Advanced Presentation Skills Malaysia | How To Handle Questions During The Presentation
How do you handle questions as part of your presentation?
What do you do if something goes really wrong?
Question Time
Not all presentations include questions, but if they do, you should be prepared. If you are, this can be the most stimulating and memorable part of the event for you and for your audience. What follows are some things to remember when dealing with questions.
The Big Question
When should you answer questions? There’s no right strategy for all situations. It depends on the audience, the content, and the structure of the presentation, and your personality.
You can decide to take questions as they come up through- out the presentation. If so, you’re far less likely to frustrate members of the audience who have questions early on. You can reduce misunderstandings and uncertainties, rather than allow them to develop. But it also takes more time and, if you’re not really comfortable with handling questions, more energy. And it can take the presentation off track if you’re not careful.
You can decide to leave time for questions and answers at the end. That way you don’t have to deal with interruptions. But you may find yourself surrounded by participants with questions as soon as you announce a break. Also, if your presentation is structured to build up their knowledge to a culmination, an action point, you may have a faulty foundation and not realize it until the end.
You can decide on a compromise: pause after major sections of your presentation to take any questions. Also, if you do so just before a break, you create a natural opportunity for shy individuals to approach you during a break or for those interested in following up on questions raised.
Planning for the Questions
For some people, the hardest part of doing a presentation is handling questions. If they’re already nervous, this is the most likely time for the butterflies to suddenly rise up again and go crazy.
The key is to maintain control of the situation. To do so, you need to be ready. Here is a five-step process for handling questions:
Anticipate the questions that might come up.
Listen carefully to the questioner.
Repeat or rephrase the question.
Answer clearly and concisely.
Go to the next question.
Anticipate the Questions
Don’t just trust your luck, assuming that you’ll be ready and able to answer any questions. Prepare in advance. You know the content of your presentation, the objectives, and the participants, as discussed in their background, experience, needs, and interests. So, put yourself in their seats. What questions would you ask?
Jot down the questions most likely to come up, one to a note card. Then, go through them, one by one, and think about how you should answer each question. Jot down the essence of a good answer. You don’t need to write out complete answers or memorize them. You’ll be prepared and your answers will flow naturally and spontaneously, but professionally.
Then, any time you have a moment or two before you give your presentation, pull out the cards and review your questions and answers. This is an excellent way to calm your nerves, continuing to prepare instead of just worrying.
This preparation should help you be ready for any questions and to anticipate them with confidence. Show your confidence by using open hand gestures toward the audience when you ask for questions. Show your confidence also by waiting for them confidently, your arms relaxed at your sides. Don’t fold your arms: that signals that you don’t really want questions.
If participants are reluctant to ask questions, you can turn the tables and ask them to answer one or more of your questions. Allow enough time for them to think; counting mentally to five or 10 slowly should be enough.
If participants are tentative, encourage them. After all, it’s not a quiz, just a way to help them realize what questions they should be asking. This strategy generally works well if they feel like they’ve gotten all of the content. You’ll probably uncover some difficulties, gaps, or misunderstandings. Then, some members of your audience will likely start asking questions. If not, what do you do? That depends.
If they seem tired or eager to take a break, obey one of the basic rules about asking for questions: don’t do it. You might be able to wring a few questions out of them, but even the best answers in the world are unlikely to have much effect on them. If you’re unsure, just ask them if they need a break. Then you won’t be wasting time for minimal results and they’ll appreciate your sensitivity.
If they seem alert and comfortable, don’t do anything. You’ve given them ample opportunity, they seem to understand what you’ve presented, and you’ve varied the pace of your presentation. So, just say, “OK. I think we’re all ready to get back to the presentation.”
Some presenters, if they suspect in advance that they won’t get many questions, set some up. They plant a friend or a colleague in the audience with a question or two. This strategy can be risky, because if anybody recognizes that the inquisitive “participant” is not one of them, it could undermine your rap- port. On the other hand, if it’s staged in such a way as to be obviously a plant, there’s no sense of deception and a good laugh may get the ball rolling.
Listen Carefully
When someone begins to ask a question, focus on that person. Your eye contact shows respect and attention. Listen to the whole question before you start to answer. Otherwise, you’ll likely seem rude. You’ll certainly seem to not care about the audience. And you could be very embarrassed when you give a great answer, only to have the person respond, “But that’s not what I was asking.”
