Lessons in Chairing Panels
FT Edit published a commentary recently decrying the state of panels and roundtable discussions at conferences and trade shows. It’s a good piece, and I recommend that you read it if you have access to the article and if you have an abiding interest in what can go right and what can go wrong with panel discussions.
During more than a decade at IDC, I chaired countless panel discussions. Sometimes I was involved from the inception of the event, participating in the definition of the session’s subject matter and the drafting of abstract text, as well as the judicious selection of panelists. Just as often, however, I was brought in later, after some of those tasks had been completed, and my principal task was to chair a panel that had already been defined and casted.
Either way, I invariably enjoyed meeting the challenge of chairing and moderating panels, though I invoke the word challenge with considerable forethought and discretion. It’s not a simple matter to chair and moderate a panel discussion. There’s more to it than you might think.
When it comes to panels, as with so many other aspects of professional life, preparation is essential. Paradoxically, a good moderator must prepare thoroughly to ensure that, on the day or the night of the event itself, spontaneity and improvisation have opportunities to make their timely appearances. Oddly enough, for those moments to have maximum impact, you have to a lot of work beforehand to allow them to happen.
Preparation Rather Than Reparation
As a chair and moderator, I spent a lot of time preparing, researching and reading about the panelists – who they were, what they knew, what they did in their jobs – and about the organizations to which they belonged. (I often already knew a lot about the panelists and their employers, but not always. It depended on the subject matter and whether I had a hand in selecting the members of the panel.)
From my advance research, I identified how I could help to make each participant a successful panelist. What you do, in preparing to oversee a panel, is determine who should be the first panelist to address various questions you’ll put to the panel. Generally, while panelists all get a chance to speak to each question and to provide the audience with their perspectives, you’ll find in your preparatory work that certain panelists might have a particular affinity for, or a unique interpretation of, a specific aspect of the agenda. When it’s time to ask that question, touching on a specific facet or subtopic, you’ll want to turn to the most enthusiastic or informed panelist, whose initial contribution provides an impetus for the other panelists to carry the discussion forward and offer their own interpretations.
Everybody on the panel should have a chance to shine, for their own sake and for the benefit of the audience. As the moderator, you want everybody on the panel to hold the interest of the audience. Ultimately, a panel is all about serving the audience’s needs, but you get to that result by ensuring that your panelists are compelling, entertaining, and informative. As a chair, you try to shape proceedings so that everybody on the stage can carry the weight assigned to them.
How do you make them compelling, entertaining, and informative? Well, in the end, they have to earn their own way, of course. Still, you, as a moderator, can do your part by putting them at ease, and winning their trust, before the curtain rises.
When I prepared to chair a panel, I invariably scheduled a meeting with the panelists before the event. We didn’t rehearse things too rigidly – you have to leave a bit of room for inspiration and spontaneity – but I wanted everybody to know what we’d discuss, how the process would unfold, and to gain an understanding of what each of them wanted to communicate to the audience. The preparatory call also gave me insight into their personalities: who was introverted, who was extroverted, which of the group might need guardrails and which might need a bit more prompting.
Know Your Role
In the FT Edit piece, the author rebukes panel chairs who hog the limelight (such as it might be) by making long-winded introductory perorations or lengthy prefatory presentations. I’m in complete agreement with such criticism. Nobody in the audience wants to be subjected to the self-indulgent bloviating of an egotistical chairperson.
As a moderator, I always knew that my role was to facilitate discussion and encourage interaction between the panelists, not to draw attention to myself. I always believed that an effective moderator should be a prominent presence only in opening and closing proceedings, but should otherwise play an ancillary role. My job was to keep the proceedings moving briskly and engagingly, not to dominate or hijack discussion.
Sometimes I was asked by organizers to put prepare a slide or two to provide context or to otherwise set the table for the discussion to follow. I always did what was asked of me, but I if presented a framing slide or two, usually featuring some relevant data, I ensured that whatever I presented was succinct and aligned with the panelists’ expertise and the audience’s interest. The contributions and interactions of the panelists – what they had to say, how they reacted to one another – were always the main attraction. I might set the table, but the panelists made the meal, and the audience would, if they enjoyed the feast, send their grateful regards to the chefs.
