Questions are a sign of quality
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
When I give a lecture or do a presentation, a bullet-proof way to know whether I did a good job or not, is if I get questions afterwards. Take note of this the next time you listen to an awesome presentation. When the lecture ends, that is where the real conversation starts. The best lectures get the most questions, and the inferior presentations get few or no questions at all. If the audience could not understand a single word of what you were talking about, how are they supposed to ask a question then? And on the contrary, if they clearly understood your message, asking questions will be simple.
I often aim at making my lectures as simple as I possible can. Set the bar so low that just about anyone should be able to understand them. Start super-easy and go deeper from there. Of all the hundreds of lectures I have done, only once have I received negative criticism that it was too easy. And yet, I am convinced that I am still setting the bar too high. When lecturing about your own domain of expertise, it is extremely difficult to realize how much deeper your own knowledge is compared to those that are listening. When I feel that I have set the bar too low, I am likely approaching the upper limit of the audience’s ability to understand. There is a constant mismatch here that I suspect many of us suffer from. And we are often afraid to make a fool of ourselves, so when we don’t object when we don’t understand, the lecturer might take this as an indication that all is well. Perhaps it is better to look at it the other way? If we don’t get any interruptions or questions, does that mean that we have been too optimistic about the audience’s ability to understand? That might be a good sign that we need to lower the bar even more.
We should probably also consider whether we need to lower the bar everywhere, or if there are certain aspects of the presentation where understanding is crucial. Personally, I would argue that we really need to get the introduction right. The purpose of the lecture. Why are we here? And I need to know what my key talking point is. What is the message that I want to transmit? It’s just like entering the destination on you GPS navigation system. When you start off, it is not relevant to investigate in detail which road junctions you should go a long, long way away. It is more important to get an overview of the entire journey, which are the critical road choices and how do you drive to get out on the main highway? The more specific your destination is, the better guidance you can receive to get there. As the saying goes, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.”
When you practice and improve as a lecturer, you might notice that you get more questions. And when those questions start coming, you can use them to improve. The audience will tell you what you should do more of and what to do less of. Just listen to what they are asking and implement the answer in your talk the next time you give the presentation. Your quality will increase as a result. Another important thing to consider is to “break the ice”. It is often wise to engage with your audience as soon as possible in you lecture. Seek some form of engagement. If the people that are listening get to speak early, the probability that they will stay engaged and interact with you during the lecture increases. So, try to figure out an activity that will engage your audience as soon into your lecture as possible. You could throw out some open questions or (depending on audience size) ask them to give a short presentation of themselves. For very large audiences, you could perhaps use online tools such as Menti. Just figure out a way to get that early engagement. Your reward will be the questions.
Never forget, that even if you have 30 years of experience in a specific field, an audience of 30 people with an average age of 30, has a collective experience of almost a thousand years across diverse fields. Thus, when standing in front of an audience, you are standing in front of a gold mine. You just need to figure out a way to get them to start asking those questions and let them illuminate your own field of expertise with knowledge from completely different backgrounds.