75 Questions to Ask Guest Speakers During a Virtual Event

Whether you’re hosting or attending, a virtual event is a fantastic opportunity to engage with an expert and learn about their experience and insight. For hosts, it’s also a great chance to promote speaking and presenting skills.

To make the most of your event and position your organization in the best possible light, you need to carry out careful research and develop a body of thoughtful questions.

So what are some good questions to ask a guest speaker for an entertaining, enlightening discussion? In this article, we’ll cover the best questions to ask presenters, including topics to avoid and tips to ensure a successful virtual event?

Best questions to ask a presenter at a virtual event

Here are five of the best questions to ask guest speakers at your next online event:

1. What’s the best feedback you’ve ever received at work?
2. Do you foresee (trending technology) influencing your field in the near future?
3. What does great leadership look like?
4. What early setbacks later gave you an advantage?
5. What one piece of advice would you have given yourself 10 years ago?

Below, we’ll explore top ice breakers, deep dives, follow-ups, and closing questions.

15 ice breaker questions to get a guest speaker talking

You’ll want your guest speaker relaxed and forthcoming, which is why good ice breaker questions can be so important to set the tone of your webinar presentation.

One good way to put your guest at ease is to find some common ground. This could be a light chat about where you’re from or where you’ve lived. It could also be a story about your family, or it might be a shared interest or hobby.

Getting your guest talking about something lighthearted and personal can be a great springboard for further conversation. But the real value here is in getting you, your guest speaker, and the audience settled in and engaged.

So be expressive when showing your interest, and responsive to what your guest says. Remember, no matter how many people are viewing, you are your guest's most important audience member.

Note: these questions will give you some great ideas. But you’ll want to adapt many of them to your guest’s experience, which we discuss further below.

1. Who are your role models?
2. When was the last time you were surprised or shocked?
3. Tell us something no one in our audience knows about you.
4. What song or album did you listen to most last year?
5. What superstitions do you have?
6. What movie have you seen the most times?
7. What three superpowers would you choose to have?
8. Who would you invite to your ideal dinner party?
9. Who’s someone in your profession you really admire?
10. What qualities do you most admire in others?
11. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would it be?
12. What period in time would you love to have experienced first-hand?
13. What would be the title of your memoir?
14. What’s the best feedback you’ve ever received at work?
15. What’s the number one thing that inspires you?

30 deep-dive questions to get value from your guest speaker

Once you’ve got the ball rolling with a few icebreakers or areas of common ground, you can start probing more deeply into your guest’s experience.

If you can, find a surprising or curious fact about their work or past, such as an early success or hurdle. See if you can home in on this to glean something substantial and unique from your conversation.

On their career and industry

1. What are the biggest decisions you’ve made over the last year?
2. How has your role changed in the last 12 months?
3. How do you see the industry evolving over the next five years?
4. Do you foresee [trending technology] influencing your field in the near future?
5. What’s your secret to dealing with disappointment?
6. What’s the most important thing for you to concentrate on in the months ahead?
7. What are the biggest misconceptions about your work?
8. What would you say makes you different from others in your field?
9. How do you stay competitive in your field?
10. What makes your job exciting?
11. What are the biggest opportunities in the industry out there at the moment?
12. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the last year in your industry?
13. What’s the best decision you’ve ever made in a professional context?
14. What’s a piece of advice you wish you’d heard at the beginning of your career?
15. What could candidates do to stand out in your field today?

On leadership

1. Can anyone be a leader?
2. What does great leadership look like?
3. In your experience, what’s the most effective leadership style?
4. What’s the biggest leadership lesson you’ve learned?
5. What challenges do leaders face when working together?
6. What’s the single most important quality a leader can have?
7. What would make you a better leader?
8. How important are mentors in developing better leaders?
9. How have you improved your emotional intelligence as a leader?
10. How do you resolve conflict within a team?
11. How do you bring about change?
12. How can you get a team to come up with unique solutions?
13. How do you develop a strong culture within a team?
14. How do you get teams to collaborate effectively when working remotely?
15. How do you take steps to improve your leadership skills?

20 follow-up questions to dig deeper

The best follow-up questions help the conversation flow naturally while bringing further insight for the audience. Ask questions like the ones below to keep the conversation going.

1. What early setbacks later gave you an advantage?
2. How did you use your experience to influence your decision-making?
3. What other factors made a difference in your choices?
4. What strategies have had the biggest impact on your success?
5. How well have you maintained a positive work-life balance throughout it all?
6. Would you make the same decisions again?
7. Can you explain your strategy for making informed decisions?
8. How do you get stakeholders on board with your decisions and initiatives?
9. What’s the one thing you’ve learned from your experience?
10. What could have made a difference to how things worked out?
11. What’s the most important skill you’ve developed?
12. How much has luck played a part in your success?
13. How much do your emotions play a role in your choices?
14. Has [current trend] made a difference in how you approach this topic?
15. How do you stay informed about industry trends?
16. What’s one thing you’d change about your field or industry?
17. When did you first realize you’d chosen the right career path?
18. Can you recommend resources for someone who wants to get started in your field?
19. What kind of timeline can someone expect to advance in your field
20. What mistakes did you make then that you wouldn’t make now?

But a great way to get even more value out of your discussion is to involve the audience. One way you can do this is with question upvotes.

With Livestorm you can invite audience members to add their own questions to the Questions Tab. Encourage attendees to upvote their preferred questions. Then, ask your guest whichever ones receive the most upvotes.

