We're going to talk about asking questions to the audience. And when people hear that they sometimes think that this has to do with what they call rhetorical questions. Now this part is not about rhetorical questions in the sense that rhetorical questions with an obvious answer or sometimes no answer at all. Sometimes we dismiss questions as being, that's a rhetorical question. No, we're going to talk about [LAUGH] interesting questions, non-rhetorical questions if you will. Rhetorical questions are questions like is this a joke or who knows, right? Now, there are good rhetorical questions, okay? There are interesting rhetorical questions, but rhetorical question is a question where you do not expect any answer from the. Let me give you a few examples, this is one of the most famous speech in the history of speeches. This was in the United States before they state that British American thing that happened. They tell us that we are weak, unable to cope with so formidable an adversary Britain that is, but when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week or the next year? And those as far as I am concerned are excellent rhetorical questions, I think they are great. Simon Sinek, the author of the presentation How Great Leaders Inspire Action, gave a speech at TEDx, which became an Internet sensation. Starts his presentation with a series of questions, aimed at the audience. How do you explain when things don't go as we assume or better? How do you explain when others are able to achieve things that defy all assumptions? For example, why is Apple so innovative, right? The audience might want to answer, but he has no chance. Because he just continues speaking, which is a sensible strategy. If you have just 18 minutes and if you are on a stage with a huge countdown clock. We are going to talk about situations where you are not so pressed with time. We're going to talk about questions, not rhetorical, but rather conversational questions. We're going to talk about questions that do require an answer, an answer that you are prepared to listen to. We're going to talk not about scripted, but mostly about improvized questions. It's not like you cannot rehearse improvized questions, you still can, but it will be mostly situation dependent. If you see the word incense board, it's time to ask questions. Now, this might be a tough job, I mean formulating a good question is difficult enough. And then you need to react to the answer, you need to improvise. And in this regard, this course is a bit like that instruction from the parachute, which says to you, open the hatch, jump right in, to be continued, right? So don't try it all at home, I guess. Please do not, well at least not ask open questions to your audiences before the next section of this course, which has to do with improvisation. But I guess you can start asking closed questions, if you didn't do this before. So why do we need to ask questions to the audience even though it is quite hard, even though it does put a lot of strain on our limited processing power? Well, there are four reasons as far as I can tell. Number one, the obvious reason is to create a conversation, because questions are essential to conversations. Questions is how conversation work. I ask you a question, you give me an answer, you ask me a question, I give you an answer, this is what a conversation is essentially. Now people sometimes ask, Alexi, what do I do if nobody asking me questions right after the talk. And well bad news, by the time you arrive the the Q&A it is already late, you have to start conversing with people well before Q&A. Because after I don't know about ten minutes, people settle into what I call the watching mode. They are just like at their couch at home and they're watching TV, and this is a passive activity. TV is to not provoke conversations, you're just watching the TV passively. So they don't want to talk to you anymore, they need to switch gears, and this is hard. I think you need to start working with an audience that is asking them questions well before the Q&A, I think this is an excellent idea. And of course the situation is dreadful, I mean do you have any questions, and dead silence for five seconds. And then okay, all right, I'm going to get going, so start talking to people earlier. Questions demonstrate interest, they actually make you appear to be a more engaged, more passionate speaker, you are interested in people. What other ways we demonstrate interest? Well we lean forward in the conversation, that is. We watch people, we look people in the eye. We nod, we make uhums, and we ask questions, clarifying maybe questions. And this is precisely what I recommend you doing while you're speaking at public or you're making presentations. Lean forward, get off the stage, go to talk to people, look them in the eye. When they talk support them non-verbally and go ahead and ask them questions. Or it doesn't work for short talks, it doesn't work for highly scripted talks. It doesn't work at I don't know, Ted probably, but even at Ted, people sometimes ask questions to the audience, most of them don't. Now, the drawback is that you have to react, well I guess you can negate, but you cannot ignore the feedback, you need to do something about it. Thing number two, which I think is quite interesting. By asking questions, you fight something called the hindsight bias. It's this ability of people to go, I knew it all along. I think Dan Ariely told the story about him just going around and telling everybody about his experiments. He runs a behavioral psychology, behavioral economics they call it lab, and he does all the behavioral experiments. And people reacting with either disbelief or saying that well, it was obvious from the get go. Why did you choose to spend your time on precious text-based, precious Ford Foundation's money on those stupid experiments. The result was obvious, and then he started asking questions. He started revealing the setup of the experiment, and then asking the audience to predict. By a show of hands, to predict the results of their experiment, because those results were suprising to himself. And he was a research scientist, and what he found out that the audience had no clue. It was just a hindsight bias thing, all I knew it all along, no you didn't. So if I tell you the Battle of Waterloo happened in 1816. You'll go, yeah, of course it did, so what? Well, first thing it didn't happen in 1816, it happened in 1815, gotcha. But secondly, there's a different way of doing the same job, it's longer. But I think it's more satisfying both for you and for the people in the room. At first, we'll ask you, if I observed that you are bored, I dont do this all the time. I conserve time, but if I see that the audience is starting to get slightly bored, instead of just telling them. I would say, what would you say was the most important battle of the 19th century? And people will go this or that, but the Battle of Waterloo will make it to the top five answers. And then ask, okay, how many of you know when did the Battle of Waterloo happen? And then some people will inevitably, somebody will say 1815 or maybe I can go with a show of hands. How many of you think it's 1814, 1815, 1816? And you might see that a substantial part of the audience has no clue. They don't know the correct answer, which makes your information much more valuable. This gives you a license to speak, I call it. It's important for you, you start to value your information. You think wow, okay, I came to the right place, those people don't know that you didn't like them. But then it's also, I think very important for people in the audience who know the correct data. After the Battle of Waterloo, because before that they thought this is all of this. But now they see that the rest of the people have no idea and sort of, this makes this experience slightly better for them. Now they know that it's the audience that doesn't know not the speaker telling obvious things. Thing number three, questions enhance memorability. If you ask a question before giving out the information chances are people will memorize this information much better. This is called the prequestion effect, now there's a bit of controversy on whether this effect applies to both prequestions and non prequestioned information. Some studies demonstrated that yes, people remember prequestioned information more. But this comes at a price where long prequestioned information is not remembered as well. However the most recent research studies that I have seen say that. This effect applies to both prequestioned and non-prequestioned information. What you can see is a market improvement in people's final test scores. So there, ask questions for the information you think is really, really important. And finally, asking questions allows you to customize your talk, it becomes a unique experience. You are not a speaker, in the sense that you do not just give out prerecorded information. No, this is not you do, you co-create this experience with the rest of the people. This engages them and the tool becomes unique and thus much more valuable. So I think there are, even though it's quite difficult, I think there are pretty good reasons to ask the audience questions during the talk.
