You will be able to answer questions concisely and confirm you have addressed them.
Someone at the back of the room asks a question. The speaker starts answering before the person has finished. The answer begins with background, covers three related points, mentions a project from last year, and arrives at the actual answer about two minutes in, if at all. By then the person who asked has stopped listening, and everyone else is checking the time.
Answering questions well is mostly about restraint. The prepared answers from lesson 7.1, Predict the questions before they are asked, are only useful if you deliver them briefly and to the question that was actually asked. This lesson covers a four-step method: listen, check, answer, then stop.
Let the person finish the whole question before you start answering. That sounds obvious, but nerves and eagerness push speakers to jump in as soon as they think they know where a question is going, and they guess wrong more often than they expect. The last few words of a question can change it entirely. "What does the trial cost?" is a different question from "What does the trial cost if it fails and we have to roll it back?"
When they have finished, pause briefly before answering. A second or two is enough. The pause shows that you are taking the question seriously. It also gives you a moment to think, which makes your answer shorter and clearer. Lesson 5.1, Pace, pauses and volume, explained why pauses sound more confident to the audience than they feel to you.
In a large room, many people will not hear a question asked from the audience, especially if you have a microphone and they do not. People online may hear nothing at all. So before you answer, repeat or rephrase the question so everyone hears it.
"The question is what happens to the trainers if more training moves online."
Rephrasing does three useful things. Everyone hears the question. You check that you understood it, because if you got it wrong, the person will usually correct you straight away. And you gain a few more seconds to think.
Keep the rephrase neutral and short. If a question is phrased aggressively, you can rephrase it more calmly without changing its meaning: "The question is whether the pilot results will hold up at a bigger site." Lesson 7.4, Hostile, long and off-topic questions, covers that further.
In a small meeting where everyone can hear, you can skip the repeat, but a quick rephrase can still help if the question was complicated.
Answer with the point first, in a sentence or two. Then add one reason or piece of evidence. Then stop.
This is the same principle as point-first writing in Communicate at work, lesson 1.1, Say the point first, then explain it, applied to speech. Most people do the opposite when answering a question, and start with background and context before they get anywhere near the answer. But the person asked because they want the answer. Give it to them first.
Wei Ling, second time round, was asked about the trainers. Her answer: "Both trainers move to running the floor safety sessions and supervising the online modules. HR has confirmed the roles, and their headcount stays the same." Two sentences, the answer first, then the reason. Then she stopped.
Stopping is the hard part. When you finish your answer, there is a short silence, and the temptation is to fill it with more detail, a related point or a second version of what you just said. Let the silence sit. Extra material weakens the answer and uses up time that other people's questions need. If the person wants more, they will ask.
A practical target for most questions is under thirty seconds. Some need more, but if you find yourself regularly going past a minute, you are probably answering more than was asked.
After you stop, check with the person who asked. "Does that answer your question?" or simply "Does that help?"
This short check does a lot. It shows respect for the person who asked. It gives them a chance to say no, which is much better than leaving them unsatisfied in silence. And it gives you a clean end to the exchange, so you can move to the next question.
If they say no, ask what part you missed, and answer that part. If the question needs a longer conversation than the session allows, offer to follow up afterwards.
Arjun found the check particularly useful with senior people. When the operations director asked about cost and he gave a short answer, the check let her say, "Yes, but what about the vendor's setup fee?" He would never have guessed that was her real question.
The four steps feel slow at first, and your answers will feel too short. Both feelings fade with practice, and the quickest practice uses the list of prepared questions you wrote for lesson 7.1, a friend and a stopwatch.
Ask a friend to put five of your prepared questions to you and answer each in under 30 seconds, timing yourself.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).