 

And an article by Jasmine Garsd at NPR on September 11, 2024 titled The stereotype of immigrants eating dogs and cats is storied – and vitriolic as ever said that Asians previously had been disparaged with that false claim.

 

My cartoon was adapted from images of a dog and plate at Openclipart.

 

How to answer when a tough question puts you on the spot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent article by Allison Shapira at the Harvard Business Review on December 19, 2022 titled When a tough question puts you on the spot. She advises you to:

 

"Prepare in advance

Pause and breathe

Express empathy and honesty

Acknowledge the uncertainty"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Similar advice comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on their crisis communication pocket card, which I blogged about on May 30, 2014 in a post titled Remembering what is important in crisis communication – the CDC CERC pocket or emergency card. The front of that card is shown above. (I also mentioned it in another post on March 11, 2020 titled How not to communicate during a real crisis like the coronavirus).

 

 And Allison also says to follow the acronym PREP when you need to take a stand:

 

"Point: State one main point

Reason: Provide a reason behind it

Example: Give an example that supports your point

Point: Before you start rambling, re-state your main point"

 

The Table Topics section of a Toastmasters Club meeting involves answering a question via a one-to-two-minute impromptu speech, and Allison’s advice applies there. Table Topics also is discussed by Peggy Beach in an article titled Spontaneous Speaking which can be found in the October 2020 issue of the Toastmaster magazine.   

 

My cartoon was adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

Job interview questions about soft skills also can be used for Table Topics questions at Toastmasters club meetings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table Topics is the impromptu speaking section of a Toastmasters club meeting. That is where members without roles in running the meeting participate by providing one-to-two-minute answers to questions. Table Topics is discussed in a brief article by Greg Lewis on pages 26 and 27 of the January 2022 Toastmaster Magazine titled The two sides of Table Topics.

 

Where can you find good ideas for questions to ask? One obvious way is to just Google the phrase “Table Topics Questions”, perhaps adding filetype:pdf. In a previous post on November 21, 2022 I discussed how Conversation Starters also can be used for Table Topics questions. And on November 12, 2022 I blogged about how Writing prompts can also be used for Table Topics questions.

 

Still another source is questions used for job interviews. In your local public library system you likely can find several books with questions and answers. Three examples are: Ronald W. Fry’s  2016 book, 101 Great Answers to the Toughest Interview Questions, Matthew DeLuca’s 1997 book, Best Answers to the 201 Most Frequently Asked Interview Questions, and Peter Veruki’s 1999 book, The 250 Job Interview Questions You’ll Most Likely Be Asked and the answers that will get you hired. Ten questions from Peter Veruki’s book are:

 

What’s your dream job?  

Give an example of how you saw a project through, despite obstacles.

How do you regroup when things haven’t gone as planned?

What personal skill or life habit have you struggled to improve?

What’s the most creative or innovative project you’ve worked on?

Describe an improvement you personally initiated.

What’s your most productive or ideal work setting?

Do you prefer continuity in structure or frequent change in your daily work?

Tell me what you learned from a recent book.

What things impress you in colleagues?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How about Google searches? It is helpful to also add the jargon phrase, “soft skills.” That sounds like it might describe activities like pillow fights (shown above). But soft skills (also known as core or common skills) are those common to all professions – like public speaking, problem solving, teamwork, critical thinking, etc. There is a long post by Juste Semetaite at the Toggl blog on November 4, 2022 titled 100 Soft Skills Assessment and Interview Questions.

 

The job interview silhouettes came from Openclipart, and the pillow fight came from the Library of Congress.

Defending yourself from ‘gotcha’ questions, and handling difficult audiences

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Answering questions during and after a speech is an important topic in public speaking. The July/August 2021 issue of Speaker magazine has an excellent article  by Kristin Arnold on pages 18 to 21 titled The ‘Gotcha’ Question. She identifies eight types: ambush, faulty premise, hypothetical, leading, left field (personal attack), loaded, negative, non (really a comment). Then she describes do’s and don’ts, which includes rephrasing questions. As shown above via a cartoon, you need some verbal judo for handling questions.

 

Toastmasters club meetings provide a supportive environment, and discourage disruptions. But at Level 4 in the Pathways program there is a project about Managing a Difficult Audience. It is required in the Presentation Mastery path, but is an optional elective in the other ten paths. For it you give the usual five-to-seven-minute speech followed by a question-and-answer period (for a total of ten-to-fifteen minutes) and try to manage disruptions in a role play. The project evaluation is about how you managed those disruptions rather than the speech itself. On June 9, 2021 I did a speech for this project titled You cannot believe everything you read in Toastmaster magazine. I based it on two of my blog posts: one from August 5 2020 titled When doing research, your attention span should be more than 10 seconds, and a second from August 14, 2020 titled Toastmaster magazine is spreading nonsense from John Bowe about how common the fear of public speaking is.

