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Q & A Sessions

There may be times when you will participate in a question and answer session as an audience member or a speaker, or both! Below are things to keep in mind when these situations arise.

Audience Responsibilities

As audience members, you are tasked with critically analyzing a speaker’s message. This requires critical thinking skills and the ability to use verbal communication to accurately inquire about your ideas, concerns, or rebuttals.

• Critically listen to the speaker/presenter – this requires focus and listening with an open mind
• Connect to topics/ideas that resonate with you
• Think through ideas that you would like more information and/or research – others in the audience might desire more information, too
• In your questions:
  • Use strong examples from the speech to demonstrate you were listening to the speaker and their position
  • Ask a clear and concise question
    • Sometimes people ask questions to make themselves look “smart” or “better” or “more knowledgeable” than the speaker; this is ethnocentric and inappropriate; do not speak in circles or monopolize time during the Q & A session.
  • If you have research and/or knowledge about the topic beyond the presenter, consider sharing the information in a helpful/valuable manner
  • If the speaker does not have an answer to your question, thank them, and allow them to move to the next audience member
• Avoid aggressive questions and/or challenges that create conflict and/or inappropriate behavior
• Avoid passive aggressive language
• Avoid using fallacies in your questions

Speaker Responsibilities

As a speaker, you may at times have to answer questions about your presentations. This is an important public speaking skill: impromptu speaking. While you may able to anticipate some questions, you likely will not anticipate all possible questions.

The following video provides practical tips on how to handle a Q&A session.

Q& A Sessions vary in length; however, a proper question from an audience member should be approx. 1-2 minutes. Allow the speaker to answer; if you have a follow-up question, you can ask it but remain brief. If you would like to continue the question, wait until the end of the session and see if the speaker has time for a 1:1. You can also get their contact information and follow up on another day via email and/or another form of appropriate communication.

Preparing for Feedback

Turning to feedback, now that you have completed your speech, it will now be time to interact with your audience.  Some audience members may respond to your presentation with questions.  If you have inspired your audience, they may want additional information, or may even want to talk further about your presentation.  Others may disagree with your speech and respond to your presentation with hostility or frustration.  Remember, you are in charge of addressing the audience members, and, as such, you must formulate a strategy for handling feedback. Your instructor may also set some guidelines for expectations for question and answer segment(s) for your presentation.

Here are some questions that you may wish to ask yourself as you prepare to address feedback:

• Have I addressed the other side of the issue discussed in my speech?
• What will I do if someone gets angry with me?
• What questions might my audience have for me?
• Have I used quality sources to prove my points?
• Can I explain any charts or graphs that I have presented?
• If the audience members want to know more about my cause, what information will I provide to them?

Pro Tips

• Listen to the question answered without bias – don’t listen to the assumptions you may have about the person or the question – listen to the actual question.
• Directly answer the question asked – it may be tempting to use fallacies such as a red herring and take the answer in a different direction. Avoid this temptation and answer the question directly!
• If you do not know the answer, state this direclty. You are not expected to know everything there is about the topic. Using deception will decrease your credibility.
• Share your resources with your audience – be prepared with a list of resources.