Prepare before a talk for the questions you are likely to get, including the difficult ones.
Take your talk outline and write down the ten questions you would least like to be asked. Leave out the friendly ones and keep the awkward, sceptical, detailed and personal questions. You can predict most of the questions that come after a talk. The ones that catch speakers out are usually the ones they hoped nobody would ask, which means they never prepared an answer for them.
Wei Ling (an invented example) finished presenting a training proposal and invited questions. The finance head asked first: what happens to the two trainers if most of the training goes online? She had not thought about it. She mentioned redeployment, then natural attrition, then stopped and admitted she would need to check with HR. The rest of the Q&A went fine, but that moment is the one everyone remembered from the meeting.
To find the questions, look at the talk from the audience's side. Your audience profile from lesson 1.2, "Who is listening and what do they need", is the most useful starting point. Go back to your answers under "what worries them". Each of those worries is likely to come up as a question.
Next, check your own argument for weak spots. Look for an assumption you have not tested, a cost you have only estimated, or a risk you mention only in passing. If you can find these gaps, a sharp listener in the room can find them too.
Some types of question come up in most work talks. People ask how much it will cost, what happens if it does not work, why now, and why not the alternative. They also ask who does the extra work, what this means for their team, and where a particular number came from. Go through your list and check that it covers each of these.
When Wei Ling prepared her second attempt at the proposal, she wrote this list of unwelcome questions:
What happens to the trainers? What if new hires cannot use the online system? How do we know the pilot results will hold at a bigger site? Why not wait for the new warehouse system next year? Who checks that people actually complete the modules? What happens to the pilot hires' safety record?
Under each question, write your answer and keep it short. Two sentences is usually enough. The first sentence gives the direct answer, and the second gives one reason or one piece of evidence for it.
There may be a few questions you cannot answer yet. For each of these, write down what you would say instead. Lesson 7.3, "Say I do not know without losing credibility", shows you how to say this and still be taken seriously.
You are close to the material, so your list will have blind spots. The fastest way to fill them is to ask someone else. A colleague can help, but someone in the same role as your audience is better. They know what their colleagues worry about, and they often name a question you had never considered.
Give the person a two-minute summary of your talk, then ask, "If you were in the room, what would you ask?" Add their questions to your list and write an answer for each one.
Arjun asked a clinic manager he knew well from another project what her colleagues would ask. She said their first question would be whether patients who prefer phone calls to text messages would be left out. That question was not on his list. It came up in the real meeting within the first two minutes, and he had an answer ready.
Some questions need more detail than you can give in two sentences. For these, prepare backup slides: slides that hold detail such as a cost breakdown, the full data, the method, a comparison or a timeline, which you show only when a question needs them. Backup slides go in the appendix, the part of the deck after the closing slide. The audience will not see the appendix unless you need it. Lesson 4.4, "Your slide deck is not your handout", explains how to use one.
Good candidates for backup slides are the detailed cost breakdown, the full data behind a chart, the method you used, a comparison with alternatives, and a timeline. Give each slide a clear headline so you can find it fast during the Q&A. When the question comes, say something like "I have the breakdown here", jump straight to the slide, answer, and then go back to where you were.
Most questions do not need a slide, and a prepared spoken answer is enough for them. Keep backup slides for the few questions where a number or a chart will answer better than words.
Before the talk, decide whether you will take questions during the talk or at the end. Tell the audience your choice at the start.
Questions during the talk suit small, informal groups. They also suit talks where people need to understand one part before the next part makes sense. The risk is that one question turns into a long discussion and you run out of time. Questions at the end suit larger groups and talks with a tight time slot. The risk there is that someone sits with a confusion for ten minutes before they can ask about it.
The middle option works well for many work talks. You take quick clarifying questions during the talk, hold bigger discussion questions for the end, and explain this arrangement at the start. You could say, "If anything is unclear as I go, stop me. Bigger questions, I'll take at the end." The audience knows the rules from the beginning, and you have a polite way to park a long question until later.
If you take questions at the end, take them before your final close. Lesson 2.3, "Close with the message and the ask", explains where the close sits.
Now write the ten questions you would least like to be asked about your own talk, with a two-sentence answer to each.
List the ten questions about your talk you would least like to hear. Write a two-sentence answer to each.
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