 

A post by Julie Kertesz at her Pathways Experience blog on December 15, 2018 titled Some Things Depend on Us & Managing Difficult Audiences briefly describes the five types of Disrupters you will encounter in a role play for this project. The project has detailed advice on handling them. I wrote and rehearsed my speech in a week, so I did not have time to memorize those details. What I did instead was to be nice but not back down. My previous experience as a professional engineer dealing with civil court trials and depositions gave me confidence for handling this project. Back on March 7, 2016 I blogged about Getting comfortable with testifying as a witness.

 

It might be best to skip the ray-gun sound effects when answering that question

A recent xkcd cartoon titled Space Mission Hearing had Megan rehearsing how to answer a question on funding. As shown above, she gave a serious answer but then continued with excessive enthusiasm. Ponytail told her to ‘dial it back.’ Have you ever gone overboard like Megan did?

10 Dumb, 10 Smart, and 10 Celebrity CEO Interview Questions

At the Forbes web site on March 4, 2018 there was an article by Liz Ryan titled Ten Smart Interview Questions – and Ten Painfully Dumb Ones. Here are Liz’s dumb ones:

 

D01] Why do you want to work here?

D02] What’s your greatest weakness?

D03] Where do you see yourself in five years?

D04] What would your last manager say about you?

D05] What are three words you would use to describe yourself?

D06] If you were a can of soup, what kind of soup would you be?

D07] What do you bring to our team?

D08] Why should we hire you?

D09] Tell me about a time when you overcame a challenge.

D10] How badly do you want the job?

Over the years I’ve been asked many of them. The best answer I’d heard given to D03] (Where do you see yourself in five years?) reportedly came from someone who was being interviewed for Vice President of Research at a materials company (a position from which no further promotion was possible). He simply replied:

 “retired and living in the south of France.”

For D06] (If you were a can of soup, what kind of soup would you be?) I’d be tempted to say condensed Cream of Mutant Soup or Cream of Zombie Soup.

For D10] (How badly do you want the job?) I once almost blurted out that I didn’t want that job nearly as badly as you thought I did. That interviewer incorrectly had assumed that I must be desperate to immediately find another position. Then he told me a story about a previous candidate who hadn’t been worth hiring (D08]), and made me a lowball starting salary offer. But I wasn’t desperate – just insulted. I walked away since I had six months more unemployment coming in, that more than covered all my living expenses.

Here are Liz’s smart questions:

S01] What have you learned about our company so far?

S02] Here’s a quick description of the role. How do you think this job will be similar to other jobs you’ve had?

S03] Here’s what we’re dealing with in the department. (Explain) What are your thoughts about our 2018 challenges and opportunities?

S04] What can I tell you about the role, the team, the company or the industry that will help you understand what the job is all about?

S05] Here’s a typical day on the job. (Explain) What parts of the position sound like they’d be the most challenging? How would you overcome those challenges?

S06] Here’s the biggest project you’d take on in this role in the first few months. (Explain) How would you approach that project?

S07] I’d love to hear a story from one of your past jobs that illustrates how you show up at work. Tell me a story about a situation where you were in your glory, doing what you love to do and making a positive difference.

S08] How does this job move your career forward? What does it give you that you don’t already have?

S09] What do you imagine will be the highest priorities for the person in this job, in their first few months?

S10] If you were offered and accepted this position, how would you step into the role? What would your ‘attack plan’ be?

There was another set of ten in an article titled Celebrity CEOs: What they ask in interviews that had appeared on March 1, 2018 in the biweekly Managing People at Work newsletter:

C01] Tell me something that’s true, that almost nobody agrees with you on.

C02] If you were able to sit yourself down 10 years ago, what advice would you give your younger self?

C03] On your very best day at work, what did you do that day?

C04] What would someone who doesn’t like you say about you?

C05] Are you the smartest person you know?

C06] What didn’t you get the chance to include on your resume?

C07] What do you want to be when you grow up?

C08] Can you tell me about four people whose careers you have improved?

C09] How would you describe yourself in one word?

C10] On a scale from 1 to 10, how weird are you?

