Handling questions

Speakers rehearse the talk and improvise the questions, which is the wrong way round given which part the audience remembers.

Preparing for it

Which most people do not.

List the ten questions you would least like to be asked, and prepare answers.

These are generally the obvious weaknesses in your argument, which the audience will also have noticed.

List the ten most likely questions, which are different.

Prepare a short answer for each — thirty seconds rather than a second talk.

And identify the questions you cannot answer, and decide what you will say instead.

The basic technique

For any question.

Listen to the whole question without preparing your answer during it, which is the most common failure and which produces answers to a question that was not asked.

Pause before answering, which signals consideration and buys time.

Repeat or rephrase it if the room may not have heard, which also confirms you understood it.

Answer the question that was asked.

Answer briefly, since long answers reduce the number of questions and lose the room.

And check: "does that answer it?"

When you do not know

The situation people fear most.

Say so.

"I do not know" followed by "I will find out and come back to you", or "my guess would be, and I would want to check", is considerably better received than an evasive answer.

Audiences detect bluffing reliably, and it costs more credibility than the admission would.

And offering to follow up, and then doing it, converts a weakness into a demonstration of reliability.

The hostile question

Which is less common than feared.

Most apparently hostile questions are people expressing a genuine concern badly, or making a point rather than asking.

What works: acknowledging the concern before responding; separating the substance from the tone; answering the reasonable version of the question; and staying warm, since the room is watching how you handle it more than what you say.

What does not: matching the aggression, being defensive, or dismissing the questioner.

And where someone is genuinely trying to score a point, the audience generally sees it, and a calm brief answer wins.

The statement disguised as a question

Common at conferences.

Someone speaks at length and never arrives at a question.

The options: "thank you — I think the question is whether…" and answer that; or "that is an interesting perspective; is there a question I can address?"

Both are acceptable, and the room is generally grateful.

The chair should handle it and frequently does not.

The multi-part question

Which is a trap.

Someone asks three things at once.

The technique: state that there are several parts, answer the one you consider most important, and offer to address the others afterwards or briefly.

Attempting all three produces a rambling answer and loses the room.

And it is entirely acceptable to ask which part they most want answered.

The question you have already answered

Which happens.

Answer it again, briefly, without pointing out that you covered it.

The questioner missed it, which means others may have too.

"To go back over that point briefly" is graceful; "as I said earlier" is not.

Managing the session

If it is yours to manage.

State the format at the start: how long, how many questions, whether questions come at the end or throughout.

Take questions from different parts of the room and from different people rather than the same person repeatedly.

Notice who has not spoken, since the same voices dominate otherwise.

Watch the time and say when you are taking the last question.

And close with a prepared line after the questions, so the last thing heard is yours rather than an answer to someone's tangent.

Panels

A different situation.

Prepare shorter answers, since time is shared.

Do not repeat what a previous panellist said — build on it or disagree.

Address the audience rather than only the moderator.

Come in when you have something to add rather than waiting to be invited, since moderators do not always distribute evenly.

And be willing to disagree, since panels where everyone agrees are dull and forgettable.

Afterwards

The overlooked part.

Note the questions asked, since they reveal what was unclear in the talk.

Follow up on anything you promised to find out, promptly, which is remembered.

And revise the talk based on the questions, since a question asked twice indicates a gap that should be closed in the material rather than in the session.