How to Handle the Dreaded Q&A

[Paul Archer]

I was at a conference recently and the speaker, who had done a pretty good job with his presentation, was about to take questions from the 50 plus audience.

It was time for the dreaded Q&A Session. And you could tell this speaker wasn’t looking forward to it as his body language closed down and his voice demonstrated fear and trepidation.

As always, audiences want speakers to do well. It’s a human DNA thing. No one wants a speaker to bomb. And I was hoping this speaker would follow the golden rules of Q&As and do a good job.

Let me remind you the golden rules.

Question and answer sessions are excellent audience participation techniques which work really well with larger groups where spontaneous questions just don’t work. I mean for groups of 20 plus. They allow the speaker to demonstrate their knowledge or wisdom, they encourage audience involvement and they help the presentation to be linked to the needs and problems of the audience.

So you should run Q&As.

But you simply mustn’t leave them to the last moment. That’s a recipe for a damp squid close. Ending on a Q&A can be risky because you don’t know how many questions you’re going to get and it could all end rather meekly.

No, you should plan to run a Q&A session about two thirds into the presentation, when content has been delivered and the audience inspired and educated.

If you must leave the Q&A to the end, plan a finish to your talk – your call to action or summary or “bang” as I call it – but have your Q&A before this planned close. That way if you get few questions, then you just launch into your planned finish, to end on a high.

If you’re worried about getting few questions, prime some audience members beforehand. Alternatively display your mobile number on the big screen and get people to tex you questions as the presentation is delivered. This works very well for younger audiences where mobile phones are their third limb.

If you really want to be really clever, use an audience polling system using mobile phones. When this works it’s very smart and ignites audiences who love to hear what others think. If you want the latest technology for meetings you will want to visit Corbin Ball’s site who is an expert in this area.

http://www.corbinball.com

When taking questions, follow this template:

• Repeat
• Respond
• Review

Hopefully you have a roving microphone, so everyone can hear the question. But it’s always good practice to repeat the question to make sure everyone can hear it. There’s nothing more frustrating than a question from the audience that others can’t hear. You lose interest.

Repeating also gives you valuable thinking time whilst you formulate the answer in your head.
Respond, of course, although if the question is totally irrelevant, it’s quite OK to park it and suggest you have a one to one later. You might upset the questioner but you’ll please everyone else in the audience.
Respond quickly and succinctly. Don’t ramble on and on. This is a game of tennis with a both players involved in an exciting rally. Question, answer, next question, answer, next question and so on.

Give the audience value by getting through a lot of questions if you can.

Finally review the answer. Ask the questioner, “was that useful”or “has that helped you”. And then move on to the next question. A little tip here if the questioner is hostile in any way – trying to catch you out or demonstrate their own expertise which some do, then don’t do the review. When you’ve answered the question say something like “I think we have another question over here" and move on.

A final Q&A tip for you is to focus your eye contact on the whole audience with about 30% of your attention on the questioner. This helps to keep the audience engaged. It also prevents you getting tied in with continuous questions from one person which is equally wearisome for the whole audience.

Keep to your timing that you allocated to the Q&A, thank the audience for their questions and move onto the grand finale that you prepared.

And you’ve made the dreaded Q&A an integral part of your presentation.

My speaker from earlier. How did he do? He did OK, had excellent technical knowledge which was evident from his presentation anyway. He repeated the question which was good, but tended to rumble on with his answer. This is quite common from technical expert speakers unfortunately. And he got a fair few questions. He did well and the audience was thrilled.