Two types of questions you might face when presenting are Clarification questions and Challenge questions.

Clarification questions are usually pretty simple — someone is curious or didn't understand an aspect of what you said. You just need to answer as best you can and check with them that you answered their question.

Challenge questions are when someone disagrees or has concerns about what you've presented. Not all of us, however, are likely to say so clearly, and so challenge questions are often disguised as clarification questions. A "How it will work for new visitors?" might actually come from the thought: "I don't think this will work for new visitors." Or a "When will it be ready?" may stem from "I don't think this will be done on time." You may pick it up in the tone of how it's asked.

Challenge questions usually benefit from a different approach. Responding effectively to a Challenge question may require exploring the concern or issue behind the question. I've seen many short, factual responses to Challenge questions where the person asking is not at all reassured by the response.

Reminding myself that a question may be a Challenge, not a Clarification question, helps me make sure everyone is brought along with me during a meeting, presentation, or plain old conversation.

This along with many other useful frameworks is from Trenton Moss' excellent Human Powered.

Challenge questions

It's easy to want to fill an awkward silence. Often, however, a pause in conversation is time people need to think. When conducting research, and maybe just in normal conversations, try to trust the questions that you ask and avoid filling the silence after asking a question. Just wait and listen.

My experience is that it's very easy to follow a nice open-ended question such as "How do you feel about it now?" with all sorts of qualifications or assumptions because a silence feels uncomfortable. It can quickly become, "How do you feel about it now?...I guess it must have been hard for you, right?" And instead of giving someone space to share a thoughtful answer of your open-ended question all you might get is a "Yes" and perhaps your chance of finding out what they really thought has gone. Instead, have faith in what you ask and stick out the silence.

Also see: prefer open-ended questions, some social research tips

Don't fill the silence

So often do we talk about speaking with passion, much rarer do we think about listening with passion.

Conversations are two-sided, they only work if one person is listening while the other is talking. Unfortunately, we tend to have a greater innate interest in making sure others know the smart, interesting and important things that we think than truly absorbing what someone else has to say. So I love this quote from Harriet Lerner:

Listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.

If we all could do this routinely with our colleagues, friends, family, children, and partners I’d guess it’d make quite a difference.

I learned about it from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead.

Listen with passion

7 minutes well spent watching Julian Treasure at TED.

3 ways to listen better

Thanks to Jump Associates and Peter Lyman.

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Category: listening