Welcome to the sixth video on Powerful Panel: How to Moderate a Lively and Informative Panel
discussion.
We are on step four today about moderating a panel.
Now, I know that you have been saying, "So when are we going to get to the moderation
piece?
When are we going to get to moderating the panel?"
You've done a lot of work ahead of time.
Step one is about clarifying the starting positions, selecting the right participants,
panelists- that's number two.
Number three is about planning and preparation which is worth a pound of cure, I've got to
tell you, because if you've done all of that, when you get to moderating the panel it seems
to go so much more smoothly, because the panelists have a real solid idea about what they're
supposed to be talking about.
So when you get to the actual day just before, I suggest that you arrive early, as early
as you can at the venue.
Check in, check out the room, check in with the meeting planner, the meeting chair, check
out with the AV people, walk through the room, meet up with your actual participants.
Maybe you might have had a conference call ahead of time, you certainly have talked to
each of the panelists individually, but this is probably the first time that they've actually
gotten together face to face so this is a great time-about an hour ahead of time- for
you to just meet up and remind people of the process that you're going to use and any ground
rules that you have in place.
So that then just kind of seals the deal that everybody knows what's going on so that the
panel discussion can flow smoothly.
Your role as a moderator, typically, is to open the session.
Open it with something smart, witty, an anecdote, a story.
Keep it very, very short.
They're not here to listen to you being bombastic and everything, just something interesting,
a hook.
Something that they go, "Ooh, wow.
This is going to be different."
Tee up the topic.
Tee up who you are, what your role is.
Tee up the agenda, the process that you're going to use, any housekeeping that you might
have in place.
Maybe there's a handout or if there's any recording that's going on, video recording,
sometimes one part of the room won't be recorded and the other part will be, maybe some people
don't want to be recorded.
So any of those kind of housekeeping things.
A nice reminder is to ask people to put their phones on STUN.
I don't recommend—well that would be STUN—I don't recommend that you ask people to turn
off their phones, simply because a lot of people now take notes on their phones or they
might be twittering or they might want to take a photo ad post it later so you don't
really want to tell them to turn off their phones, but just remind them to put it on
silent.
You then want to go into introductions.
Either you're doing the introduction which allows you to control the timing, or you allow
them to do the introductions, introduce themselves which sometimes that timing can go a little
bit longer than what you had expected so there's a tradeoff between those two.
And as you're doing this opening of the session, I recommend that you watch for snags.
Sounds like that should be an acronym or something but it's not.
It is you are watching the audience, you are watching to see can they hear, can they see,
what's their reaction?
Is there anything that you need to change or modify in order to make sure that this
is the best experience for the audience members?
So that's the opening piece.
Then you move in to starting the conversation.
You use those starter questions that you have.
Remember you've got a least two questions: a strategic question and a tactical question
for each panelist.
You decide whether you're going to hot potato it or a Ping pong.
Let me explain.
A hot potato is I'm going to ask a question and I'm going to expect all the panelists
to comment on that, so it's like a hot potato.
They're going to hand it on.
Unfortunately by the time you get to the last panelist that might be more of an uncomfortable
position because one of the ground rules that I hoped you put in place is be additive and
not repetitive.
Nobody needs to see the dashboard dog through a 60 to 90 panel presentation.
The other thing that you can do is what I call a Ping pong is I'm going to ask a question
of a panelist, they're going to answer.
Then I'm going to ask a question of the other panelist and I'm probably going to br introducing
as I do this first ping pong and then it's going to come back to me and I'm going to
go to another panelists, so that's kind of a ping pong.
And that's great to get started but you want to make sure that people start engaging in
a dialogue, a conversation among each other as quickly as possible.
One other ground rule that I like to put in to play at this point to remind them, especially
in the preplanning, is that two is enough.
I say additive, be additive not repetitive.
Two is enough, three tops.
You know that third person who needs to comment it's because they've got to.
They've got to.
Otherwise you want to make sure that you've got that robust lively conversation and that
you don't have just one or two people dominating the conversation.
The other thing that I would recommend at this point when you're just getting the conversation
started is be flexible.
I know you have spent a lot of time crafting those questions.
At least two questions for each panelist, you've got some follow up questions, just
in case the energy takes a little bit of a dip because that's one of the things that
happen.
When you don't know when next to do, the energy in the room just gets sucked right out.
So you need to be on it as making sure that the conversation is flowing and when the conversation
just lulls you've got a new question to ask.
The key is to be flexible and not so wedded to your questions that you're taking those
questions as the higher priority than the conversation actually going on.
So you need to be watching and listening and really being present to the conversation as
well as thinking two or three steps ahead.
So again, this is about multitasking a whole bunch of different things and it's all about
being in the service of the audience.
Now once you've started that conversation, you need to keep it moving at a pretty brisk
pace.
Now the panelists, if you have teed them up that that's what you're expecting, they'll
probably step up to the plate pretty well and you make sure that they know that you
don't want anybody to dominate and make sure that they all participate.
There's a couple of things that you can do to make sure that it keeps moving.
Sometimes you can ask them follow up questions.
For example, if somebody has talked about X, Y, and Z, you might say, "Well tell us
more about X, Y and Z."
Probe a little bit deeper.
Take the next step.
"Well, if X, Y, and Z... would A work in that situation?"
So you can ask some querying questions.
You can make some bridges between what one panelist said and another panelist and see
if there's some connections, and then you can also be that instigator.
Stir the pot, ask the controversial question or even test the unsaid.
