How do you start a Q&A session. If you’ve ever been to an event and you might be watching thisvideo because you’re hosting event or you’re about to moderate a Q&A session of some type and youwant it to go really well, right? If you’ve ever been to a QA session that typically follows thepattern of awesome keynote happens and then they go to Q&A and somebody stands up and talks aboutthemselves for 2 minutes and then sort of kind of doesn’t even really ask a question. In this video, I’m going to give you a really innovative and different strategy to host phenomenal Q&Asessions. I’m Chad, I’m the co-author of a book called Ask Powerful Questions Create Conversations That Matter. And by the end of this video, you will know exactly how to do both. Here we go.
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Please, after you are done watching this video, never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever enda keynote or a workshop or anything else with a Q&A. This is the first element actually. Beforeyou even start a QA you need to know that it actually, I really believe should not bethe absolute last thing. If you’ve got a phenomenal keynote speaker, invite them to make a powerful closing. Or if you are the presenter or the speaker the Q&A should be the second to last thing that you do. You want to…. Say you’re going to speak for 60 minutes. You want to speak for maybe 45 minutes then open up 10 minutes for Q&Abut leave 5 minutes for a really powerful closing on your terms as opposed to the audience’s terms. Because the primacy recency effect in psychology says, “We remember what happens first and weremember what happens last most.” You don’t want to roll the dice with what happens last. Youwant to steer the closing to the most memorable, impactful way possible. If that’s areally great story that you want to share or a stat or a question that you want to leave peoplewith, that’s a way more powerful way than ending with an audience member’s question.
How to start a Q&A?
First of all, do not create a microphone in an aisle orjust have people unmute virtually and pop out a question. Silence is one of thegreat arts of conversation. Maybe I would edit this quote maybe a little bit. And silence isone of the great lost arts of conversation. Typically, when we do a Q&A session, all thiscontent gets dumped on an audience and then we immediately say, “Any questions?” [Cricket Sound].And then there’s this kind of like awkward shuffle of people. Everybody’s heart rategoes up if they’re thinking about it and asking a question. They’re like, “I don’t know what I’mgoing to ask.” And that’s the absolute wrong place that you want people to be in. Because if people’s heart rates are really high during a Q&A, they’re going to go to their defaultwhich is like mumbling, bumbling talking about themselves not formulating a really well-crafted, intentional, curiosity-based question. By far, the most impactful way to start a Q&A session is by inviting people to take some silence and come up with the question internally before they even ask it. You can actually… You know, the best way toavoid awkward silence is to create productivesilence. And so, perhaps depending on your context, the best part… The best way to start a Q&A might be 30 seconds of total silence and you might frame it like this.Verbatim, you might say,“Whether you plan to stand up and ask a questionor not, or whether you plan to unmute and ask aquestion or not, go ahead and take 30 secondsof total silence to just rewind the tape,think about what ___ has just shared with usand formulate a question in your brain. Whatare you naturally, genuinely curious to know about what was just shared?”
Let that silence sit for a little bit. Onceyou have planted a question or once you’ve invitedpeople to plant a question in their own brain, youknow that there’s a ton of really great curiosityin the audience. You have a handful ofdifferent options. In this video, I’m just goingto share 2 paths you can take. The first one is just the quick and immediate path. The second onewill take a little bit more time but create much, much higher engagement and a much more usefulQ&A session. The first one, quick one is simply invite people to ask a question,right? Now, the problem with this is when you invite a large audience to ask a question, you’refavoring extroverts curiosity. And to be honest, usually, introverts have some of the bestquestions, the most thoughtful questions, the ones that benefit everybody in the room. What Imight do as the host or the moderator and what I often do because a big part of my job is going in and speaking and facilitating workshops with some of the top organizations and universities on the planet. And what I will often do is I will speak facilitate this experience and then I’ll get to the end and say, “Alright. Ask me anything time. Everybody think of a question. What I’d love to doto just kind of hear what you are curious about is popcorn out a bunch of questions. You’vegot your question. Hold it. By the way, really great questions tend to begin with how and what.
If your question doesn’t fit that mold, feelfree to maybe adapt it.” Little secret, by givingpeople that template or that directive, thatreally great questions begin with how or what,you ensure that people actually ask a questionrather than mumbling out a bunch of sentencesand contexts and all this other stuff. Then followed by a question because for this,I want people to just popcorn out 10 to 15questions so that I as the speaker can hearwhat are people collectively curious about andwhat I might even say to the group is “What I’dlove to do is popcorn out 10 to 15 questions justreally quick.” I’m not going to answer them. I’mjust going to hear 10 to 15 questions and thatwill help me kind of understand engage what arewe collectively curious about so I can offer aresponse that benefits everyone rather than theone person who asks the question. Do you see howthat method is really, really powerful to makesure that the Q&A session is really engaging foreveryone. The second method that I’ll share inthis video is just simply a paired share. If you as the speaker or the host don’t feelcomfortable um facilitating out those popcornquestions in a large group audience. And by theway, I will do that virtually in a group of 300to 500 and in person with a group of 8,000. I willpopcorn out. It doesn’t matter the groupand also in a group of 15 people as well. It doesn’t matter the group size for me. Thatmethod is a really great way for you to take onthe role of harvesting people’s natural curiosity.
The second method though we’ll call simply apaired share. And this is you have people comeup with a question and you say before you kickyour question out into the larger room, sometimesit’s helpful to just let our brains process thatquestion out loud. If your virtual split people upinto breakouts 3 to 4 people each with the aim ofjust going around and either with their partneror their small group, sharing the question thatthey would like to ask. And then with any extratime they have, decide on which question or whichvariation of a question the entire group is kindof votes to put forward. This is a really coolway to harvest collective curiosity because (1)you have people share it which ensures that whenthey actually ask a question, it’s just a clearlystated question. It doesn’t take a lot of timeexplaining context and it allows the the speakeror whoever the expert that you’ve brought infor that moment to share their wisdom with the audience.
Here are 2 ways… We’ve got about sevenmore to do Q&A sessions. Feel free to check out some of my other videos. If you’re intriguedand you want to read the book Ask PowerfulQuestions: Create Conversations That Matter,Will and I were quite happy and quite surprisedare still quite happy and quite surprised to seethat it’s just lingering as a number one Amazonbestseller and has for the last couple years atthe time of recording this. Really great book that will help you craft really phenomenal questionsand create conversations that really matter. Ihope this was one for you.
Have an awesome day.
