At a company meeting last week, an employee named.  Noah cited a statistic that seemed too exaggerated to be accurate. A colleague, confused by his numbers, somewhat rudely challenged asking, “Where did you hear that?” Noah pointed to a woman named Sarah several rows back and said “She told me.”

By the barely audible moan from the group, I could tell one of the three lost a lot of face with the group that day. Who do you think it was?  Was it Sarah, the source of the inflated facts? Was it the ill-mannered colleague who challenged the information? Neither of them. The one who really came out looking like a insecure little puss was Noah. Why?

A COOL COMMUNICATOR never pass blame on to someone else for what he/she has said. Noah should have just confidently conceded with something like, “I understand that number does sound unusually large. Let me check with my source and get back to you.” People respect your taking the hit and shielding someone from blame.