I've seen this happen a couple of times in panels where nobody's really talking about
the elephant in the room, so as a moderator you are in a perfect place to say, "Well,
how come we're not talking about that elephant?
Let's talk about that elephant."
That is your job as a moderator.
Be the instigator.
Keep it moving at a very brisk pace.
Now, sometimes you run into situations where panelists are not behaving appropriately.
I know... wouldn't happen to you, but it's certainly happened to me several times and
there's several instances where you might find somebody who's talking too much or maybe
there's a little side conversation going on or maybe they're blathering and not getting
to the point.
I could keep rolling.
The key is if that comment or that behavior is not in service to the audience, and the
audience is not getting their needs met through the panel format, you must intervene.
You must intervene firmly and respectfully.
You don't want to make them look bad or feel bad about the whole thing but you must intervene,
and there various levels that you can intervene, various low level intervention is using some
eye movement, eyes or gestures or actual movement, especially if you're standing as a panel moderator
you have a lot more latitude and some lower level interventions.
But you might need to take it up a notch where you actually redirect the question or you
redirect the issue.
You reframe the issue, you restate the question.
You can also remind the panelists of the ground rule or the process or procedure, and then
sometimes you just have to escalate it up and just say, "No, that's not acceptable,"
and that's a confrontational strategy.
Generally for the most part, you're going to use some of those lower level interventions
but they key is that use your gut, be in service to the audience and intervene respectfully
and firmly.
You are the moderator.
The next piece that usually comes into play is the audience Q and A- the question and
answer period.
At this point when you move into it, you might want to, during the moderator curated part,
give the audience in like your last one or two questions that you're going to be moving
in with the audience Q and A and the next minute or so, just so that you're kind of
giving them a cue before hand and they'll start thinking about their questions.
But the key is, in this piece, is to describe the process.
Of course you've described how you're going to get questions at your beginning comments,
but reaffirm your Q and A process here, and the process that I find to work admirably
well is that you ask people to stand.
Now, if they're going to microphones, they're already standing I would hope.
So ask people to stand, state their name and their position and company if that's appropriate
and then which panelist, or group of panelists, they want to address the question to, and
then start off with one sentence as the question.
Then, if they want any contextual information, one or two sentences to understand the context,
so the panelists understand the context.
And I am so rigid about following this process.
If somebody gets up and starts going, "Well... you know, I'm not exactly sure where I'm going
with this," you're going to get into Blah-Blah land, and you kind of look at the panelist
and go, "So where is the question?"
So rather than letting them ramble and let the audience tune out is if the first sentence
is not a question, you say, "And the question is..?"
or "Is there a question there?"
Start off with the question and then the context so it keeps it brisk and keeps it moving.
Make sure that you get questions from all parts of the room.
Don't focus on one side or the other.
Generally we tend to favor one side of the room over the other.
If you look at Oprah, she's out in the room, she's working the room.
Work it.
You want to make sure that you're working the room and people would probably raise their
hand, set a cue in place- first I'm going to take this person.
If you know their name, first I'm going to take Randy and then I'm going to take Donna.
If you don't know their names, just point out a flattering characteristic.
"The lady in the red jacket."
And then, the key is to remember it and follow that cue.
Generally at the end of a Q and A, you might say, "We have one or two more questions."
You're always observing the time because you want to end on time.
There is a conclusion piece that you need to say.
Five, maybe ten minutes or depending on how long your panel is for, for you to summarize
or for your panelists to summarize.
Please do not say, "So what's your biggest takeaway as the panelists?"
No.
Ask them some challenging question, "What are we going to be talking about in this topic
in five years?
What's a future trend?"
Ask them something interesting as a final question.
You could actually have the audience summarize what they heard.
Go into the audience and say, "So what are your key takeaways?"
You could summarize as well.
So there's all kinds of ways for you to put the little bow on the package.
This is the time, after you've done that summary, that if you're going to allow panelists to
do any kind of promotional 'Here's my book' 'Here's a new product' 'Come visit me in the
exhibit space," now is the time.
This is also the time for you to thank everyone.
Thank the meeting chair, thank the meeting planner, thank the AV people.
Thank anyone who has helped make this successful and thank the panelists.
Thanks them specifically by name and one thing that you appreciated about them and if you
have gifts, give them the gifts.
Invite the participants to extend the conversation either at the front of the room or if there's
another session going on immediately after, extend the conversation outside or in an area
that you think would be appropriate.
You can also invite them to extend the conversation into social media space.
Either on company blog, the association blog, whoever's blog, the social media space, some
people set up groups for you to extend the conversation.
Any final announcements about 'Go to the closing session over in the general ballroom' or 'Looking
forward to seeing you at the next event,' those kind of final announcements.
'Oh don't forget to fill out your evaluation forms,' you get the idea, and then you leave
the applause and you say, "And thank you for participating.
Thanks panelists, thanks audience members.
Thanks for coming, have a good day."
And that's the moderating of a panel.
Isn't that exciting?
It goes so fast and there's so much stuff you have to do.
There's stuff you do right before you open up the session, you start the conversation,
you keep it moving, you intervene when it's not moving, you facilitate the Q and A, you
conclude the session and before you know it, you are done.
And before you know it, we are done with this sixth video.
Isn't that amazing?
We've got one more to go because you are not done yet.
We still have 'The Follow up."
Even though you're done with the panel, there's still some work that you need to do, so see
you on the other side, Video Seven, Step five in our process which is about following up
after the Panel discussion.
Thanks for watching!