In fact, listen to the whole question before you even think about the answer. Sometimes questions wander around or take a sudden twist, to end up somewhere that the answer you’re mentally formulating won’t go. However, if the participant is fumbling to get the question out, you can tactfully intervene to help him or her phrase it. But then, be sure to verify that the end result is indeed the question the participant was trying to ask.
Repeat or Rephrase
There are at least three reasons to repeat or rephrase a question:
to verify understanding
to maintain control of your emotions
to buy time to think about the answer
It’s easier to maintain your poise and not allow your voice to betray any negative emotions if you first repeat or rephrase the question before answering it.
If someone makes a statement rather than asking a question, you can either ask him or her to rephrase it as a question or you can do it yourself. It’s simpler if you do it yourself—if the statement-to-question conversion is straightforward. Otherwise, just ask, “What is your question?”—but without letting it sound like a challenge or a rebuke.
A participant says, “It doesn’t seem practical to use this program to track all of our activities.”
What do you do?
You can rephrase that statement: “The question is ‘Is it practical to use this program to track all of our activities?’” or “You want to know if it’s practical to use this program to track all of your activities.”
You can ask the participant, “What is your question?”
The do-it-yourself approach is generally safer than asking for the statement in question form, for two reasons. First, the participant is likely to think that you’re quibbling over the form when what really matters is the content. (For some, this may evoke bad memories of elementary school teachers.) Second, the participant may take your response as an evasion and so hit even harder: “I just want to know how anybody with any brains could expect us to use this stupid program when we’re already too busy doing our jobs! That’s my question!”
Obviously, it’s easy to quickly slip into some negative energy.
If you rephrase the statement, you control the language, and you’re less likely to have a Q&A go bad. Some presenters react to each question with a positive comment, such as “Good question!” Although this reaction can make the questioner feel more at ease and encourage others to raise questions, it can quickly lose its value. Let’s face it: not every question is great. And even if you’re lucky enough to get only great questions, you don’t want to react to each of them in exactly the same way. Also, some people might get the feeling that you’re using your comment just to buy time to think.
So, try varying your positive reaction. You could vary the wording: e.g., “That’s an excellent question” or “Hmmm, you’re going to make me work here!” You could vary the timing: react immediately or react after repeating or rephrasing the question.
No matter what, keep your reactions positive. To paraphrase that age-old advice: “If you can’t say something nice about a question, don’t say anything at all.” Remain positive—even if for no other reason than to help keep calm, poised, and confident.
What if the question is vague? “Often a question is virtually unanswerable because of the kind of question it is— long, winding, complicated, multi-faceted, or obscure. . . . Don’t try to answer a vague question because there is no way you can please the seeker. Get a better question.” She suggests one of the following tactics:
Ask to have the question repeated.
Ask a question of your own.
Ask for clarification.
Ask for a definition.
Clarify or define a point yourself.
To handle such questions, you have to keep in mind these tactics, but you also have to be able to sense the attitude of the person, the concern behind the question, and concentrate on resolving the situation.
Answer Clearly and Concisely
Every question in a presentation can become an important turning point. Usually, it all depends on how you deal with it.
Stay calm. Be open to the opportunity to help your audience better understand what you’ve presented—or to indicate what you should cover in the time remaining. Above all, don’t let any question cause you to lose your poise—and perhaps the positive sense of community and rapport you’ve developed.
Don’t rush to answer. Give yourself enough time to answer intelligently, articulately, concisely, and professionally.
Taking a little time to start answering shows that you’re thinking. In fact, you should generally avoid answering as quickly as possible. It suggests canned responses—or little thinking.
When you answer, focus your answer on the question: don’t talk around it or overload the answer with superfluous information or verbiage. Above all, don’t just repeat what you said during the presentation. Repeat key points, yes, but with explanations or examples. If your words didn’t convey your message the first time, will simply repeating them work better the second time?
Support your answer briefly. If any participants want more support, they’ll ask—or you’ll sense it from their reactions to your answer.
If your answer is complex, structure it around points. Begin by stating, for example, “There are three issues involved here” or “Depending on the specific situation, there are four courses of action.” Then, count off the points one by one (using your fingers as visual cues) as you make them.
Choose your words carefully. Among the winning entries in a contest for the worst analogies ever written in a high school essay was the following: “Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.” Unfortunately, many of us occasionally fumble around for the right word or settle for something less.
