See if this feels familiar:
You’re in the audience of an enthusiastic presenter. Her slides are pretty good, and she clearly knows her stuff. She drops a lot of knowledge on you. After talking for 20 minutes, she takes a breath and says, “Any questions?” She looks around for a second, scanning the room, then says, “Okay! I’ll keep going then.”
I was discussing this phenomenon with a client recently, and she observed that she has a hard time reading the room in those moments, especially in a virtual setting. So when she’s the presenter, she says, she definitely falls into what I described above: “Any questions? No? Okay, moving on…”
“Do you want them to ask questions?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she answered. “I ask if they have any, and no one says anything.”
Okay. Let’s take this apart a little bit, and think about what’s happening from the audience perspective. They’re taking in new information both visually and aurally, they’re in a group of other people they may or may not know, and if it’s a virtual event, there are other things competing for their attention.
The audience needs several things to be able to participate in a robust question-and-answer session:
- A genuine invitation
- A specific prompt
- A pause
A genuine invitation means that when the presenter stops and asks for questions, they say something that indicates they’re, you know, really asking for questions. Instead of “Any questions?,” try “I’m going to pause now and make time for your questions.”
Pair that with the specific prompt: “How does this idea land on you? What thoughts do you have about X [that I just explained]? How do you see this working with this other thing?”
And finally, you have to pause. For, like, a couple seconds. This gives people enough time to process, gauge what else is happening in the group (is someone else asking a question?), determine that you really are serious about eliciting questions, formulate the question, and raise their hand. This takes a few seconds! It may feel like a long time to you, but remember all the things the audience is processing, and give them plenty of time to catch up and figure out what they want to ask.
If you’re serious about creating an interactive element of your talk or presentation, commit to creating the environment that allows questions to surface.
