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Moderating a panel at a seminar or conference

How many times have you watched a panel at a conference and thought that it was entertaining and informative? Your answer is probably a small number, yet quite often a TV debate programme keeps your interest and has enormous pace and tension. Why is this? Its because the TV programme often has experienced hosts and a production team behind the scenes who have researched the guests, thought of the best questions to ask, the best scenarios to imply, and how to pace out the entire TV debate. Moderating a panel is deceptively hard - harder, in fact, than keynote speaking, because the quality of the panellists is usually beyond your control. Perhaps even more than the speakers, a conference or meetings moderators play a critical role in determining the effectiveness of each session. Speakers are frequently the big names the draw for the audience but how the moderator steers the session determines whether audience attention is held, and what the audience takes away. The success with which a moderator does his or her job changes the energy in the room, the flow of the session, and the content that emerges. Great moderators make the panellists better, draw out the most interesting information and keep listeners engaged. Bad ones not only squelch their panellists potential, they but they also lose audiences, and they drift off, either mentally, or to the bar! A big part of the problem is that moderators tend to fall under the radar. Both conference organizers and those asked to lead sessions often underestimate how critical and challenging being a good moderator is. Organizers get caught up in booking speakers and choosing the lunch menu, while moderators themselves often assume theres nothing to it. Ironically, some of the same people who prepare extensively when theyre invited to be featured speakers and even hire coaches to refine their presentation skills, dont hesitate to busk it when theyre asked moderate. Theres a perception that the job is just peppering a panel with questions and vaguely listening to the answers, but those who do it well realize its far more complex. The good news is that effective moderators can be made. Its actually much easier to learn to be a good moderator than to be an effective speaker. You dont have to have a warm personality or a good sense of humour to run a session successfully. Those things are just icing on the cake. The skills that are really necessary can typically be developed if one is willing to take guidance, practice and do their homework. You need to have good people and listening skills, know how to read people and have the mind-set of an inquiring journalist.

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With this taken as read, follow these tips! 1. Don't over-prepare the panellists. The more panellists prepare in advance, the more likely they will be boring. If you provide all the questions in advance, many panellists will prepare carefully-crafted, devoid-of-content responses--in the worst case, even tapping PR people for help and (horror) reading out statements! The most you should provide is the first couple of questions to make panellists feel comfortable and prepared.

2. Prepare yourself in advance. Moderators need to prepare more than panellists because they need to be able to stir up the pot with questions about the latest industry controversies and hot issues. It's hard to do this in real time, so prepare the questions in advance using multiple research resources. When you present these questions, make it sound as if you have just thought of them; never read from a list of questions! If you don't have enough industry knowledge to stir up controversy, then decline the invitation to moderate the panel.

3. Never let panellists use PowerPoint. Even if the panellists are important powerful individuals, never let them give a brief PowerPoint presentation. If one panellist uses PowerPoint, everyone else will want to. Then the session will encounter the technical difficulty of making multiple laptops work with the projector or the challenge of integrating presentations into one. Plus all the slides will look different. Forget it.

4. Never let panellists use a video either! Suppose everyone accepts the no-PowerPoint rule, but a panellist comes up with the clever idea of showing a brief corporate video. Again, the answer should be, No, sorry. Frankly, if a panellist needs either a PowerPoint presentation or a video, he or she is probably not articulate enough to be on the panel, so get rid of them if you can.

5. Make panellists introduce themselves in thirty seconds. The moderator shouldn't EVER read each panellists bio because they will inevitably (a) mispronounce something; (b) get some fact wrong Oh, you didn't graduate from Harvard, you just attended a one-week course there; or (c) fail to highlight some crucial part of the panellists background. Get them to do it as it breaks the ice and you get time to think what happens next.

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6. Break eye contact with the panellists. Look at the panel, ask a question, and then look at the audience. Do not continue eye contact with the panellists because you want them to speak directly to the audience, not to you, the moderator. Also, don't hesitate to tell panellists to speak louder or get closer to the microphone.

7. Make everyone else look smart. The goal of the moderator is to make the panellists look clever and interesting. It is not to make him or herself look smart--or grab the most attention. Moderators can make panellists look smart in two ways: first, give them a few soft questions that they can really tackle. For example, What do you view as the most pressing issues of the industry? Second, extract good information out of the panellists by rephrasing, summarizing, or clarifying what they said. A good moderator should account for only 10% of the speaking time of a panel.

8. Stand up for the audience. Making panellists look smart does not mean letting them fool the audience. The moderator is called the moderator is because his or her role is to ensure that there is only a moderate level of nonsense and sales pitches. A good moderator is the audience's advocate for truth, insight, and brevity! When a panellist makes a sales pitch or tells lies, you are morally obligated to hit back in front of the audience. Think BBC correspondent!

9. Involve the audience. Unless its against the conference rules, moderators should allocate approximately 25% of the duration of the panel to questions from the audience. Any more, and the audience will run out of high-quality questions. Any less and the audience will feel like it did not participate. However, don't feel obligated to accept any stupid questions from the audience any more than you accept stupid answers from the panellists. Just in case, always have a few good questions in your hip pocket just in case no one in the audience has a question. Or, even better, you could seed the audience in advance!

10. Work that voice! Make sure both your voice and physical presence command authority. If they dont do so naturally, you may need coaching to develop them. How you appear and sound are key determinants in your ability to control a room. Resonance and clarity are the two main things to work on.

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11. Learn how to interrupt forcefully but respectfully. Successful moderators are able to cut panellists off when theyre going on too long or not answering the question. Also be honest enough and have the confidence to say, Excuse me, but I honestly didnt understand a word of that If you didnt, you can be certain many in the audience wouldnt have either, so you wont look stupid!

12. Learn and research, but act as if you dont know everything. Know more than the average audience member about the topic of your session. You must be familiar enough with the topic or have researched it sufficiently to be able to ask provocative questions. But the facts must come out of the panellists and NOT you!

13. Talk to the panellists at some length before the event. Doing so will enable you to play to the panellists strengths and creates a comfort level and warmth thats palpable to an audience. Plus you need to get the panellists on your side.

14. Be a critical listener. Rather than thinking ahead or even looking at your crib sheet, listen to the panellists comments and tie in what they say to subsequent questions. Be prepared to change the running order or structure at very short notice to keep continuity and flow.

15. Timing. Learn how and when its appropriate to draw the audience into a discussion. Some situations lend themselves to audience participation, while in others it derails the flow of the session. Learn when people are getting bored with one subject or even the whole session. How to do this? Simply feel the atmosphere, look at the body language of the audience; or imagine you are in the audience how would YOU feel at that point?

16. Above all, ENJOY YOURSELF. Its an honour and an opportunity to be a moderator. Pretend youre Jeremy Paxman or David Dimbleby on Question Time. And like them and good BBC presenters, ensure you are impartial, unbiased and independent enough so that in the Green Room afterwards nobody, neither a panellist nor a member of the audience complains that you were unfair or biased, or asked a below the belt question. That truly is the Litmus test! GOOD LUCK!