Sometimes an offhand question can catch you off guard:

“Cool, so what kinds of people can I connect you with?”, she asked.

Do you have an immediate and good answer?

If not, maybe you’re also thrown into a bit of thinking loop, like we were.

It was a genuine and small offer, not a pivotal point in the conversation, not intended as a trick of any kind.

But some questions wield more power than their answer ever could.

Small adrenaline rush.

You know you should absolutely be able to give an intelligent and correct answer at a moment’s notice, but you just don’t have it. At work, this might be about an important KPI; in your private life—not to be too cliché—your wedding anniversary.

When confronted with one of these questions, you face a fight-or-flight set of options:

→ either go into brutal honesty mode

→ or bullshit your way through it.

In this particular instance, of course we chose to stumble our way through some story about a vague type of person we would love to be introduced to.

It might as well have been the Oracle of Delphi’s response to “what will the person I marry be like”. Nonsense that sounded all right in the moment, but with zero chance that she’ll actually remember us when talking to a relevant person.

SIDE NOTE: Did you know that people who sought the counsel of the Oracle in Ancient Greece were known as Consultants? If that isn’t perfect irony, I don’t know what is.

Say the right kinds of words in the right way, and a lot of people will buy into them, regardless of their veracity. She, however, did not.

“It seems to me you actually have no idea who exactly you would like to be talking to.”

That sinking heart feeling when you know you’re getting exposed holds a ton of value. No matter how you react in the moment, you know you’ve found a question you should ponder—and a person who won’t shy away from exposing you.

Find yourself those people who will ask important and difficult questions, especially those with whom you feel comfortable openly sharing your occasional cluelessness.