我也有话要说（二十四）向听众提问时要注意什么？

I Have Something to Say Too (24): What to Watch When Asking the Audience Questions

> By Li Xiaolai · 2010-07-27 · [Original (web archive)](https://web.archive.org/web/20111113113520/http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/9812.html) (Chinese)
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

From time to time a speaker needs to ask the audience some questions, hoping for some response. However, when novices ask questions, an "awkward silence" often occurs. This situation is often [not because the audience won't cooperate](http://www.lixiaolai.com/archives/9573.html), but because the novice's way of asking is wrong, which leaves the audience not knowing how to respond.

The most obvious mistake, yet also a quite common one, is treating a rhetorical question as a real question. A so-called rhetorical question is a question that doesn't need the other party to answer. But novices often throw these questions, which they should have answered themselves, to the audience, causing embarrassment. Suppose that in a time-management talk I asked: "Do you all know how I manage my time?" and after asking actually paused to wait for the audience's response; then I'd be stupid, and the room would certainly go "cold." Because this can obviously only be a rhetorical question, and an unnecessary one at that. Before I give the answer, the audience has no way of knowing the specific answer, and more importantly, the audience came precisely to hear this, so why would I ask a rhetorical question? Just say it.

Another common and important mistake is the speaker mistakenly thinking they should "stump the audience"—the audience didn't come to take an exam. Never think that stumping part of the audience with a question or two can prove the speaker's own intelligence. Even if the speaker could stump the entire audience (which is almost impossible), if the speaker made this the ultimate aim, what they'd get would certainly not be self-proof but only the audience's dislike. Even if the speaker sometimes has to stump the audience, that's only a means, not an end. The speaker must use this means to prove something to the audience, provide an unexpected yet effective solution, and let the audience acquire principles they didn't know before. Never take the means for the end.

Another common embarrassment is the speaker asking a question "a three-year-old could answer," to the point that the audience feels answering the question is itself an insult to their intelligence. Most of the time this is caused by the speaker's own low level: the speaker thinks it's a big question, but the audience thinks it's common sense—which produces the effect of the audience thinking the speaker is childish. There's no other way around this; it can only be made up for through personal growth.

And the most widespread mistake is not making the premises and scope clear when asking, to the point that the audience doesn't know how to answer. Many questions have different answers under different circumstances. For example, "Do you prefer working at a big company, or at a small company?" There's actually only one answer to this kind of question: "it depends." As for what it depends on, a thousand people have a thousand circumstances... If this is the kind of question you ask, how do you expect the audience to answer?

An even more embarrassing situation is when the speaker asks a question but gets an answer he'd never imagined before. Because he'd never considered it before, and there isn't enough time on the podium to "think it over carefully," a novice can easily be thrown into disarray in this situation, causing endless embarrassment.

So, when preparing to ask questions, the speaker must do his homework in advance.

> - Do I need to ask this question?
> - Does everyone know the right answer to this question?
> - What's the purpose of asking this question?
> - So that the audience can answer this question clearly, what premises should I set out in advance, and what scope should I make clear?
> - What reactions might the audience have to this question? And how should I respond to these answers?
> - Have I thought of every possibility for answering this question?
> - Are there answers the audience can't possibly think of?
> - What exactly can those answers the audience can't think of show?

Sometimes you can't necessarily think these seemingly simple questions through on your own. You may need to experiment on friends around you first, collect all kinds of responses, and then mull them over repeatedly.

Copyright: © LookMinds. Our own edited text and translation, not a substitute for the original; rights in the original belong to the author and the platform. Please see the original link.