Q&As are for interviews, not workshops

A rant.

You can’t have it both ways.

Insist on a traditional question and answer session at a stakeholder workshop and then complain when people go off topic.

Off ‘your’ topic is what you really mean.

What the speaker talked about is largely immaterial. Workshop participants just want to get stuff off their chest or say what’s on their mind.

Your first ‘presenter’ – they still insist on using slides - is often a sitting duck for the Q&A.

I felt so sorry for the demographer who shared his insights with a group recently. He wasn’t from the host organisation but the workshop participants grilled him as if he was.

He responded in good spirit initially, then grew more and more defensive as the questions rolled in. Few were about his content. Most were complaints, phrased as questions, about the host organisation’s policies and programs.

Someone from the host organisation warned me that ‘they’ were going ‘off track’. They were ‘straying off the topic’ and hinted that I should step in.

But that would be among the worst things I could have done. Intervening would have undermined any trust that the group had in the workshop, which was convened to gather their ideas.

Next time you see ‘Q&A’ on a workshop agenda, be brave and ask if there is another way to convey the information.

Perhaps send participants a video of the speaker well before the workshop. Invite them to bring their impressions and thoughts for discussion with their fellow participants. They can get started on the real work a lot faster.

If your colleagues or client insist on speakers don’t open it up to questions immediately. There are other ways to help people digest the information they have just heard.

Pair people up and ask them to compare notes on what struck them or what did they find surprising or thought provoking.

Try a quick ‘quiz’ to help them digest the content they just heard. It may well help to answer their first questions too.

Please don’t say, ‘any questions?’

I’d love to hear how you flip the Q&A. Please share by commenting below or email me. I’ll compile all suggestions and share them with you so we can all keep learning.

If you’d like to learn more about designing workshops, you’re invited to join me backstage in my next Masterclass Series. 4 x 75-minute online sessions with a small group of just 8. Tuesday 20 April – Tuesday 11 May. All the details and to register, are here.