Do You Have Q & A Anxiety? Proven Techniques to Help You ANTICIPATE the Toughest Questions.

You finish your presentation and the audience is smiling, applauding. You nod, mouth the words “thank you” and take a little bow. In this moment, you could leap buildings in a single bound. You’re a rock star.  Invincible.

As the applause tapers off, you see it. A hand.

An eager waving hand.

A hand with a question.

For you.

And in that moment, you wish for a sudden, inexplicable illness that requires immediate hospitalization.

Q & A sessions can strike fear into the hearts of even the most accomplished presenters. It’s the unknown, the uncertainty, the fear of being forced to answer questions on the spot without time to think – and the fear of looking foolish, like you you don’t know what you’re talking about after all. It’s a vulnerable place to be, standing there, waiting for the questions to come your way.

The good news is that most questions that come up in a Q & A session can be anticipated and addressed through a well-researched, thoughtfully designed and well-delivered presentation.

Do Your Research

You must know who your audience is and what they really want. What are their fears, aspirations and biases – about you, your subject matter and even your organization? You have to do your research before you even start developing your presentation.

If you don’t have direct access to the people in your audience before your presentation, talk to people in your network who are like those you will be presenting to, or to people who know and relate to your audience.

If you discover that your audience has a very strong bias for or against a particular point of view or solution, address this in your presentation and you’ll be much less likely to get a tough question about it. You can only do this well if you learn as much as you can about them before you step on stage.

Anticipate – and Preemptively Address – Their Questions

The primary source of tough questions usually falls into one or more of the following categories:

1. Relevance. If what you’re saying isn’t relevant to your audience, they’re going to ask questions that will help them figure out how and why what you’re saying is important. You can only be relevant if you do your research and figure out what they want and need.


2. Clarity. Even if you do a brilliant job making your content relevant to your audience, if you’re not making your point in a clear, easy-to-understand way, you’re going to get questions.


3. Compelling. So, you’ve done your research and you’re a master of clear, concise point-making and you’re still getting questions. Why? It could be that you’re not very compelling. If you support your ideas, claims or concepts with compelling proof – examples, stories or demonstrations – the “I’m bored and trying to believe you” questions will taper off.


4. Conviction. You may well be saying all of the right things, providing compelling evidence and telling powerful stories. But you might not be saying it in a way that makes the audience believe that you’re the expert, that you really know what you’re talking about. So, they will test you with tough questions. Ditch the qualifiers, extend your eye contact and speak with conviction and you will win over the doubters.


5. Change. If what you’re talking about challenges the status quo and what you’re advocating requires change, people will resist. It’s human nature – we naturally resist change. So, you may have audience members who attack your point of view through challenging questions. It’s difficult to avoid this entirely, but understanding your audience and anticipating and addressing their objections in your presentation will dramatically reduce the “I hate change and therefore you” questions you receive.


6. Ego. Yep, good old-fashioned ego. Sometimes when a person puts up their hand, they want the room to know that they are the expert. It’s incredibly useful to acknowledge other experts in the room when you begin your talk. Give them a shout out and acknowledge their expertise preemptively.

You Can Do It

It is possible to design and deliver a presentation to make the Q &A that follows a breeze. When you research your audience’s needs and address their most pressing questions during your talk, you can spend the Q & A in a lively discussion about what your audience might do with your content and concepts – and not in a debate about whether or not you know what you’re talking about!

Tune in Next Week for Part 2

Next week, I’ll be sharing Part 2 in this series about Managing Q & A Anxiety and in it some thoughts on how to effectively ANSWER questions in the moment. 

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you feel about Q & A sessions? What techniques do you use to design the answer to your audience’s questions right into the content of your presentation? Share your tips, tricks and experience in the comments below.

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Ten Tips to Help You Gesture Like a Genius During Your Next Presentation

Photo by KatarzynaBialasiewicz/iStock / Getty Images

Take a look down at your hands. Ten digits, opposable thumbs, a palm that helps you hold apples and give high fives. Now, take in the glory of your arms. They help you hug, throw a baseball, provide directions and do the wave at a concert. Awesome.

