The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 353 - Q&As

Transcript:

Pete: Hello, Jen.

Jen: Hello, Pete.

Pete: I had an experience last week that reminded me of a mutual love that you and I have.

Jen: For the New York Yankees?

Pete: I mean, sure, it could be the New York Yankees. But also, a mutual love for Q&A.

Jen: Ah, yes.

Pete: So I'd like to talk about it with you today, and ironically, ask you a bunch of questions about how you think about and how we might embrace Q&A.

Jen: Love it. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Pete: So I've sort of long had this curiosity about how I think some people get a little nervous or afraid of Q&A, in the capacity of maybe you're doing a workshop or running a meeting or giving a keynote and there's this sort of fear or worry that someone's going to ask us a question, and that that fear and worry seems to default to this sort of thought process of, "It's a gotcha question, and I'm going to be found out." And then, last week I had this experience where I was speaking at this really cool conference here in Australia. And each speaker was given a forty-five minute time slot. And I was sort of fourth or fifth on the list during the day. And most speakers, in fact, all speakers prior to me chose to speak for about forty minutes and then did a couple of questions as part of the Q&A. I think the most was probably three or four. And then, here's a little ol' me walking on stage, and I had planned to do twenty-five minutes of talking and twenty minutes of Q&A. It might have ended up being thirty and fifteen, but I spent a large portion of the time doing Q&A. Because A., I love it. And B., maybe part of the reason I love it is, I think it's a really cool chance for us to speak about the thing that's actually on the minds of the people we're speaking to.

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And I was telling a friend about how this was the structure I took on the weekend, and they were like, "What? You did twenty minutes of Q&A? What the hell is wrong with you? How did you know there would be enough questions? Weren't you worried about what questions you would get?" And I was like, "No." Because again, I see this as the opportunity for me to actually address the thing that's on the mind of the people in the room. And so, maybe that's unique to me. I think it's definitely also unique to you. And I just thought we could talk about why we have certain fears about questions and answers, and how we might let go of those fears and start to embrace them a little more.

Jen: Well, I'm right there with you, Pete. I love Q&A. Give me more Q. Give me more A. Give me more Q&A. I just, I love it. In fact, I don't know if I've ever told you this before, but I do a monthly Q&A with my Career Collective. We do an hour of ask anything you could possibly want to know, in context of building a life as an artist and a career as an artist. And it is the most fun for me. And I feel extremely creative doing it. And I love having to connect the dots and synthesize all this information in a really concise way. It's really interesting, Pete. I'm having this thought right now, which is that, when you do Q&A, there is almost a promise of positive impact. Because someone's question indicates a challenge or a problem or something they're struggling with, and even if you don't answer it well, the fact that you're willing to hear their question is already part of the solution. And one of the things that is just so important to me as a speaker, a teacher, a coach, etc., is having an actual impact on the people I'm speaking with.

Pete: I totally agree. Maybe that's why I love it so much. If I think about a talk or a workshop, I have so internalized this idea that my job is to help the people in the room in some way. It's not about me trying to look good. It's about trying to help the people in the room get where they're going. And I've been lucky enough to hear, and I guess be mentored, that that is the approach to take, by so many people along the way, including you. You hear a lot of the great public speakers, they're like, "It's not about you. It's about the people in the room." In my mind, I'm always looking for, "What's the easiest way to serve the people in the room?" And I think Q&A is that, because you're so right. And I wasn't always this way. I, too, was afraid of Q&A at some point in my life, I have no doubt. And I guess over the years, I've gotten more comfortable with that and had more experience in what you described, which is even if you don't nail the answer (because you probably won't nail the answer), the fact that you listened to what someone had to ask and said, "Hey, I see you. That sounds like a hard challenge. Let me offer some ideas that maybe will be helpful," is almost enough for them to go, "Oh. Like, I feel better having just had you hear the thing that I have or acknowledge the thing I have is a challenge."

Jen: I am having a couple thoughts here that may or may not be helpful, but just like little tips for people who want to open up spaces to more questions.

Pete: Yeah. I like tips.

