Q & A sessions aren’t exactly very popular among speakers. As one of the professional speakers, Barry Gibbons, said “My experience tells me that these sessions are high-risk, low-reward interludes for everybody involved” He is right. In fact, I know of a lot of professional speakers who will talk the organizers out of having one. Here’s why.

There is a lot of uncertainty around Q & A sessions. One, you can’t control the questions that are thrown at you. Two, you can’t control the people who asked questions. (If you are “lucky”, you will have a fair share of ramblers, hecklers and pricks who are out to get you) Three, you can’t control the outcome of the Q & A session. It doesn’t help that a badly conducted Q & A session can easily ruin your painstakingly prepared speech and leave your audience with a sour taste.

So how exactly do you effectively manage a Q & A session.

One way is of course to do without one. Right from the start of your presentation, you can inform your audience that there will not be a formal Q & A session. Instead, you will stay behind to answer any questions they may have. There are many advantages to this approach. First, you are in control of how you end your presentation. Second, audience who are fearful about public speaking will still have a chance to have their questions answered. Third, you save yourself any embarassment of a badly conducted Q & A session.

However, what if you must have one? Here are some quick tips on how to manage one effectively.

1. If you have a huge audience, make sure you have an effective system of soliciting questions.

One way is to have helpers standby with portable microphones (that work!). The other is to have standing microphones at several accessible points, so that at one time, you can have 4 - 5 people ready with their questions. Alternatively, you can have the audience write down their questions on slips of paper and have them passed on to the helpers, and then to you. This way, you can filter your questions and also encourage more participation from the audience.

2. Prepare questions in advance to break the inevitable silence.

This is particularly important if you are speaking in an Asian country. Asians are more passive and are less inclined to raise their hands to ask questions. (although this trend is reducing in the recent years) Hence, there is bound to be a long silence before some brave soul asks the first question.

What you can do is to either prepare some questions in advance. They can either come from you or your organizers. What I like to do is to get the organizers to collect questions from my audience a week before my presentation. This way, I can ensure that I cover what matters to my audience. And any left over questions can be handled during the Q & A session.

So if no one raises their hands to ask, you can always pose a rhetorical question like “I get this question a lot…” or “One of you asked me this really good question at tea break which I thought I will elaborate here…”

3. Plant questions in the crowd.

This is an excellent solution to break the deafening silence at every Q & A session. You can either get some of your pals in the crowd or organizers to do so. This is especially helpful if you have extra material that you want to cover, but you have no time to do so during the actual presentation. These planted questions can help you lead in to the areas you want to talk about.

Couple of other things to observe as you manage a Q & A session.

1. Repeat the question aloud so that everyone in the audience can hear it.
2. If the question from your audience is too long or complicated, you have the right to rephrase or shorten.
3. Do not bluff your way through. If you do not know the answer, say so and promise to check back.
4. Never ever argue with your questioner. Period. Even if he is trying to give you a hard time, stay cool. If you have to, end the conversation and take it offline.
5. If you sense that the questioner is trying to put you in a difficult situation, you do not have to answer the question. Instead, question the intention behind the question. Or question the premise. This will usually silent the troublemaker and protect your interests.

   For example,

   Troublemaker: I heard that your company isn’t exactly doing very well, so what gives you the right to be here to speak?
   You: Interesting. Where did you get your information from?

   Troublemaker: So are you saying that what you are offering is much better than what Mr S is offering?
   You: Out of curiosity, how did you even come to this conclusion?

   Troublemaker: Is coaching better than NLP?
   You: Hmm.. what made you ask this question?

   If you want more tips on handling Q & A session, you got to check out this and this from Andrew Dlugan’s blog. Great stuff!

   Cheers,
   Eric Feng
   Your Public Speaking Coach

   P.S: To all the lovey dovey couples out there… good luck to your wallets! (It’s just my way of saying Happy Valentine’s Day!)

   P.P.S: I am very very excited because I finally got a copy of “On Writing” at the local library. This is an extremely valuable resource for all speakers. Carmine Gallo, one of top communications coaches in USA has also mailed me his latest book “Fire Them Up!”. Will share with all of you about the book pretty soon. Meanwhile, happy V-day!

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