As a business analyst, I regularly need to make presentations to groups large and small. It is often nerve-wracking so I like to pick up new techniques and approaches that might help.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to listen to a webinar entitled "Presentation Skills for Conferences" that was offered by members of the organising committee for the BA Conference Europe 2017. The webinar was facilitated by IRM UK and the members who made up the panel were Debbie Paul, Adrian Reed and David Beckham. A lot of the information and the advice being offered was very helpful, some I had come across before (the importance of preparing in particular) but some tips that were new. However, there was one question which really caught my interest which was "How do you deal with awkward questions?". This is the part of any presentation that is unpredictable - who knows what questions might be asked? And the awkward question, where I really don't have a clue what to say, is the nightmare scenario. In reality, though, this can happen to any presenter - no matter how well they understand their subject - so I gave the answers particular attention.

Six Top Tips for Answering Difficult Questions in Presentations

1. You're not alone. The first thing to remember is that this happens to everyone so it's important to remain calm and don't panic or get flustered; this could affect your performance for the remainder of the presentation.
2. Do not waffle in trying to answer. This may sound obvious but waffling is always obvious and does not help to lead the audience away from the question. You can see this happen on a regular basis on programmes such as BBC Question Time - the audience can usually see straight through it.
3. Be honest. Honesty is always the best policy in these situations. Explain to the member of the audience that you had never thought about it is this context before and perhaps try points 4 or 5.
4. Deflect the question back to source or the audience. Usually if a member of an audience has asked a question they've had a chance to think about it and have possibly already formed their own opinion which you can use to start a conversation. Similarly, you could open it up to the floor and encourage other audience members to participate.
5. Offer to investigate it further. Rather than leaving a question unanswered promise to take it away and then get back to them via on email or a social media platform. It is important that if you say you are going to follow up that you do this, or this could affect the way you are perceived with future presentations.
6. When planning the presentation think about questions you might get asked.Obviously to think about every possible question you could get asked would not be easy, but you could put yourself in the shoes of the audience and think about what you might ask. This can help to identify where there are gaps in your knowledge or understanding. And sometimes, your questions are far worse than any you are asked!

I think the panel's tips could be very helpful when preparing to present.

If you would like to learn more about presentations you could take a look at the AssistKD free-learning course which looks at planning presentations, developing presentations, speaker's notes, presentation aids, delivering the presentation and the team presentation. This course can be found in our Knowledge Hub here.

Are you interested in updating your BA toolkit or training for a professional certification? Check out AssistKD's wide choice of business analysis courses.