Dealing With Questions

The last one, dealing with questions. This stresses people out a lot. Sometimes people think, “I don’t want to do talks, because someone’s going to ask me a question, they’ll know more than me, and it’ll be horrible.”

Here’s the secret: you don’t have to take questions. If you don’t want to don’t, no one’s going to make you. You can just say, “I’ll take questions some other time,” or, “Here’s my email address, feel free to email me a question.” If taking questions is the thing putting you off, just don’t do it.

If you do go for it, there’s one type of person to watch out for: the “more of a comment than a question” person. These are people who have an opinion about your topic, or something vaguely related, and would really like to share it with you and the rest of the audience.

It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, my recommendation is if you don’t want to engage then don’t. Let them make their point, and then say, “That’s a really interesting point. I’m afraid we don’t really have time to cover it properly right now, since it’s quite detailed. Why don’t I catch up with you after the talk?” And if you don’t want to catch up with them afterwards, don’t :)