Activity 7.6 - Acknowledge, Bridge, Communicate if it gets tricky
1 - Introduction
You don’t want to ignore any questions you are asked, even if they are hard to answer. Instead, if a question is highly challenging you can engage with it and then steer the interview back to your own communication goals. A common way of doing this is to use a three-step technique called acknowledging, bridging and communicating (ABC).
This process is described below:
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Acknowledging Let the interviewer know you’ve understood the question by either answering it briefly or telling them you don’t know the answer. For example: “That’s an interesting question. All we know at this stage is …” or “I can’t tell you that at this stage. However …” |
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Bridging This stage allows you to move on to what you want to talk about. For example: “I think it’s important to consider what we are doing about the problem” or “Let’s look at what we do know.” |
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Communicating Go back to your key messages and supporting points. Even if you have to repeat yourself a little, it’s better than stumbling on your words. For example: “The real objective of our work is to solve this huge crisis, which millions of people suffer from each year. The latest research shows …” |