If you’ve prepared for your presentation by anticipating likely questions and formulating good answers, you’re probably going to find that the right words come more easily. If you still have trouble coming up with the right words, don’t panic. It happens to all of us.
Just apologize. Anybody who’s ever been in your shoes or endured an oral exam will empathize. Recover and try to do better with the next question.
When somebody asks a question, maintain eye contact for the length of the question and the start of your answer, then look around at the other members of your audience. A question may come from one person, but the answer should be for all.
What if you don’t know the answer to a question? The best advice is not to act like you do—you’ll probably get caught and you’ll lose your credibility. The best reaction may be to admit that you’ll don’t know and offer to check on the question and to report back to the participants. This works, of course, only if you’ll have an occasion to meet with them again. You can also give the answer later to the person who arranged for your presentation, to pass along to the group.
You could also call upon the knowledge and expertise of others in the room. However, in doing this, you need to be careful not to lose control of the Q&A session. And if you don’t know the group, you don’t know whether you can trust the “expert” who offers the answer.
Go to the Next Question
As you finish answering a question, you should be looking around the room. That’s a signal that you’ve finished your answer and you’re inviting other questions. And the participants should be signalling back to you. Maybe a hand is raised, an obvious signal. Maybe you notice that somebody is fidgeting, eager to speak.
What if the same person wants to continue? If he or she has another question, answer it. Then try to move on to others. If it’s the same question, you should point out that you’ve already answered the question as well as possible and you expect that others have questions, too. If the person insists on pursuing the same question or following up on your answer, you have two options. First, if enough others seem interested, tell the person, “OK. How about one follow-up question and then we move on to another question?” Second, if you sense that interest in that question is low, offer to meet during the next break or after the presentation, with that person and anybody else who’s interested, to discuss it further.
Especially if you’re taking questions during your presentation, don’t allow the Q&A to go on for too long. How long is “too long”? Watch the participants and read their expressions and body language to gauge their interest.
When it seems that interest has declined appreciably, simply announce that you’ll be glad to take any remaining questions during the break, at the end of the presentation, or after.
When a Question Is More than a Question
Some “questions” aren’t questions at all, but rather statements or even objections that aren’t intended as requests for information, an explanation, or an opinion. They’re challenges. If possible, rephrase the statement as a question. Then, you can pro- vide an answer. You may even defuse any negative feelings with a humorous approach.
For example, imagine that someone “asks,” “You’re a moron if you think we’re going to use any of this stuff!” Brutal. You then turn the statement into a question: “So, you’re asking me, ‘Are you a moron?’” You pause a moment, especially if members of the audience laugh, then answer (to the whole audience, not just the individual), “Well, I’d hate to take a vote on that right here and now” or “I’m not a psychiatrist, so I’m not qualified to evaluate my mental level.” Your poise should turn a tough situation to your advantage.
You can prepare better for a difficult crowd than for difficult individuals, because you should be able to predict general attitudes toward the presentation and predict general reactions.
It’s more difficult to prepare for the individuals who hit you with “question sharps.” But, if you handle the questions as if they were asked sincerely to get an answer, you’re likely to have the other members of the audience on your side. And sometimes a lack of peer support for the challenger or even a show of peer pressure against the challenging behavior may be enough to quiet that individual or at least take the edge off his or her attitude.
If a question is hostile, don’t treat it as you would a normal question. Don’t repeat it. Don’t allow negative language and feelings a place in your Q&A. This only reinforces the negativity. Instead, do your best to neutralize things by rephrasing the question.
Let’s take an example. Somebody speaks up: “This company has a history of exploiting its employees. Now they want us to change over to this new system, which will increase our work for no extra pay. How do you feel about being used to indoctrinate us to accept the new system?” Suddenly you’re facing a sticky situation. Rephrase the challenge as a neutral question, to shape it constructively: “Your question, then, is ‘Can you explain the advantages of the new system for employees?’”
Pause for a moment to allow the others to adjust to this shift in focus. Then, answer the question.
As you finish your answer, indicate that you’re moving on to the next question, by walking away from the hostile participant and scanning the audience for a new question. Your body language sends the message loud and clear.
Sometimes the negativity may be pervasive. In that case, you may decide after another question or two that it would be best to wrap up the Q&A. Announce that you’ll take one final question. Again, your message should come through loud and clear.