10 fun questions to end your virtual event

What are good questions to ask a presenter after a presentation? A few fun questions can be useful to end your talk on a fun, lighthearted note. You could also use a short video, gif, or image to wrap up the event on a positive note.

1. What three things would go in your room 101?
2. What’s your best tip for balancing work and life?
3. Which app would you most miss on a desert island?
4. What’s the best book on [event topic] you’ve read recently?
5. Why do you love what you do?
6. What’s the best way for someone to get started in your field?
7. What’s the strangest question someone’s asked you in an interview?
8. What one piece of advice would you have given yourself 10 years ago?
9. What’s your perfect evening after a busy week?
10. What’s a motto you live by?

What makes a good question to ask a guest speaker at a virtual event?

The better you know your guest, the better you’ll craft original, relevant questions that will give real value to your viewing audience.

Even with limited knowledge of your guest’s background or expertise, you can still get your guest talking at length with open questions that consider their struggles, skills, and hopes.

Many of our most meaningful concerns are in fact universal issues. **Use your own experiences to help you formulate thoughtful questions., **

Whenever possible put yourself in your guest’s shoes to consider what obstacles they’ve faced. You may find that you’ve come up against similar challenges yourself.

During your webinar and as your discussion progresses, listen carefully and respond naturally to what they’ve said. Of course, remaining natural and spontaneous isn’t always easy when you have an audience, but with a prepared list of questions, you’ll have lots of good ideas to draw from.

Use this simple checklist to make sure you ask great guest speaker questions:

• Raise questions that relate directly to the speaker’s presentation
• Personalize questions by putting yourself in the speaker’s shoes
• Invite the audience to ask questions from their own perspective
• Respond naturally with follow-up questions
• Avoid yes or no questions and provide open-ended prompts instead

Align guest speaker questions with the presenter’s expertise

Having a long list of fantastic questions is vital to hosting a successful conversation with your guest speaker during your marketing event. But even more important is doing background preparation that allows you to best tap into their concerns, passions, and challenges.

Before the event, take time to:

• Read what your guest has written
• Listen to what they’ve said
• Study what they’ve accomplished

Their LinkedIn profile will be a great place to start to find links to published work and interviews. Alternatively, you can simply send them a friendly email and ask them to point you in the right direction.

With a strong understanding of your guest’s professional journey, you’ll be in a good position to guide the conversation through the most interesting and relevant areas of discussion.

How to modify questions for guest speakers

Now that you have a strong body of questions to work with, you can use your interview research to really get the most out of them. Let’s look at some examples of how you can adapt questions to a specific guest.

For our example adapted questions, we’ll imagine the guest speaker is Jenny Stewart, an edtech CEO who’s founded and grown a website providing online lesson resources for teachers.

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What to avoid when questioning your guest speaker for a virtual event

There are no concrete rules on what not to do or ask during a virtual event. However, it’s usually best to avoid religion and politics. It’s also a good idea to tread carefully when it comes to potentially personal or sensitive subjects.

To be sure you’re on safe ground, consider connecting with your guest before the event starts. Ask if they prefer to avoid any areas of discussion.

During the event, don’t feel you have to urgently fill any pauses with your own thoughts or further questions. Instead, give your speaker the chance to think and reflect before giving you a response.

Also, don’t forget that the success of any virtual event depends on engaging your audience. While your speaker’s presentation will likely do a great job of that, you can also encourage audience participation wherever possible.

Question upvotes and multimedia shares are both great ways to encourage video engagement. With Livestorm you can also create polls to get the audience talking and see how much they agree or disagree with your guest on a particular subject.

Livestorm also supports reaction emojis during live events. Ask attendees to use them to express their support for or thoughts about webinar topics in real time.

Engage your guest and your audience

Your goal with a guest speaker should be a relevant, engaging, and unique conversation. So the importance of careful guest research and interview preparation can’t be overstated.

Where possible, explore their professional history and see if you have any shared experiences you could touch on. You might uncover a surprising fact or opinion that serves as the starting point for your entire discussion.

To make the event more memorable for your audience, involve them in the Q&A process. Livestorm’s question upvotes, polls, and emoji reactions make it easy to involve attendees.

With thorough research, great questions, and audience participation you can host a successful, engaging virtual event.

Frequently asked questions about guest speakers for virtual events

What questions should I ask a guest speaker?

Ask your guest speaker open questions about their career choices, the hurdles they overcame, and their plans for the future. You can also ask fun questions as icebreakers or to break up the conversation. Always listen carefully to your guest speaker, and ask follow-up questions that delve deeper into subjects they’ve raised.

What are good questions to ask a speaker?

Craft questions that directly relate to the speaker’s experience and topic of discussion. Invite the audience to suggest questions so they can engage directly with the presenter.

Avoid asking questions the presenter can answer with one word. Instead, raise open-ended questions that allow for deeper discussion.

How many questions should you ask a speaker?

Ask enough questions to fill the allotted discussion time. Depending on the length of the presentation and the amount of extra time, anywhere from five to 10 questions may be appropriate.

What are good questions to ask a successful person?

Most successful people have had to work hard and negotiate struggles or failure, so ask them questions about those challenges, what key moments made a difference to their fortunes, and what advice they’d give to their younger selves.

How do I find a guest speaker for my virtual event?

Build a network of contacts through work, forums, and social media – especially LinkedIn, where many professionals are also looking to grow their contacts and find partnership marketing opportunities.

When you identify a subject you’d like to discuss, search out specialists within those networks, and consider podcast hosts, influencers, and friends of friends. The best guests are experienced speakers, so also work out your budget and schedules before making contact with a potential guest.