Hands and arms. They are wildly useful appendages that we know how to use in our lives. But when we get up to present, we’re at a loss. We have no idea what to do with them. They become limp, dangling fish. Or fidgety nervous nellies. Or so shy they never once come out of our pockets.

And this is a shame because our hands and arms have so much to offer our communication. Here are five gesture DOs and five gesture DON’Ts that will help you make the most of your hands during your next presentation…

TOP FIVE GESTURE DON'TS

1. DON’T adopt the “crown jewels” stance. If you're a man, never stand with your hands cupped over your crown jewels.  Not only does this place the emphasis in the wrong place (unless you’re talking about athletic protective gear), it also rolls your shoulders forward and draws them down which diminishes your presence. Stand with your hands above your belt buckle area. This will roll your shoulders back, enhance your presence and your hands will be ready to help you make a point.
    

2. DON’T jam your hands in your pockets. Jamming your hands in your pockets and leaving them there because you think it solves your appendage problem is not the answer. By hiding them away you are robbing yourself of a great opportunity to communicate.
    

3. DON’T stand in the “at ease” position. Even if you are addressing military personnel, don’t stand with your hands clasped behind your back. It’s awkward, stiff and unnatural - you would never do this in a conversation. When I see people do this it makes me think they are worried their hands will misbehave and inadvertently flip the audience the bird!
    

4. DON’T hitch up your pants or skirt. It doesn’t make you look folksy or charming. It makes you look like you forgot your belt – or that you’re looking for the saloon.
    

5. DON’T keep your hands moving all the time. When we’re nervous, we tend to one end of the gesture spectrum or the other. We either lock our hands in place or move them madly. As with so many things in life, they are best used in moderation. We want our gestures to help convey our key points, not detract from them.

And here is a sixth bonus DON’T…

6. DON’T steeple your fingers. Unless you are 65 years old, have a PhD and a well-earned mane of grey hair you can not get away with this. At best it looks contrived, at worst it looks like a bad Dr. Evil impression, and therefore ridiculous.

TOP FIVE GESTURE DO'S

DO use your hands early. It’s a good idea to start using your hands early in your presentation because it will loosen you up and make you appear more comfortable and confident.

DO acknowledge your host/introducer. After someone introduces you, you can start your hand gestures with a subtle, single-handed open palm thank you to coincide with your verbal thank you. Or you can greet the audience with a good morning/afternoon accompanied by a double open palm gesture.

DO minimize your conversational gestures. We all have a collection of informal and unfocused hand movements – a murky cocktail of Mr. Miagi meets bouncing-ball-lyrical syncopation. This can make you charming in a conversation but it makes it hard for people to take you seriously when you’re presenting.

DO make thoughtful use of definitive gestures. Listen for verbal cues that could be matched up with a definitive gesture. This helps you align your content with your hands. Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Enumerate. When you tell your audience you want to share three key ideas with them, enumerate them by stabbing the air with appropriate number of digits. Don’t point them at your audience when you do this. Enumerating your content with gestures helps you deliver with clarity and conviction.


• Delineate a timeline. If you’re talking about something that happened over time, or will roll out in the coming months or years, use an open palm chop to place the date on a horizontal timeline. Orient the timeline from the audience’s perspective - from their left to their right, not yours.


• Accentuate simple adjectives and adverbs. Listen for simple adjectives and adverbs - like “large”, “small”, “huge”, “exploded”, “grow”, “shrunk” – and match your gestures to them. You don’t want to act out your presentation or look like you’re playing charades. Capture the essence of descriptive words and phrases and convey them with your hands.

DO build your hand gesture vocabulary in private. If you’ve been a quiet hand-talker, it may feel unnatural integrating some hand movement into your presentation. Try to use your hands next time you are on a conference call when no one can see you. Chances are, they will hear you with greater clarity, conviction and authority, all led by your hands.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How do you feel about the use of gestures in your presentations? Are you conscious of the gestures you use? What success have you had introducing more definitive gestures into your presentations? Do you have any gesture disasters in your presentation past? Share your experience in the comments below.