Jen: Okay, so here's the first one. As the speaker, as the facilitator, as the teacher, as a coach, whatever role you're in, you know when you are going to stop and ask for questions. So, it might be at various points throughout a talk or a class or a workshop. It may be at the end. But you, as the person delivering, know when it's going to be. The people in the audience do not know when it's going to be. And so, they haven't prepared to ask their question, but you have prepared to be asked a question in that moment. And what I think makes people feel like they have egg on their face sometimes is that you open up for questions and nothing immediately happens, because people are thinking. Right? So, we've talked about the power of silence many times on this show. When I'm doing a Q&A on Zoom, I have a cup that has a straw in it.

Pete: Oh my god, what?

Jen: And so, every time I stop and then ask for questions, I pick up the drink and I slowly sip through the straw. And this is a reminder to myself to not talk.

Pete: That's good.

Jen: Do not talk until someone asks a question. Sometimes, it's five seconds. Sometimes, it's like thirty seconds. But someone always asks a question, which then leads to other people asking questions. People need a moment to get their thoughts together.

Pete: Yeah, this is so important. The amount of times that I have paused for questions and there have been none, and I have completely panicked is mind blowing. And so, I agree with you that there's a need to hold the tension of the silence. Because eventually, someone will ask a question, if nothing else, because they feel sorry for you. Which, I have no doubt, sometimes people feel sorry for you because you're standing on stage waiting for a question. The other thing I have discovered is that the way you ask for questions matters. Here's what I recently have been experimenting with, and it is wild, the difference. For many, many years, across probably hundreds of interactions, workshops, keynotes, etc., I have said something like, "Do you have any questions?" And often, that is when I'm greeted with silence.

Jen: Right.

Pete: I don't know why it took me so long, but eventually, I figured out that if you say, "What questions do you have," it assumes that there are questions to be asked. It's not a, "Do you actually have any?" It's a, "I know there are questions, so what are they?" And the difference is shocking, how many more questions I get, just by saying, "What questions do you have," as opposed to, "Do you have any questions?" So I don't know, it's just like a little...based on my own failures, there's a tip to avoid saying, "Do you have any questions?"

Jen: And when you really get into the semantics of it, the only answer to, "Do you have any questions," is, "Yes," or, "No."

Pete: Exactly.

Jen: But, "What questions do you have," is actually asking them to state their questions. I have also found that, in certain circumstances, to set expectations for the group. So, "I'll be stopping periodically for questions, so feel free to chime in with those along the way," or, "I'm going to leave about twenty minutes at the end for us to do some Q&A," is also really helpful.

Pete: Nice. Yeah, agreed. That's like, "Here are the ground rules for this interaction," almost.

Jen: Another trick that I've learned is, over time, you start to collect questions that people have. And sometimes, I will intentionally leave one little piece out, because I know that people have a question about it. And then, I will ask the first question of myself.

Pete: Yeah. Nice.

Jen: So it could be something like, "At this point, people usually have the question, 'fill-in-the-blank', so let's answer that first. And then, let's open up for other questions in the room."

Pete: Like a plant, I like that.

Jen: Yeah. You are your own plant.

Pete: I think part of the fear of questions is, obviously, they're unknown. And so, I could worry about the question that might be asked that I don't have an answer to. And I saw this play out last week, at the conference. And this lady absolutely nailed it when someone asked her a question about a specific topic that was related to the talk that she'd just given. And she very openly and vulnerably was like, "I have never heard of that thing you're talking about. I don't know if I can answer that question. But I'm excited to go and learn about what you just told me." And then, she actually said, "Can you tell me more about it now?" And so, the lady that asked the question was like, "Oh yeah, it's this thing that I discovered only last week. I don't know much about it either. I was hoping you might be able to help me, but it sounds like we all need to go and do some research on it." And she was like, "Yeah, great." And that was the takeaway. It wasn't like everyone was like, "This speaker sucks because she didn't know the answer." She totally owned the fact that, "Huh, great question. I don't actually know the answer." And I feel like maybe we need to give ourselves permission for that to be an okay response, that you're allowed to say, "I don't actually know, but I'm excited to find out."

Jen: Yes. And that generates trust.

Pete: Right.

Jen: When you take all the BS out of it, people will trust the things you do share with them, because you're not lying to them about knowing things that you don't know.

Pete: Yeah. Now, I did not intend for this to be like a pro tips episode, but while we're here, you know how I respond to questions like that? I don't think I've ever told anyone this, but I'm sure people have noticed it. What I do, if that happens to me, I say something like, "That's such a great question. Does anyone else in this room have any thoughts on that question?"

