"Any Questions?"

In the education world, you can always tell someone is an inexperienced teacher if they are talking for long periods of time/ delivering information, then pausing on occasion to ask "Does anybody have any questions?"

You can spot a veteran teacher by the absence of this question. And yet in the corporate training world, I hear this question asked day after day and training after training. Maybe you have, too.

So let me ask you this, my corporate friends: How effective is this question?

Don't Do This:

The question "Does anyone have any questions" most often results in one thing: Silence.

To explain why this happens, let me give you a scenario. Imagine you are in a long, boring training/ meeting where the trainer does 90% of the talking, and now--of course--the training/ meeting has gone over and everyone is checking their watches. So, when the presenter stops and asks "Any questions?" nobody responds for three simple reasons:

• Anyone who is disengaged isn't asking a question because they weren't paying attention.

• Anyone who *is* engaged, will go ahead and just interrupt you during the training to ask their question anyway.

  • Don't like interruptions? I suggest using a question parking lot system in a live training environment or diverting all questions to chat in a virtual one.

• People know that asking questions extends meeting times, and they're already bored and disengaged and don't want to have to stay a second longer than they have to, so no one asks questions. (And if someone does break that unspoken cardinal rule, everyone else in the meeting silently grumbles.)

"Wait, so are you saying I shouldn't check in with my learners?" NO--that is NOT what I'm saying at ALL! How do you know if the training is actively working unless you are checking as you go? What I'm saying is, you should be asking better questions.

So if I can't ask "Does anybody have any questions?" what am I supposed to ask instead?

Instead, Do This:

Instead of asking "Any Questions" ask questions that test their knowledge/ understanding of the key points *you* want them to take away. That means you have to plan ahead and create a question that forces an answer that demonstrates understanding/ mastery of the concept to test them.

Example: You have just finished explaining Medicare Part D. Instead of asking "Any Questions" ask them to list the four stages of Part D, then ask what triggers the transfer from one stage to the next, etc.

The bottom line is this...

If it's worth your time to teach, it should be worth their time to learn. If it's worth their time to learn, it's worth your time to make sure they learned it. So if you aren't assessing as you go, you're wasting everyone's time.