Question & Answer Sessions: Rules Regarding Time

Video Transcript

"Alright, during question and answer periods, you obviously want to try and answer as many questions as you can. And so you want to encourage participation from all of your audience members. Now, one or two things will happen. Either lots of people will have a question or no one will have a question. So let's talk about if a lot of people have questions first. What you want to do at the beginning of the question and answer period as soon as you've said does anyone have any questions and you see all these hands shoot up, you want to very quickly establish some rules. You know how much time you have for question and answers. Maybe you have five minutes, maybe you have twenty minutes, maybe you have an hour. Setup your rules based on the time frame that you have and the number of people that you have that want to participate. Its very simple, you say something like oh, I see we've got a lot of people who want to ask questions, that's fantastic, let's try to keep the questions limited, the questions and answers limited to five minutes or less. Or, ok, I see I got a lot of questions, I'll only be able to take five questions. Whatever it is, create rules in the moment and let everybody know what the rules are and then that way people won't get upset. Well gosh, he only answered one question or three questions and there we're fifteen of us. Well, he said he could only take three questions, or he said he could not take lengthy questions. So that keeps you out of the hot seat as well. Alright now let's take a look at what to do when nobody asks any questions."