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The Top Ten Things TED Has Done For Public Speaking

As a presentation skill consultant and coach, I spend a lot of time watching TED talks and sharing them with clients. It is fantastic to have such a diverse database of speaking performances to learn from and teach with.

But in a recent conversation, a client challenged me on the usefulness of TED Talks, suggesting that TED speakers have raised the bar to the point where mere mortals like him were expected to deliver TED-quality presentations every time they were asked to speak.

I love contrarian points of view like this because they push me to reflect on my own assumptions. What has TED done for public speaking? Has it changed or improved anything, contributed something positive? Or has it just made things more difficult for aspiring public speakers?

After much debate and discussion, I still come down on the side of TED. And so I give you the top ten very good things TED has done for public speaking:

1. It’s made public speaking aspirational again. For a long time, many of us felt that public speaking was something other people did—people like politicians, business leaders or celebrities. TED has challenged this paradigm and made getting up on a stage and sharing ideas publicly an incredibly exciting thing to do. Every year thousands of people clamour for a spot at one of the hundreds of TED events taking place around the world.

2. It has proved that we have a voracious appetite for great ideas, presented well. I often hear from clients that their time-pressed audiences “just want to get the information and hear our ideas without any fluff or fanfare.” Audiences definitely don’t want fluff or fanfare, but they do want information and ideas served up in inspiring and illustrative ways. When we share our ideas and use stories, examples and demonstrations to elevate their relevance and meaning, audiences connect with us, and the content we share, more deeply. Benjamin Zander’s TED Talk about classical music is  a wonderful example.

3. It has shown how public speaking builds profile. Before she gave her first TED talk, Brene Brown was a research professor at the University of Houston studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness and shame. After her 2010 TED talk about shame went viral, she became a recognized and sought-after speaker, a best-selling author and a friend of Oprah.

4. It's proven that you don’t have to be famous to make a difference. No longer is world stage reserved only for high-profile public figures. TED provides a platform for anyone with compelling ideas. Academics are emerging from scholarly obscurity, technologists are blasting out of their computer labs to share their brilliance on a global stage and unassuming social justice pioneers are compelling international audiences to give more and do more than ever before.

5. It’s demonstrated that there is no one, single way to be a great speaker. There are important fundamentals, but there is no cookie cutter approach. You only need to watch a few TED talks to realize are so many ways to be brilliant on the stage.  Dan Pallotta combines storytelling and statistics to make a compelling case for change in the charitable sector. And Susan Cain proves that soft-spoken introverts can be equally engaging and persuasive  in a gentle and thoughtful way.

6. It’s encouraged people to ditch public speaking conventions. TED has forced people to lose the lectern, give up their addiction to text-heavy PowerPoint slides and say goodbye to the notion that more—more information, more time—is more. And the results speak for themselves

7. It’s reinforced the importance of speaking fundamentals. For all its convention-busting, the TED format has also provided countless examples of what’s possible when you embrace the fundamentals of delivering a great presentation: (1) developing a talk with your audience in mind; (2) sharing ideas and illustrating them well through examples and story; and (3) preparation, preparation, preparation so you can deliver authentically and without notes.

8. It has celebrated authenticity and diversity. One of the most powerful things you can do as a speaker is bring yourself to the stage. It seems obvious but so many presenters forget to connect their personality, their history and who they are with the content they’re sharing. If you want to touch the hearts of an audience, you must let them see you. Perfection is not required. Authenticity is must. Jane Fonda’s talk is an honest, strikingly open perspective on aging that is Fonda at her authentic, activist best.

9. It has proven the tremendous power of storytelling—over and over again. Human beings are wired for story. It’s how we share our experience in the world and we use stories to make sense of what’s happening around us. Stories also connect us to one another in rich, important ways.

10. It’s raised the bar. Yes, TED has raised expectations and audiences everywhere are rejoicing. The world doesn’t need any more boring, badly delivered presentations. Our ideas deserve to be shared well. We can do better and TED presenters inspire us to do so. As John F. Kennedy once said, “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How has TED affected your views about public speaking and your practice and experience as a public speaker? Share your experience in the comments below.

