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06 Time for questions - Tips

Page history last edited by Béatrice H. Alves 14 years, 7 months ago


 

Handling the question and answer session

 

Here is a 5 step approach to handling questions along with some additional tips to make your next question and answer session go smoother.

  1. Listen to the entire question
  2. Pause and allow yourself time to value the question and listener. REPEAT the question out load so the entire audience can hear it. It is important that everyone "hear" the question or the answer you provide may not make sense to some of the people. By repeating the question, this will allow you some additional time to evaluate the question and formulate a response.
  3. Credit The Person for asking the question. You may say something like, "That was a great question" or, "Glad you asked that question" or even, "I get asked that question by many people". One word of caution. If you credit one person with asking a question, be sure to credit EVERYONE for asking a question. You don't want people to feel their question was not as important.
  4. Respond to the Question honestly and the best you can. If you do NOT know an answer to a question, do not try to fake it. Be honest, and tell them you do not know but DO promise to research the answer for them and DO get back to them.
  5. Bridge to the next question by asking them a question. "Does that answer your question?", "Is that the kind of information you were looking for?". This is critical.. Once they respond to you, "YES" you now have permission to go on to the next person. This also gives them one more opportunity to say, "No" and allow them to clarify their question more by asking it again.

 

You can read more in this article.

 

 

 

 

Anticipating questions

 

If you know your topic well and know who your audience is, it is possible to anticipate most of the questions that will be asked. When preparing your presentation, always try to make a list of questions you expect to be asked. Some of the most common questions will be something like this:

 

 

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What has to be done?

How much does it cost?

What are the alternatives?

Who will be responsible?

How long does it take?

Is there a deadline?

Do we get support?

What can go wrong?

 

 

 

Dealing with interruptions

 

Dealing with interruptions

Sometimes you may be asked questions during the presentation, even if you have asked the audience to wait. Whereas some questions can and should be answered quickly (for example, when a participant hasn’t understood something you’ve said), you might prefer to postpone unwelcome questions or comments.

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If you don’t mind, I’ll deal with this question later in my presentation.

Can we get back to that a bit later?


Would you mind waiting with your questions
until the question and answer session at the end?

 

Summarizing after interruptions

After answering questions, especially those that require a longer answer, it is sometimes necessary to remind the audience what you were talking about before the interruption.

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Before we go on, let me briefly summarize the points we’ve discussed.

So, now I’d like to return to what we were discussing earlier.

So, back to what I was saying about…

 

 

 

 

Reforming questions

It is sometimes necessary to reformulate a question (i.e. say it in another way) before answering it. This not only give you time to think, it also allows you to make sure you have understood the question. With a large or noisy audience, it allows the other participants to hear the question (again) and finally, it gives you the chance to change the tone of the question, e.g. by making it less aggressive.

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I see. So, what you’re asking is…

If I understand you correctly, you want to know…

OK, let me just repeat your question so everybody can hear it.

If I could just rephrase your question…

 

The question is:

You reformulate to make it:

By:

Negative
Isn’t there a better solution?

Positive:
What would be a better solution?

Leaving out negative words such as:
no, never, none

Aggressive
Do you honestly believe we can get the contact?

Neutral
You’re asking whether I think it is possible to get the contract?

Avoiding words which sound aggressive or have a negative meaning such as honestly, really, disaster

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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