この記事では、プレゼン後の質疑応答に備えるための3つのヒントをご紹介しています。 記事は英語です。 どうぞお役立てください！
What’s more scary than giving a presentation? The Q&A session after the presentation.
A Japanese executive who I’d been coaching for a keynote speech emailed me the other day because he’d just found out from the conference organizers that he would have a Q&A too. He was worried.
I assured him that we could prepare and practice for the Q&A.
The good news is that he rocked his presentation and Q&A (wahoo!!!), so let me share with you the steps we took to prepare and practice for the Q&A in the hope that this will help you too.
1. List potential questions
First, we listed all the questions he could think of that the audience might ask. We then added questions from his colleagues and from me. The result was a list of 38 potential questions.
2. Understand techniques to answer questions with confidence
I taught him these techniques:
Listen until the end of the question. Some presenters are eager to end the Q&A, so they start answering before the questioner has finished. This can result in answering the wrong question and/or making the questioner feel unheard.
Paraphrase. Repeat the question in your own words. This is useful for three reasons: 1. You can confirm that you’ve understood the question properly – especially if it was complex, 2. You can make sure that other audience members heard the question, 3. You can take a moment to think about your answer. For example
Question: What do you expect to be the biggest challenges for the industry in the next five years?
Answer: The biggest challenges in the next five years? I expect…
Or if the question was complex, you may start with “So your question is [restate the question]?”
At the same time, you don’t need to paraphrase every question. If the question is clear and everyone can hear, it’s fine to answer without paraphrasing first.
Pause – if you need to. Many presenters are uncomfortable with silence. However, pausing before you answer suggests that you’re thinking carefully about your response. That shows respect for your audience. If you need time to think and you’re really uncomfortable with the silence, you can say, “Please give me a moment to think about that…”
Say you don’t know – if you need to. Do you dread not knowing the answer? Think you’ll look bad? You should be an expert in the subject that you’re talking about, but that doesn’t mean you need to have the answer to absolutely everything. Provided you’ve established your credibility during your presentation, for one or two questions you can say, “I don’t know the answer to that” or “I hadn’t thought of that. Thank you for raising it.”
Ask someone else – if you need to. If you don’t know the answer to a question, you may be able to call on someone else from your organization or someone else in the audience to answer. Only do that if you’re certain that person can answer. If they can’t, you’ll both look bad.
Offer to follow up – if you really, really need to. Some presenters are quick to offer to follow up if they don’t have the answer, for example saying, “Let me email that to you later.” Be careful though. You’re adding to your workload. The audience member may be able to find out for themselves instead.
3. Practice, practice, practice in multiple ways
The more you practice, the more comfortable you’ll feel on the day. Here are three different ways you can do that:
Get a colleague or coach to ask questions. You can practice answering each question to be sure you can respond clearly and with confidence.
Rehearse in front of a group. Go through your entire presentation and Q&A with a group. The executive did this three times with audiences varying from around 5 to around 50 of his colleagues. Each time we held a Q&A, I told the audience it was fine not to be clear in their questions, so that we could make the rehearsal more challenging and it would be easier on the day.
Make an audio recording of the questions. As an extra surprise for the executive, I recorded all of our questions and emailed them to him for when he arrived in the States the day before his presentation. This way he could get some extra practice to be really well prepared. You don’t necessarily need a coach for this. You can make your own recording.
The executive emailed me after the conference:
“I got many questions about our technology. It was a really fantastic opportunity for me and for our company. I really appreciate you. Without your support, I could not have such great experience. I had a lot of fun communicating with many talented people.”
Emails like that make my day 🙂
So I hope that you can use these techniques to prepare and practice for your next Q&A and get your message across with clarity and confidence.
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Huge thanks to TopTia for the photo!