One of the things I’m most often asked to help with in our presentation skills training is how to deal with questions. There are lots of useful things you can do – but some very interesting research reported here suggests a number of interesting things.
For example, people apparently think more highly of an interviewee who answers a question well, even if it’s not the question that was asked, compared to someone who tries to answer the ‘right’ question but does so badly….
Lessons to be learned for all of us improvising there! :)
I have always found the most satisfying answer to this problem is to “own up” to the fact you can’t answer that question as well as you would like but to then make sure you find out the answer and get it to all attendee’s ASAP.
Obviously this cannot always be done but where possible it shows a level of commitment to accuracy and inspires trust in the rest of the information you have provided.
Regards
Grant Bodie
Mount Recruitment
My personal approach is to confess, assure them I’ll get back to them and publicly give a time by which I’ll do it. The latter bit is really important for credibility.
I guess I was really commenting on how sad it is that sometimes (according to the research, often!) people don’t *listen* and therefore don’t notice the quality of what they’re being told.