The person who asked C05] (Are you the smartest person you know?) wanted to hear a YES. But if you suggested another person, then he would try to hire them. My wife said that question was missing the critical context phrase “for this job.” If she was asked it in an interview for an accounting job, she might say I was. But I know nothing about accounting, and thus would be worthless.

The Savage Chickens cartoon from February 22, 2018 was titled Didn’t Get the Job.

  

Ask your speech audience to write their questions down on note cards

The Toastmasters International guide for trainers, TRAINING BASICS Getting it right, Making it Work, discusses dealing with difficult participants including The Silent Type, The Talker, and The Interrupter.

 At the Faculty Focus website there was an excellent article by Professor Meriah L. Crawford on October 13, 2017 titled A Simple Trick for Getting Students to Ask Questions in Class. She described getting a magic increase in feedback from passing out note cards and asking students to just write down their questions. If there are multiple questions, you can shuffle the cards to keep the responders anonymous. When there are multiple questions on the same topic, you can combine them. Written questions can draw out The Silent Type.     

This strategy also will work for speeches. Getting the questions in writing will help them be more organized, and shut down The Interrupter (a long-winded audience member who just wants to hear themselves talk). 

Professor Crawford also suggested that for large audiences you could ask for questions online (perhaps at Twitter).

The image of note cards came from openclipart.

Saying ‘Look’ isn’t a good way to begin answering a question

On August 9, 2016 at the Playbook page for the American Management Association (AMA) Beth Noymer Levine wrote about Not A Good ‘Look...’ Avoid This Public Speaking Faux Pas. She was irritated by political commentators using that word frequently. It is self-centered rather than audience centered.

When I read her article I began laughing, since back on July 19th Stephan Pastis had a more specific Pearls Before Swine cartoon on that topic. His dialogue was: 

“Rat: Want to play a drinking game with me?

Goat: What is it?

Rat: You drink a beer every time a CNN political analyst begins their answer with the word ‘look’.

Goat: O.K. I’ll play for a few minutes.

Goat: (lying drunkenly on his back) Curse yoo, David Gergen.”

Another way you can irritate your audience is to tell them to Write This Down.

What can you communicate in 20 seconds or less?

More than you might guess. You can concisely answer a question, like What can you do for me?

On August 23rd in her Speak Schmeak blog Lisa Braithwaite posted about Storytelling in 30 seconds - can you do it? and showed a TV commercial as an example. But, there also have been 20-second TV commercials which famously were used back in the 1952 presidential campaign series Eisenhower Answers America. Here is one example:



You can find three more videos on a web page at the Museum of the Moving Image. Look at the line of Republican ones and click on the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 7th (which also is shown above). A web page on 5 Most Effective Campaign Ads mentioned that there was a total of 40 in that series.

Why is there a drawing of a fireman with a hose at the beginning of this post? He is a polite illustration of what that roughly 20-second time interval also represents - the average time it takes for an elephant (or any mammal the size of a house cat or larger) to urinate. This year’s Ig-Nobel Prize for physics was won by a 2014 scientific article by Patricia J. Yang et al in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled Duration of urination does not change with body size.    

In 2011 I blogged about The 99 (or 100) second presentation, and in 2012 I blogged about 101-word stories and 50-second elevator speeches.

How about ten seconds? Back in 2007 in his HELLO my name is blog Scott Ginsberg discussed networking via 10 different approaches for your 10-second commercial. Sodastream had a 10-second TV commercial.

What can you cram into just five seconds? A Glenn Hartzheim Dodge TV commercial said:

“You’re buying a car and you’re worried about financing. Go see Glenn!

At half that or 2-1/2 seconds we finally run out of room for words. About all that will fit is brief song titles like Todd Rundgren’s Hello, It’s Me or Joni Mitchell’s Help Me. 

Adding the 5, 10, and 20 second TV commercials produces this spectrum of nine brief presentation formats:

The fireman was adapted from this 1858 image at the Library of Congress.

Nuts! A very brief reply to a surrender demand

Today is the 70th anniversary of a very brief military communication during the Battle of the Bulge. On December 19, 1944 the 101st Airborne Division of the U. S. Army hastily took up defensive positions in Bastogne, Belgium. On December 22nd their commander received the following written demand from some German emissaries:

"December 22nd 1944

To the U.S.A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.

The fortune of war is changing. This time the U.S.A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompre-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.

There is only one possibility to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the  presentation of this note.

If this proposal should be rejected one German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hours' term.

All the serious civilian losses caused by this artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.