I wasn’t entirely invisible or passive, though. I got things started, and I had to keep them moving in the right direction. When kicking off a panel discussion, it’s important for the moderator to set the right tone: assured, confident, relaxed, but always governed by benevolent supervision. Once the party got started, you had to ensure that nobody on the panel attempted to monopolize the time or redirect the discussion away from what was promised in the session abstract. Occasionally I had to gently but firmly check transgressive panelists who overstepped their bounds or took us on a gratuitous detour, but I tried to keep my interventions to a minimum, discreetly recalibrating proceedings only when necessary.
During the gloomy COVID years, the role of panel moderator was similar to what it was before (and what it would become again in future), but the setting was circumscribed; what we did before in three dimensions had to be shoehorned into two dimensions. You had to run the event online, virtually, within the rectangular borders of a computer screen.
I chaired and moderated many panels during the COVID years. The biggest difference between chairing a panel during the pandemic and doing the same in a real-world setting was that, during the pandemic, you had nearly no means of monitoring how well the session was being received by the remote, disembodied audience. Usually, all you had was a counter that told you how many people were online, watching and listening, at any given moment. You could watch the counter to see how many stayed with you and the panelists, but you didn’t know – you couldn’t know – how engaged or invested they were in the session.
Never Let Them See You Sweat
In the pre-COVID years, you were in a room – sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller – and you could see what members of the audience were doing. You could tell whether they were following the discussion, engrossed in what was being presented to them, or whether they were losing interest, tapping away at their smartphones. If you caught sight of somebody in the audience sleeping, you were in big trouble. (Thankfully, I never saw that happen during any of the panels I moderated in what some call “meatspace,” but I did have to discreetly wake another analyst once during a keynote at a trade show.)
Except for the strangely disembodied nature of the audience during the pandemic years, everything else, all the other stages of the process, remained roughly the same. I still prepared assiduously for my role, researching the respective panellists and the companies or organizations they represented. I still arranged brief pre-panel calls with the participants to confirm or update my understanding of what they wanted to achieve. I also gave the panelists, in advance, an understanding of the concise material I would present at the beginning of the panel and how that would dovetail with the interactions, their contributions, to follow. We previewed the entire process in advance of the event, too, and I let panelists know that they’d each be given an opportunity to address each component or phase of the discussion. I’d remind them that they should seek to inform first but also to entertain, if only through expression of their genuine enthusiasm for the topic. Instead of telling people you’re excited, show them your excitement – but don’t feign it. The audience, or at least a part of it, knows when you’re going throw the motions.
An engaged audience is more likely to respond favorably to the substance of the content presented, and they’re more likely to remember (and perhaps apply) the most salient insights they take away from proceedings. I also encouraged panelists not to be nervous, though some were nervous; and I explained that I was there to give everybody a chance to shine. They should see the chair as an ally, not as a stern judge.
I was asked to host a lot of panels during my career as an analyst, and I suspected that the reason why was partly down to my diligence and thoroughness and partly attributable to what was essentially my self-effacing presence at the end of the dais, where I gently but steadily kept a rein on the more boisterous panelists while coaxing the more reserved panelists to make their contributions.
Through it all, I always kept the needs of the audience in mind. What do they want from the panel? To their eyes and ears, what constitutes a valuable discussion? What points should we prioritize ahead of others, and what degree of give and take, of respectful debate and sincere disagreement, will prove most compelling. How much data should be introduced? Usually, you’d want enough data to provide a solid foundation, but not so much as to turn a fertile field into a desert of monotonously recited factoids.
Yes, I enjoyed chairing and moderating panels, but those engagements always required more careful planning and work behind the scenes than anybody in the audience probably suspected. What’s the show-business maxim (though it apparently originated in an advertisement)? Oh, yes: never let them see you sweat.