The Quickest Way to Run an Online Q&A Session
The Quickest Way to Run an Online Q&A Session
This Won’t Take Long to Explain
Having co-authored another book called, Ask Powerful Questions: Create Conversations that Matter, I’m especially intrigued at how the questions we ask shape the conversations we have.
One of my favorite ways to run an online Q&A session is what I call the “curiosity harvest.” You can do this on any platform just using the chat. There are a few versions of the exercise, but the simplest is a two-step curiosity harvest.
Step 1: Harvest Individual Curiosity
Typically, when we run a Q&A session, we get to the end of a class, conference session, keynote or workshop and ask if there are any questions. Often when we do this, we run into a brick wall. No one asks any questions, or someone just blurts one out that’s not helpful to the group.
A much more intentional way to handle this is to provide a bit of silence for people to come up with their question. I do this by having virtual participants open the chat and enter their question. Invite them to rewind the tape on the meeting. What are they naturally curious about? What topic would they love to dive deeper into? What part of this person’s expertise would they love to tap?
Then have them type a question related to that into the chat. But have them wait to press enter.
After about 10 to 30 seconds, tell your group that on the count of three you’re going to have everyone hit “enter” at the same time. That will be the group’s cue to blow up the chat with their questions.
That is round 1. You’ve harvested individual curiosity.
Step 2: Harvest Collective Curiosity
Next, harvest the group’s collective curiosity. This makes for a way more useful, practical, engaging Q&A session online. What you don’t want to do is have a presenter go down a rabbit hole with one rogue curiosity or question. You want to determine what the group is most curious about so that the leader can speak to as many people as possible.
First, ask everybody to hit the CAPS LOCK button on their keyboard. Then, invite your group to read through everyone else’s questions in the chat.
Their goal?
Read through everybody’s questions, and retype a question that each person feels captures a theme from the group’s collective curiosity. I might turn on some fun, upbeat instrumental music for this if you have over 20 questions in the chat.
I wait a moment for people to type in their questions and then have everyone press enter after counting down from three. As the facilitator or leader, I’m only paying attention to the questions in all caps to get a sense for what people really care about. This method is more engaging than simple “upvoting” of questions as it invites everyone to think deeply and tune into what the whole group cares about.
Then I pick a couple questions and lightning-round answer them, or I pick one question that’s a really strong theme and have people discuss it in breakouts. My thinking, as I’ll tell participants, is that the group collectively is always smarter than I am individually.
We might take this question: How do you motivate people on a remote team? I’ll have everyone do a breakout for five minutes to answer that, and share what they learned with the larger group. Then I’ll offer my perspective or thoughts after they’ve had a chance to share some of their ideas.
This is such a dynamic way to run an online Q&A session. It’s way more interactive and participatory than other approaches. I’ve used this method with a group of three, 30 and 300. The mechanics just seem to work.
You can also invite us to come in and run a session on how to make virtual engagement easy for you. If you’re interested, you can find more information on our website www.weand.me/virtual.
One fun alternative to running a Q&A session the way I described above is to pick a handful of questions from a deck of We! Connect Cards. You’ll find questions that nobody else will come up with but that everybody would really value to lead an engaging, and quick, online Q&A. This is a fun way for a guest speaker or presenter to do a lightning round Q&A.