Educators tell us they are being called upon with increasing frequency to make presentations, and that the standards for those presentations seem to be higher than ever. Continuing interest in this topic has led us to write this series of columns. We've selected “Answering Questions” for this first column because it is often overlooked in preparing to make a presentation.
Question-and-answer exchanges are often more significant to audiences than the formal presentation. Done well, they reduce the psychological distance between you and your audience, address concerns of audience members, stimulate attentiveness, provoke vividness, and add to your credibility.
- Displaying confidence. Not surprisingly, displaying confidence is the first principle, and along with presentation clarity, is directly related to maintaining your credibility. Verbal, vocal, and visual dimensions help convey confidence. To help establish confidence verbally, the presenter should sound decisive at the beginning of a response, avoid fillers (“um” or “you know”), not pause too long before responding, use short to medium sentences, and use words that connote power and activity. Opinions vary on the influence of qualifiers. Martel, for example, cautions that the “unnecessary” use of qualifiers may reduce an audience's sense of confidence in a speaker. In our experience, the careful use of qualifiers like “I feel” or “I believe” can help build a stronger relationship with the audience when they are used to personalize data and suggest actions.Vocally, articulation, rate, emphasis, projection, and pitch all combine to stimulate the audience's attention and convey confidence. Dropping your voice at the end of sentences, as newscasters do, signals authority. Presenters can convey confidence visually through grooming, posture, eye contact, smiles, assured gestures, and by avoiding distracting gestures such as pencil tapping.
- Providing clarity. There are several ways to enhance clarity. One is to use advanced organizers (“Here are three ideas to consider”). Other strategies that add clarity include using short and precise sentences, providing examples, using simple jargon-free language, and including the minimum number of concepts needed to make your point. Congruent nonverbal communication also helps make your responses clear. “On the one hand,” said with an appropriate gesture, or standing in a new space for each new point in your response are examples of nonverbal communications that enhance clarity.
- Maintaining conciseness. Concise answers demonstrate respect for the audience's time and communicate confidence and authority. They make your response easy to follow. They also provide opportunities for follow-up questions and increase the chance of your being quoted by others.
- Developing capacities. Transformational presenters seize every opportunity to empower individuals and groups. You support participants' learning when you ask clarifying questions, paraphrase to check understanding, and use language that presupposes audience members' internal resources—their ability to choose, their positive intentions, and their dedication to common and noble goals. These behaviors communicate respect and awareness of power within people. You can create positive energy not only for the participant asking the question, but for the entire audience.
- Increasing credibility. Credibility operates at five levels: credibility of yourself, your ideas, your agency, your school, and your profession. All of these are enhanced by your confidence, clarity, conciseness, and your ability to develop capacities within others.
Matching the syntax of your response to the form of the question being asked contributes to credibility because participants will listen for a direct answer to the question they asked, not another one you decided to answer. When true/false or yes/no questions are asked, the first word in the response should be yes or no, followed by a brief explanation or elaboration.
In the next presentation you attend or conduct, listen for the syntax of questions. You'll probably hear multiple-choice questions, “Should students be told first why the work is important, or is it better to give them an overview of the task?”; short-answer questions, “How many, how much, how soon, who?”; and essay questions, “Why is this so important?”
It is generally better to under-answer than to over-answer. Trust your participants to ask follow-up questions if they desire more detail or other examples. Above all, feel free to have fun, be direct when you don't know an answer, occasionally redirect questions to the audience, and use stories and metaphors to make your points.