The German Commander."
 
Brig. Gen. Anthony 'Tony' McAuliffe commanded the 101st Division during the defense of Bastogne. His famous terse reply was typed and centered on a full sheet of paper. It simply read:

"December 22, 1944

To the German Commander,

N U T S !

The American Commander"

The German officers who had delivered that demand were very confused by the reply. Reportedly an American who was escorting them back, PFC Premetz, elaborated that it really meant:

"Du kannst zum Teufel gehen. (You can go to the Devil)."

The 101st held on, and December 24th General McAuliffe included both the German demand and his reply in a Christmas message to his troops that opened with:

“What's Merry about all this, you ask? We're fighting  it's cold  we aren't home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West. We have identifications from four German Panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division. These units, spearheading the last desperate German lunge, were headed straight west for key points when the Eagle Division was hurriedly ordered to stem the advance. How effectively this was done will be written in history; not alone in our Divisions glorious history but in World history. The Germans actually did surround us. their radios blared our doom. Their Commander demanded our surrender in the following impudent arrogance....


....Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: ‘Well Done!’
We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.
 
A.C. McAuliffe”

On December 26th the 4th Armored Division broke through and began the relief of Bastogne. The heading from that Christmas message is shown at the top of this blog post. 

Serving your audience by answering their questions

An after-dinner speech provides a unique opportunity for answering questions after a presentation. There is not another speaker waiting for you to finish so he or she can start. You can provide a more detailed answer that shows how it fits into a broader subject.

A decade ago I heard George Vander Voort speak about Metallography of Welds at a dinner meeting of the Oregon Chapter of ASM International in Portland. George delivered a PowerPoint presentation containing lots of images of cross-sectioned, polished, and etched weld joints in a wide variety of materials. Then he took several questions about that specific presentation. (More recently George discussed that topic in a 2011 magazine article).

Next he asked the audience if there were any questions about metallography in general. George said I’m here to serve you, so ask away. His answers to several questions each  included showing a series of images from other presentations stored on his laptop. It was a virtuoso performance. George has a very rare breadth and depth of knowledge. (I have a copy of his 750-page book, Metallography: Principles and Practice). But, you don’t need  that depth to adopt his attitude of servant leadership.

Thinking back, what George’s performance reminded me of was watching someone set up an extension table for a family Thanksgiving dinner. Small pieces are fitted together to form a larger, more inclusive whole.      

The image of puzzle pieces came from OpenClipart, and the extension table from Scientific American.

Brilliant answers to car repair questions - Tom Magliozzi and Car Talk

It was sad to hear that Tom Magliozzi, 77, had died on Monday. MIT trained engineer Tom and his younger brother Ray used to host the Car Talk radio program on NPR. If you ever heard it, you wouldn’t forget Tom’s infectious laugh and how he didn’t seem to take much seriously. (Their Harvard Square office window had gold lettering with the name of the mythical law firm, Dewey, Cheetham and Howe). 

Car Talk had an apparently absurd premise - that the brothers could diagnose automobile repair problems over the phone. Beneath their silly banter, like “Is that Cindy with a y, or Cindi with an i?” and “Was that a blue car?” they asked a series of pointed questions that eventually led to a solid differential diagnosis.

In September 2011 Dr. Gurpreet Dhaliwal even wrote a brief magazine article about Car Talk titled The Mechanics of Reasoning in the Journal of the American Medical Association. You can read the first page here, or download a pdf of both here.

Yesterday the Boston Globe had a wonderful article celebrating Tom titled “Don’t Drive Like My Brother’: Tom Magliozzi’s Biggest Hits.

Robin Williams, improv, and answering questions

This week I was deeply saddened to hear that comedian and actor Robin Williams had committed suicide. Back in 2001 he appeared on Inside the Actor’s Studio. In the four-minute video clip shown above he improvises starting with a shawl, and creates (among others) the Indian director of a musical film “Whose Sari Now?”,  an Iron Chef, a bullfighter, and finally a car driving out of a car wash.

Answering questions during a speech requires developing impromptu speaking skills, and studying improv can help. Pages 20 and 21 in the June issue of Toastmaster magazine have a brief article by Thomas Piccin about Speaking Off the Cuff.

What five lessons can we learn about answering questions from a giant block of bean curd?

In his April 17th Savage Chickens cartoon on The Art of Conversation Doug Savage shows us what we can learn from Timmy Tofu in Lessons One to Five. (He often is confused with a desktop tower computer).

