How to Handle a Hostile Question With Poise—Part 1

Whether delivering a presentation, meeting with a client in the heat of a crisis, or battling with your teen over curfews, how you respond to a hostile question can make or break your credibility for everything else you have to say.

Once, when a newspaper reporter called me, he opened with this line: “I’m calling for your reaction to a story about to run. . . .” (long pause) “I’m doing a story on Mr. X [he called the name of a CEO whom I’d helped write his memoirs].  I’ve just talked to th...