Hello! Welcome to the last module of the course.
The module where we talk about Q&A's and everything that
requires maybe a tiny little bit of improvisation on your part.
So Q&A's are important because you see any actor can
memorize your speech but only you can answer those questions,
only you can say 95 percent of
all the material that you didn't say during the main part of your presentation.
So this is your star moment indeed.
Secondly, Q&A's are exciting when startups
are demoing their Software products, there's always a choice, should I do a live demo?
Or should I do screen cast?
And in some situations screen,
casts suffice but in most situations you should be
doing a live demo because a live demo is exciting.
And you know why it is exciting because there's always
this feeling that oh my God it might as well crash and,
I think excitement is great,
excitement raises the energy level in the group.
And finally Q&A's are risky,
you could be caught off guard and look stupid
and this is what people are sometimes very afraid of.
And these are the risks that we will try to mitigate during this part of the course.
Let's talk about some core principles first.
It's always important to have some principles.
Principle number one, to remind you is cooperative communication. Very important.
People get attacked because they don't cooperate.
You need to cooperate with the audience.
We cooperate by default.
Sometimes well, yes it's war and war means war but most of
the time it's peace like 99 percent of the time it's about peace rather than war.
So how would you answer to a friend?
Suppose this person is your friend.
How would you answer to a friend?
Very important principle.
Use it all the time.
So we do not defend ourselves and therefore we do not look defensive.
Right? We do not counterattack people who look like they are attacking us.
We assume their intentions are benign.
They are just trying to find out some stuff that's important for them.
We do not dodge questions.
We do not avoid questions.
We don't do this, No,
we face the question,
we try to be helpful.
Right? This is all about helping people.
And we do not deceive.
Lies are out of the equation.
Right? We need to tell the truth.
We do not lie. This is not a good idea.
Now, stand-up is very aggressive.
This is perhaps one of the most aggressive genres of art,
can I say stand-up as art? I guess I can.
And even in stand-up this approach works.
For example, Jerry Seinfield,
perhaps the most famous stand-up comedian alive.
Says that very early in his career he hit upon this idea of being the heckler therapist,
so that when people would say something nasty,
I would immediately become very sympathetic to them and try
to help them with their problem and try to work
on what was upsetting them and try to be very understanding with their anger.
And somehow it works.
You help the heckler he doesn't or she doesn't heckle anymore.
And this is more or less how it works.
How would I answer to a friend? Try to be helpful.
Now we try to answer the question and to the intent behind the question.
Sometimes people ask surface questions which might look stupid to us.
Sometimes they say, I don't know, what time is it now?
But what they really want to know whether it's time for them to leave for
an important meeting or something and we
should talk to the intention rather than to the question.
Now of course ideally to both.
Right? Ideally we need to give the people what they want and what they need.
But what they need is more important.
What do they really need to know?
What are they trying to find out?
Thing number two, servant leadership.
You are the boss but you're not important.
You serve the audience,
their interests are far more important than yours.
You are trying to be helpful,
you're trying to make this experience productive.
You're trying to, I don't know,
improve them maybe sometimes,
which means that this is not a democracy.
You are the leader.
You control whatever happens in the room but you serve the group.
This is not about your status or reputation.
This is about the group getting the most out of this conversation.
We're trying to help people.
You would not believe how many problems this solves.
You don't have to protect yourself because those people,
they're not attacking you,
they are attacking peacefulness of the situation,
they are preventing the group from learning.
And you know what we have to do.
You have to talk to the people and ask them
whether this behavior is okay and if they say "No",
it's not like you said "No."
It's the whole group say "No. "
But, you initiate this conversation.
Thing number three.
You don't have to have all the answers.
You're not a walking encyclopedia.
I mean, there are different domains and in
science "I don't know" are the most important words.
The progress in science depends on people saying "I don't know,
I should investigate, I guess."
Now, in business and politics things might be different especially in politics.
I guess we can cross the politics out of this equation and politics,
it just doesn't work. You have to know.
Right? They say that for politicians to be honest,
the public needs to allow them to be honest.
And the public is extremely unforgiving in this regard.
So I guess, we have to live with lying
politicians because we just do not allow them to tell the truth to us.
But in science, in business,
things are slightly different.
I mean the higher up you go,
the more politics you have.
But sometimes it's not about politics,
sometimes it's about finding the truth.
And we are striving to find the truth.
As far as I'm concerned,
this is what it's all about.
And even if you don't know the answer,
it doesn't mean you can't be of help.
Seriously.
Even if you don't know the proper answer to a question,
"what time is it now?"
It doesn't mean you can't help the person to decide whether he or she should leave.
Or stay. Try to be helpful.
Thing number four, very important, you need to prepare.
Even though it looks like improvisation,
most of the time it is actually not.
It is rehearsed.
People rehearse Q&A's,
people rehearse press conferences,
politicians rehearse and record themselves and watch it.
This is called media training, apparently.
I think you need to rehearse those conversations.
You're saying just five percent of what you know.
This is the secret of great presentation which means that there are
95 percent which needs to be ready for the show.
Right? You need to make this preparation so for god's sake, rehearse.
You need to sit and write down maybe 10, maybe 20,
maybe 30 questions that you might be asked by the audience and especially
questions you don't want to be asked and
then try to find out good answers to those questions.
It's mostly preparation.
It's not improvisation.
You can do mental rehearsal,
you can do out loud rehearsal and you can
record and watch yourself and this is the best thing perhaps, you can do.
It does require a lot of time but it's very productive.
And finally, especially with all things that have to do with improvisation,
context matters a lot.
I will be giving you some rules, some suggestions,
some advice, but you need to think about the situation.
Actually, rehearsals really help because they free your mind to be in the moment.
Seriously. There are no universal recipes as far as improvisation is concerned,
this is all context dependent.
Let me give you an example.
If you're talking to a large group of people,
your talk tend to become entertaining.
Therefore Q&A's tend to become entertaining.
If you're talking to a small group of people,
this is more of an informative thing.
So, they say that the answers to the questions should be concise and this is not true.
Seriously. I mean in a small group they should be concise,
but in a large crowd you can spend
up to five minutes answering the questions and this is going to be okay.
So, think about the context, apply good judgment.
Context matters a lot.
Let me wrap up quickly.
Do cooperate by default.
You can not believe how many problems this might solve.
Most people get attacked because they attack the audience first.
Their body language, their tone of voice, words they use,
attack the audience and they sort of bring it onto themselves.
Cooperate by default.
The person asking question is not your enemy.
He is just trying to find out what's in this situation for him.
Try to answer the need.
Servant leadership, you are the servant to the group,
not to the person asking the question, to the whole group.
Do not forget about the group.
This is not about you. This is not about the person asking the question.
This is about them, mostly.
Thing number three, sometimes you can say, "I don't know."
It's perfectly okay.
You don't have to have all the answers.
There are situations like one percent of all the situations when this is
not an option but most of the time you can say "I don't know" that's all right.
You are a thinking creature.
Think. Thing number four,
you need to rehearse. Please rehearse Q&A's.
Write down those questions,
you might get asked, write good answers.
And finally, please be aware of the context.
Be aware of the situation.
Always but especially with Q&A's,
do apply good judgment.
I will be giving you some suggestions,
but very little rules in this part.