On April 26th he added Lesson Six - Be Interesting.

Three types of questioners

In a June 27th blog post partly on ten things he’d learned about making presentations Harold described three types of people who will ask questions after a presentation, and then gave advice on how you should respond:

"A) The guy who wasn't paying attention, but should have been. You will know him by his asking you something you went over in detail five minutes earlier. Answer his question.

B) The guy who wants to look smarter than you. You will know him by his asking you a barely related, highly technical and rather esoteric question. He does not care about your presentation. Tell him that you do not know the answer to his question, but that you will look it up and get back to him about it. You will never hear from him again regarding the matter.

C) The guy who has a legitimate question. You will know him by his asking a question that can be answered quickly. It's very rare that his question will necessitate a response that will last for more than fifteen seconds."

His blog is titled Intellectual Dandyism, and it includes footnotes. (Item 9 on his list of things is the well known fictional Litany Against Fear, but that’s a story for another day).

In a previous post on June 27th, I mentioned that Stephen Boyd had advice on answering questions, The Presentation After the Presentation. You also can find more good advice from Nick Morgan and Andrew Dlugan.

The image came from here on Wikimedia Commons.

Return of the Table Topics Bunny

No, the title isn’t from a Hollywood cartoon movie sequel. Every year on February 22nd the Table Topics Bunny (TTB) hops by and leaves me a basket full of questions. Table Topics is the impromptu speaking portion of  a Toastmasters club meeting. The bunny visits to commemorate the birthday of the founder of Toastmasters, Dr. Ralph C. Smedley.

If the Bunny didn’t visit you, then you have to make up the questions from scratch. There’s an art to doing this. Questions shouldn’t be too hard.

I had an easy time making up the questions for the February 2nd meeting of The Capitol Club. Sonya Harris was Toastmaster and her theme was Pets: Past and Present. Most people can recall stories about pets. I just needed to ask for them by categories: largest or smallest, best or worst, oldest or youngest, etc. On February 1st Kathy McIntosh had blogged about how she both loved and hated answering Table Topics questions. She won as best Table Topics Speaker for a story about the time her daughter put a live pet rat into the freezer.

My favorite pet story is about back when I had a two-story condo and Finster, a curious little black kitten. One late-spring day I opened windows for the upstairs master bedroom (front) and bathroom (rear) for cross ventilation. Then I left to run errands for a couple hours. When I returned and opened the front door, I found a mound of toilet paper on the landing. The trail led all the way up the stairs, and into the bathroom. Finster obviously had jumped on the windowsill to look out. As he jumped back down he had brushed the toilet paper roll in the holder on the back wall, and it began to rotate and unroll. Once he got it started he just kept unrolling it and playing. I turned the roll around to feed out underhand rather than overhand, and I never had that problem again.

February 22nd also actually is George Washington’s birthday, but we always instead celebrate that holiday as President’s Day. That’s held on the third Monday in February (which floats around between February 15th and February 21st). 

Two Magazine Articles About Answering Questions

A magazine article by Stephen D. Boyd has some good advice about handling the question and answer session, which he calls the Presentation after the Presentation. Dr. Boyd is a university professor of speech communications. He also was the 1970 winner of the Toastmasters International Speech Contest.

Jerry Weissman wrote an entire book called In the Line of Fire: how to handle tough questions…when it counts. He also wrote a magazine article on The 7 toughest questions and how to handle them. The seven types are:
1. hostile
2. negative
3. irrelevant
4. multiple
5. statements that are not questions
6. presented material
7. guilty as charged

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, one of our vice presidents, was a grandmaster at sidestepping questions. One of his typical answers could be summarized as: “That is a very interesting question. I am extremely that glad that you asked me that question. May we please have the next question?”

Answering questions: "off the cuff", extemporaneous, or impromptu speaking that also is known as "Table Topics"

Answering questions is a form of impromptu, extemporaneous, or “off the cuff” speaking that is an important skill. Every meeting of Toastmasters International has a portion devoted to Table Topics. I find Table Topics much more difficult than doing a prepared speech. The one to two minute period for answering the question feels like forever to me! Here are some articles about tactics and strategies.

An impromptu speech is like a jazz solo it takes thought and lots of practice to do it well.

George Torok discusses Triumphant Table Topics.

Dave Wheeler describes some Table Topics Strategies – Use your head to speak on your feet

The most provocative nontraditional appreoachs clearly are: to LIE, CHEAT, or STEAL.

This post was updated on July 21, 2017 to replace several broken links.