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>It taught me that I can take a moment to gather my thoughts and nothing bad would happen.

One high-level exec at IBM had a habit during the Q&A at analyst meetings of writing down questions on index cards before answering. He partly did this as a process of making sure he understood the question. I'm sure it was also his way of taking a bit of time to collect his thoughts.

Preparation is hugely important of course. And sometimes the correct answer to a question is "We'll get back to you on that." But it's also incredibly useful to be able to deal with curveballs whether it's an unexpected question, an A/V meltdown, or a demo failure.




That's really interesting. I'm always nervous that taking too long to respond will make me look incompetent but if I was in the room and someone calmly took the time to write a question down I think my impression would be "wow, they're so in control" because they aren't bothered by silence.




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