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How do you respond to questions?

Not just any questions … not “How’s the weather?” kinds of questions, but challenging, hostile-sounding questions. Questions like, “Why do IT projects always take so bleepin’ long?” “Why can’t we outsource more of our IT?” “Why do you IT types always complicate things so much?” Or the ever-popular, “Why do we need all this technology anyway?”

The temptation for most of us in IT is to argue. It’s the wrong way to go about things, because it violates the first principle of business confrontation: Never wrestle with a pig, because you’ll both get dirty and the pig likes it.

How should you deal with a challenge? For some in IT it’s a difficult question because our instinct is to respond with facts and logic. It’s built into the profession. When you’re an IT practitioner, you don’t have the luxury of ignoring facts and logic very long. When a server won’t boot or a program won’t compile, those are facts you just have to deal with. Logically.

Many business executives, on the other hand, have built entire careers on expounding whatever opinion is currently popular or convenient, regardless of what the facts and logic clearly demonstrate to those willing to take the time to understand the situation. They win by outmaneuvering their opponents verbally and politically.

If you treat their questions as challenges and defend yourself, you have a problem. That is, after all, what they want. Doing what your opponent wants you to do is rarely smart, regardless of the type of combat you’re engaged in.

How should you respond when challenged? Reap the rewards that come from being obtuse. Just because you know you’re being insulted doesn’t mean you have to act like you know. Treat every question as an expression of genuine curiosity, and respond as if flattered that the questioner has so much interest in what you do. So …

“Why do you IT types always complicate things so much? I was talking with one of your business analysts and I asked for a simple database. The next thing I knew, she was trying to walk me through a long, involved process for describing what the system should do, its business value, what existing databases it would need to link to … I swear, she could have built the system in less time than it took to go through the process. So why do you IT types have to complicate things so much?”

“Hey,” you might answer. “We don’t complicate them. They are complicated — it’s the nature of the work. Let me explain why we have to do things that way.”

Sound defensive to you? It does to me, and chances are pretty good your opponent will derail you before you get the first word of explanation out of your teeth.

Imagine that instead you said, with a big smile, “You know, you’re asking a great question! We get that a lot, and maybe you can help me figure out a solution. Everyone in IT hates that form too. We created it in desperation, because …”

The secret to not sounding defensive is as simple as it is hard to remember when someone is pushing you: Agree. Empathize. And ask for help. So …

“Why does every IT project take so bleepin’ long?”

“It sure seems that way, doesn’t it? How much time do you have — I’d love to show you what it takes to get one of these projects done. I wish we could do without some of the steps … don’t get me started about regression testing! … but every time we try to skip one the project just ends up taking even longer.”

At which point you launch into an explanation of each major step in your project management and application implementation methodologies and why they’re important.

One of two things will happen. Usually, your opponent will back away, saying, “This looks pretty complicated. I’m going to have to take your word for it — I’m late for a meeting.”

But sometimes your opponent will take another run at you: “Hey, hold up. I just asked you the time and you’re telling me how to build a watch!”

Here’s what you do when this happens: Once again, agree, empathize, and ask for help: “Oh, sorry, I misunderstood the question, I guess. Why do our projects always take so long? Here’s the shortest answer I have. Maybe you can help me come up with a better way of explaining it.”

“IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE REALLY, REALLY COMPLICATED, YOU MORON!!!”

Much better, don’t you think?

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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

It isn’t well-known that Shakespeare wrote about IT leadership, but he did. An example, the dialog that follows, is from a lost folio of Hamlet.

Lord Polonius, senior desktop analyst for the kingdom of Denmark: “Methinks we should defenestrate William of Gates, instead commercing with Linus, Prince of the Finns. Many pounds would we save, and verily the onerous license forced upon us by William of Gates would be vanished.”

Hamlet, Prince of the Danes and Chief Information Officer: “How many pounds, good Polonius?”

Polonius: “My lord, 125 fewer would we spend, allowing us to neither borrower nor lender be.”

Hamlet: “Speak not your bromides, Polonius, until I know whether thine estimate include conversion and migration costs.”

Polonius: “These totals I have not yet computed, my lord.”

Hamlet: “Is there in our domain software that requires the platform of William of Gates?”

Polonius: “Lady Fortune’s traditions suggest we will find it so. However, in the land of Citrix, an easy journey, lies resolution.”

Hamlet: “And what debt shall we incur to Citrix’s sovereign?”

Polonius, in vexation: “My lord, thou canst pose questions that count in numbers as the stars themselves. I do acknowledge them, as you I ask to acknowledge both their number and my ableness to them resolve. Thy distrust, though, causes me distress unending.”

And so, another manager/employee relationship erodes due to conflicting expectations of trust.

The level of trust defines any relationship. The more accurately you gauge the extent you can trust others (and they you), the more effective you will be in any encounter, whether you’re assessing an employee’s recommendation, negotiating with a vendor, or establishing a curfew with one of your teenaged offspring.

Determining the appropriate level of trust is easy when two people know each other well. So Hamlet, dealing with Horatio, his longstanding advisor, might have asked, simply, “Tell me more, Horatio,” and received a succinct yet satisfactory response. Dealing with Laertes, who over the same period has proven himself lacking in both wit and initiative, Hamlet might have said, “To convert or not to convert, that is the question. Yet not the only question: We must needs review many others first, whose response we will require to know our mind.”

History has its uses. Among them is knowing how much trust is deserved, and what kind. Often, the biggest point of dispute in new relationships between managers and employees, where there is no history, is what the default should be, trust or skepticism. Many employees think managers should trust them until they demonstrate they’re undependable. Many managers act as if every employee is a thief and incompetent slacker who has to earn trust inch by inch.

If the world were binary we’d have to choose: Either trust until trust is violated or distrust until credibility is proven. The world is, luckily enough, far from binary, and good leaders have more choices than just those two, as Hamlet demonstrates in this soliloquy, his response to Lord Polonius:

Hamlet: “You ask of trust? My trust you have … to have considered these questions and more prior to this visit. What I ask of you is no more than thou shouldst have demanded of thyself in knowing thine own mind — no more. Which is as King Claudius shall demand of me as well, that I am sure of your mind and my own before an undertaking so vast as this I endorse.

“Trust? Thou has it. Or, did once. With greater clarity your visage I now observe. For your intellect my respect continues, free of doubt. Your ability to deliver answers remains also untainted in my view. It is your knowledge of the questions themselves for which my confidence is reduced and must be restored.”

Trust, that is, is neither something to bestow nor withhold automatically. It evolves through an ongoing process, to whit:

Polonius: “My liege, permit me my notion to rephrase: I beg your leave to review for the kingdom of Denmark the goods and ills of abandoning much of our trade with William of Gates, increasing instead that with Linus of Finland. Wouldst thou consider this time well spent?”

Hamlet (pleased): “I have long pondered an alliance with Prince Linus of Finland, and had wished a loyal lieutenant would offer his assistance. Develop your list of questions for our mutual review. In a fortnight we shall re-engage to your progress consider.”

See? These things don’t have to end in tragedy.

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