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Photo credit: elliot brown

Humour 101: How to Add Levity to Your Next Presentation

What is better than standing up in front of a group of people and getting a laugh?

Making people laugh is affirming, it lights up all of the pleasure centres in our brain and it makes us feel witty and clever. Why else would stand up comedians subject themselves to hecklers night after night? When your sense of humour connects with an audience, it’s amazing.

And because of that, many of my clients want to know how they can bring the funny. This can be tricky territory—how does one tell somebody that he’s not nearly as funny as he thinks he is? To help with this, I ask my clients three questions when they are deciding whether or not to incorporate humour into their next presentation:

1. Are you funny? You know if you’re funny. You do. And if you’re really not sure, try to be funny and see if you get (a) silence, (b) groans or (c) laughs. If the answer is (a) and/or (b), you’re not funny enough to try and be funny when you’re presenting.
2. Is your humour appropriate for the audience? The type of humour you use with your college buddies or even your close colleagues is hardly ever appropriate for a professional audience.
   
3. Is your humour appropriate for the topic? If you’re giving a presentation about child poverty rates in North America, the types of humour you can draw upon will be pretty limited. If you’re giving a talk about the various ways the education system is failing children, you might have more to work with. Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk is a brilliant example of how to inject humour into a serious subject with great effect. (You can watch it here: www.ted.com/sirkenrobinson)

If you can not confidently answer yes to all three of these questions, your attempt at humour will most likely bomb. And nothing kills credibility faster than humour gone wrong.

Instead of trying to yuck it up, make levity your goal. You want to create lightness and make a warm, human connection with your audience. You don’t need to get big laughs to do this. Here are five techniques you can use to create a sense of levity in your next presentation:

Observe. The very best humour comes from astute observation. Your levity efforts should start long before you set foot on the stage. Research the pain points and frustrations your audience deals with on a regular basis. Spend time observing them (or people like them) to get a better handle on the crazy aspects of their reality. This is all great fodder for empathy and lighthearted storytelling.

Acknowledge their reality. Nothing endears you to people more quickly than demonstrating that you get them. If you can playfully acknowledge their pain points or frustrations or the crazy aspects of their world, especially as it relates to your subject matter or expertise, you’ll have them smiling and nodding their heads. And this is what you’re going for—appreciative head nods, not giant guffaws.

Recount a conversation. If you have the opportunity to speak with members of the audience before your presentation, you can reference back to things they’ve told you in a fun and charming way. You will need to decide if it’s more appropriate to share these bits of conversation anonymously or to attribute them back to the person you spoke with.

Insert a conversational aside. Conversational asides are a great way to inject some levity into your presentations. I often use quotations in my training workshops and consulting work and will add a conversational aside to engage the audience further. For example, I might reference a quote by French philosopher Voltaire that helps illustrate a point I’m making and then say: “by the way, I’ve never read Voltaire lest you think I’m trying to pass myself off as an erudite philosopher. I’m not. I just love that quote!”

Share your shortcomings. I sometimes use this technique when I’m talking to clients about the importance of posture, presence and gestures. I muse in a self-deprecating way that I’m a short dude and I need to create as much presence as I can so I keep my hands out of my pockets, my shoulders rolled back and my gestures in front of me. The truth can get a laugh, generate empathy and make you approachable. It’s okay to be candid and honest about your shortcomings as long as it doesn’t undermine your credibility.

The bottom line on humour in presentations is this: don’t tell jokes. You are not a stand up comedian and that means your jokes are rarely delivered well or funny. When you tell a joke, it’s obvious you’re trying to be funny. And that’s awkward. In doing so, you’re creating uncomfortable and unnecessary tension between you and your audience.

So, aim for levity not big laughs; warmth not wisecracks. Connect your humour to your content and you’ll have them smiling and nodding and loving you in the aisles.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. How and when have you used humour with great effect? How did you do it? Have you ever tried to inject some humour and failed fantastically? What tips and tricks do you use to ensure your attempts at levity and wit land every time? Share your experience in the comments below.

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