The Q&A is a great chance to clarify any points which were not clear to the audience. This is an opportunity to really reinforce some points we made in the talk, to make them even more impactful with the audience. We can also draw on our reserve power and add extra content which we couldn’t include in the speech. Apart from when we were mingling with our audience before the talk starts, this is the next opportunity to interact with our listeners.
We have to take some precautionary steps to prepare for the Q&A. When we are designing the talk, we have to think of the likely questions we may get, so that we are well prepared to answer them. We also have to understand that the Q&A is like a street fight – there are no rules. Members of the audience can argue with us, call us a charlatan, debate with us and dismiss everything we have said. People can also ask us anything they like, however off topic.
There are a couple of steps we need for dealing with hostile audiences. From the very start we should clearly state how long we have for questions. We may find the hostile audience is quite hard to deal with and then we suddenly say we have to go and we look like a coward running away. Once we have stated the time limit for questions, we can just say, “we have now reached the end of question time” and then we can go into our second close and leave with our dignity intact.
After stating the time limit for questions we say, “who has the first question”. This is a subtle hint that we are expecting a lot of questions. If we don’t get any questions, we just say, “a question I am often asked is….”. We state our own question and then we answer it. Usually this gives people in the audience the courage to ask their question because the ice has been broken.
The type of people who go after a speaker are trying to show everyone how clever and tough they are. When we receive this type of question we look straight at the person, but try not to move our head. In polite society, we sometimes nod when people ask a question to give them encouragement, but we don’t want to look like we are agreeing with them and the thesis of the hostile question.
We look straight at the person, no nodding and just hear them out. We keep calm because we know we have a sure fire way of dealing with hostile questioners. Once they have finished, we stop looking at them and now look at the rest of the audience. We paraphrase what they have said.
We do this in a special way, where we take all the sting out of the question. For example, if they said, “Isn’t it true that your company is going to fire 10% of the workforce, just before the end of the year, when it is impossible to find another job”. If it wasn’t a hostile question, we could just repeat it because often people sitting in other parts of the audience couldn’t hear what the questioner was saying.
We absolutely do not want to say, “The questions was, is it true that we are going to sack 10% of the staff before the end of the year”. Instead, we paraphrase and purposely weaken the invective. We could say, “the question was about staffing”. Now we turn back to face our hostile questioner.
By paraphrasing, we have given ourselves between five to ten seconds to consider how best to answer the question. We proceed to give the first six seconds of the answer, while maintaining eye contact with our questioner. After that, we never give them any eye contact again for the rest of the event. They feed off attention, so we now strategically cut off their supply of attention and we look at the other audience members and talk to them. We keep making six seconds of eye contact with the others in the audience until we finish. The hostile questioner becomes deflated, because they are not getting any of the limelight and attention they seek.
The other people attending the event will be amazed at how professionally you handled the situation, which they know had it been them, they would have had no idea what to do. Our personal and professional brands have just been elevated.
We now say, “who has the next question?”. If it not hostile, we can repeat the question so that everyone can hear it and we then answer it. Again, we start the answer by directing our eye contact to the person asking the question and then move our eye contact to others in the room for six seconds each. If we want a bit more time to think about our answer, we can just insert a pause. Or we might use a cushion. This is a brief neutral statement that buys us thinking time. For example, we could say, “Thank you, I am glad you have raised that point”. We wrap things up by saying, “We have time for one final question. Who has the last question?”. We answer it and then we go into our second close.
Generally speaking, we want our answers to be concise, so that more people can interact with us by asking questions. It is also advisable to be brief because we will get ourselves into less trouble with our answers!