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And often, someone will be like, "Oh, yeah. I think that blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And I'm like, "That's incredible answer. I don't even need to say anything more, I just think that that answer there...," or it might prompt me to build on it. But I often think about, "Oh, if you're in a room full of people, there are other people in this room that could probably answer that question too."

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: And I think that also builds trust and creates more of a conversation.

Jen: I love that.

Pete: Also, just as a side, some of my favorite episodes we've ever done (actually, some of them haven't even been released) were when we did live Q&As.

Jen: Oh, yeah.

Pete: In New York.

Jen: Yes.

Pete: And I think, at one point, we'd done one that was like ninety minutes of Q&A. And we were like, "We can't possibly clip this into five episodes, so we're just going to leave it as a thing that happened that was only for the people that were there."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: And those episodes (if I can call them that, because they didn't get released) were some of my favorite.

Jen: Yeah. Those were so fun. It's making me think that we should probably do a Q&A episode coming up. Maybe when we reach our next big milestone, whatever that might be.

Pete: Yeah. We should periodically do it. I like the fact that you do it monthly with your community. I love that idea. When I had a sort of mastermind group going for a few years, sort of back during COVID, I used to do a video voicemail once a week, which was, "Throughout the week, if you have questions, put them in this Slack channel," I think it was at the time, "and I'll record myself answering these questions once a week." And it was like the funnest little creative project, where I would press record on my camera...and I had challenged myself to not read any of the questions prior. And I would literally read them and try and answer them on the spot. And it was so much fun.

Jen: So fun.

Pete: So fun. Q&A is great. I love Q&A. Come on, people. Let's embrace Q&A.

Jen: I agree. For the last few months in the Career Collective, I've been challenging myself to actually do a reverse Q&A, but I don't need them to answer directly to me.

Pete: Like an A&Q?

Jen: It's more like...well, I'll explain. So I do a monthly workshop at the beginning of the month, a ninety-minute workshop on a particular theme. And then, after the workshop is over, I come up with ten questions for the person who has watched the workshop to ask themselves, based on the content that they've learned. So it's like a resource that I create every month, ten questions for you to dig deeper within yourself in relationship to this topic. So, for a lot of people, it is an unlocking mechanism to have to answer a question.

Pete: For sure. Flipping the Q&A to the same people, "Here's an idea I had. Here are some questions you can ask yourself about that idea."

Jen: Yep.

Pete: That's cool. I love it. All in the spirit of learning and growth and connecting dots.

Jen: That's right. So the other thing that I find fascinating about my monthly Q&A...because it's with essentially the same group of people each month, but they don't necessarily talk to each other all month. They're going about their business, building their careers. But when it comes time for the monthly Q&A, it is amazing to me how thematically aligned everyone is about their questions. And you can really suss out what is going on within a community, and what the priorities are, and what the current concerns and challenges are by actually taking stock of the questions that are being asked. So because of the questions I get asked in June, for example, I will make a decision about what our theme is going to be for August, because I understand where the collective mind is. So, questions are a great data set.

Pete: I am obsessed with that. And I think about that in the context of the talk I gave last week. The first question that came up was about this, what I thought was a very minor detail or aside about one of the stories I shared. It actually didn't have anything to do with the punchline of the talk. So I said something like, "I was running a workshop on having difficult conversations the other week. And what happened in that workshop is something I want to share with you, because one of the participants ended up using AI." And so, the whole talk was about how leaders can leverage AI. The first question was like, "Can you tell us how you think about approaching difficult conversations?" And I thought that was a really interesting data point, like to your point. And sort of proof of what we talked about, which was, that gave me an opportunity to address the thing that was actually on the mind of the person in the room, that didn't actually have anything to do with the talk, but that I was able to help that person and maybe some other people who were thinking about difficult conversations. And then, I checked myself and I've been thinking about it since, of like, "Oh, that's data and information for you that that particular audience is also curious about. How are they thinking about difficult conversations?" So yeah, I agree. It's a data source for you. It's a way to get a sense of what's on the minds and the hearts, I guess, of the people in the room.

Jen: Yeah. I guess Q&A, at the end of the day, is a win-win. They get to voice their concerns, their questions, and learn something. You get to connect, and reflect back what is going on in the room. It is only positive.

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.