Chapter 2. Effective Management Implemented
Worst Case Scenario
Soldiers prepare for battle by conducting realistic maneuvers. Athletes prepare for competition by practicing with extra resistance or weights. Politicians prepare for debates by staging mock rehearsals with skilled stand-ins for their opponents.
In preparing you to step into the line of fire when you open the floor to questions, let’s assume the worst case scenario: that all the questions you will be asked will be the most hostile possible…like those Ruth Corley flung at Bob Newhart or like those Mike Wallace fired at thousands of interviewees. If you can learn to handle that caliber of ammunition, you can learn to handle any question.
To raise the bar even further, let’s assume that all your Q&A sessions will be conducted in large groups: the one-against-many dynamic. If you can survive those odds, you will be able to handle any question in any encounter…even one-to-one.
Maximum Control in Groups
In most large group settings with 50 or more people in the audience, the presenter usually has a microphone, and the audience does not, which allows the presenter to deliver the full presentation uninterrupted. In this situation, the audience members usually hold their questions to the end. In small group settings, the opposite is true; because of the informality and immediacy, the audience members freely ask questions at any time during the presentation, which usually turns the presentation into discussion. Nevertheless, in each setting, the presenter must always remain in control whenever a question is asked.
Let’s start with the large group. At the end of a presentation, the presenter opens the floor to questions and then proceeds to step through the following inflection points:
• Recognize the questioner
• Yield the floor
• Retake the floor
• Provide an answer
After the answer, the cycle starts again and continues on to another member of the audience, and then another, in recurrent clockwise cycles.
The Q&A Cycle
Each of the steps in the cycle provides an opportunity to exercise control, and as you will see, those control measures are applicable to both large and small groups.
Open the Floor
Control the Time
When the presentation is done and you open the floor to questions, say, “We have time for only a few questions,” “I’ve got to catch a plane and don’t have time for questions,” “We’ll take all your questions in the breakout session,” or “I’ll be here for the rest of the afternoon to answer any question you might have.” It doesn’t matter what you say. It matters that you say it up front and set expectations.
Then, as you get closer to the end of your Q&A session, fulfill your forecast by starting to count down: “Three more questions,” “Two more,” “One more,” “Last question.” Exert time management.
Control the Traffic
In what is very likely a carryover from grade school, most people in large groups almost always raise their hands when they want to speak. That practice often carries forward in small groups. You can leverage that custom by raising your hand when you start your Q&A session, implicitly inviting your audience members to raise theirs if they want to be recognized. When you open the floor, raise your hand and say, “Who has a question?” Your audience might not comply and launch right into a question, but you have a better chance if you establish this signal. Of course, this tactic is only appropriate in audiences where there is a peer relationship. Do not raise your hand when standing in front of a group of potential investors or the Board of Directors.
In small groups, all bets are off. The informality of these sessions makes these suggestions null and void. In these cases, skip the first step and advance to the second.
Recognize the Questioner
Let’s say three hands go up at some point either during or after your presentation. You get to choose which one to recognize. Use an open hand and do not point. All too often, presenters or speakers point to indicate their selection. This is perfectly acceptable in a bakery, but not in presentations. To avoid this unconscious tendency in your Q&A sessions, exercise a simple arithmetic equation: one plus three. Extend your forefinger, but roll out the other three fingers to create an open palm. Receive your questioners openly.
In presidential press conferences, tradition has it that the president addresses a few select reporters by name. You are not the president of the United States. You might be the president of your company, but you do not have the same privileges.
For instance, let’s say you know John, but you don’t know the man seated behind him. You recognize John first and call him by name. Then you recognize the man behind John and call him “Sir.” The second man will feel the outsider.
Take the same circumstances but reverse the order. The first person you recognize is the man behind John, and you call him “Sir.” No problem. Then you recognize John, and call him “Sir,” too. Because you know John, you are not offending him.
The ground rule is: If you know the name of every person in the room, call everyone by name. If you do not know the name of every person in the room, call no one by name. If you call the names of only selected people, you run the risk of implying favoritism at least and collusion at worst.
Yield the Floor
Let’s say that you recognize the gentleman or the woman in the middle of the back of the room, and you now yield the floor to that person. This is a very big moment. Your motor has been running at full speed delivering your presentation. During that entire time, that audience member’s motor has been idle. You step on the brakes and screech to a halt, and that person’s motor suddenly lurches into motion.
How do most people ask questions…clear, crisp and succinct? No, most of the time their questions are long and rambling. Why? Is it because your audiences are not very bright? No, it is because they have just taken in a great deal of information and are still processing your ideas, most of which are new to them. Furthermore, all this mental activity occurs primarily in the right hemisphere of the brain, which happens to process data in a nonlinear sequence. Finally, by suddenly becoming the focus of attention for the rest of the audience, the questioner becomes nervous and exhibits the harried symptoms of Fight or Flight. That person’s ill-formed thoughts then come tumbling out in a disjointed, run-on statement, which may or may not even take the form of a question.
In the meantime, you, who are very knowledgeable and very clear about your own subject matter, receive your questioner’s discursive statement in heightened state of alertness and perceive it as confused. All these diametrically opposite dynamics can produce dramatic results.
How to Lose Your Audience in Five Seconds Flat
Try this exercise: Stand up and ask a seated colleague to ask you a long, rambling question on any subject. It can be about the weather, the news, or your business. Ask that person to keep their eyes fixed on you as they ramble. Shortly after they start, thrust your hands into your pockets and settle back onto one foot. Watch what happens. Usually, the person’s ramble will start to sputter and slow down. Ask the person how your slouch felt to them, and they will very likely say that it felt as if you weren’t listening.
I do this exercise in my private sessions with my clients, and they tell me, “You look like you weren’t interested,” “You were bored,” “You were being impatient,” or “You could care less.”
When a presenter sends that kind of message to an audience, the effect can be devastating. That moment arrests all forward progress. All communication stops. You cannot even contemplate proceeding to the next two vital inflection points in the Q&A cycle (Figure 2.1): Retake the floor and Provide the answer. In fact, we will defer any consideration of these points for two entire chapters until you learn what to do when you yield the floor: Listen effectively.
Figure 2.1. The Q&A cycle.