Speaker 1: Psst. Psst. Psst. This is Evo Morales trying to get my attention. The former president of Bolivia. Psst. Well, he's doing it in a Bolivian accent, so it sounds a bit more like this. Psst. He's waving at me, leaning back in his chair. It is September 2014. We are at a United Nations session. People on the front lines of climate change. So President Morales, as he was then, was the chair of that session. So the chair speaks at the beginning and then lets the moderator and the speakers continue on with the rest of the session. President Morales wasn't finished, though. We'd started the discussion, and he wanted to say more. So as you can see, we're right there. Right along there at the top, we've got the Prime Minister Tuvalu. We've got Mary Robertson. She was a UN Special Envoy at the time. We have climate change representatives from Uganda, from Nepal, from the Solomon Islands. But President Morales had something he desperately wanted to say. I was desperately trying to ignore him, focusing on the other speakers. But when he leaned back in his chair and started to wave at me, I said, yes, Mr. President, what more would you like to add? He then set about doing a speech about the horrors of the United States, how they were a military regime and hypercritical of the United States. I listened very carefully because I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing the point with climate change and what he was saying. There was no connection whatsoever. What do you do when one of your main speakers goes off topic? You have to moderate. Now, moderating is something that we do every day in real life. We do it at events and panel sessions, meetings, video conferences, family gatherings. No one really teaches us how to do it well. So when I asked President Morales at the time, and I realized that he wasn't adding to the conversation, I said, Mr. President, thank you so much for your feedback. Now I'm going to get back to the people on the front lines of climate change. In the front row, like here, there were diplomats from Bolivia. They hissed at me. And then on Twitter, Bolivian Twitter, I was derp for the next couple of days. They were so mad that I interrupted their president to get back on topic. I realized I had PTSD from so many events I'd gone to as a member of the audience where moderating had gone bad. For instance, there was this one time where the moderator was a very well-known journalist, said, I will moderate for you, UN, at the headquarters. You don't have to pay me. It's lunchtime. Do you know what he did? He got out his lunch and started to eat his lunch while he was moderating. Who does that? That's like if I started eating a snack while I was talking to you. That's unprecedented. Another time that scarred me for life was I was sitting in the audience and the moderator was talking to a head of state, very important head of state. The head of state was very eloquent and didn't stop talking. This went on for 10 minutes and 15 minutes and 20 minutes and 30 minutes until the audience started yelling out, stop. Stop talking. And started heckling the moderator. The moderator didn't stop talking. This is why I have made it my mission to dare to change the way moderating is done. Can that be done? I think so. So, here is how to moderate like a boss in a few simple steps. First of all, confidence. Walk like you mean it, even if you're scared. Pretend. I always think of President Obama, when he gets out of Air Force One, and his walk across the grass, that is a confident moderator's walk. Do that. That's a great walk. If you're online and you're moderating online, think about how you're going to start and nail that beginning, that smooth, eloquent beginning. The rest, you can just be working at. It's okay, because moderating is a job. It's a process. So, not everything is going to be perfect, but at the beginning, make that beginning so slick, so beautiful that everyone leans in. They don't walk off. They don't get out their phone. They don't start doing anything else. They just care about what you're about to say. Don't read. Maybe you might need a few notes, a few bullet points to help you out. Don't read. It looks like you don't know what you're talking about. You could have spent hours preparing and writing up the entire session, or the entire meeting, and then you're reading it, and then the best part of you is not necessarily your forehead, because your head is down here, and you're looking down, and you're not making contact with your audience. The thing that makes me cry when I hear it is when people read out a resume or a CV to the person who is standing there or sitting there on stage. It is awful. Think about what you know about that person. What would you like to say about that person? What is interesting about that person? Because we can all Google them. They're all on the pamphlet or the brochure, so don't read. Research. That's worthwhile. The more you know about the subject, the more confident you'll feel about taking on that meeting, that event, that panel session. You can't know too much not to show off, but just so you feel good about the topic that you're talking about. So, warming up your speakers. It's as simple as saying hello, getting to know them a little bit. Sometimes I call them up ahead of time, have a little chat, so you're not all together as a bunch of strangers trying to talk very naturally but actually not having ever met ever before. That's odd. The only people I know who can do that really well are kids. Kids are like, hello, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they talk, and they chat, and they're great, but most of us have sort of defence mechanisms. We don't go up and just talk to each other, so make that time to get to know your speakers, get to know who's in your meeting, so that you have a little bit of rapport, a little bit of chemistry. I'm so glad we're doing in-person events again because warming up the audience is really worthwhile. All right, let's do it now. This hand is laughter, okay? This hand is applause. The higher up each hand goes, the louder either the laughter is or the applause. Ah, now we're all warmed up. Fantastic. One of the hardest things to do when you moderate is how do you stop people from talking? You want them to talk. You want them to converse. You want them to have a back-and-forth. That's what real conversation is, but if they go on for too long, what do you do? A couple of tricks. Giving them to you. Open source. Use them any time. Open your mouth as if you're about to say something. The most dedicated of speakers will ignore that, right? So, if that doesn't work, touch them on the arm. If you're close enough, that works. Another thing you can do is if you say someone's name, you'll say Mosem. Mosem will say yes for me. He has to stop what he's doing to say yes. That's your little in. You slide in there like a ninja, and then you move on to the next point. He has no idea that you've just interrupted him because you were so elegant. Everybody has to breathe. Even I have to breathe. Did you hear that pause right there? That pause, listen to people when they breathe, sliding there again. When they take a breath, you go, good point, Mr President, good point, Madam Ambassador. Let us just move on. Use that breath. Don't be embarrassed. Don't feel uncomfortable about using that breath to moderate. Definitely get into that breath. If you're stuck and you're on a virtual event, you can also ask the team to put your face up. Be a human timer. When they see you smiling, doing this, saying your name, you know, and they know that they've been given a signal. That always helps. This is so obvious, and I'm really embarrassed to even mention this one to you, but moderate when you moderate. If something's going off track, bring it back on track. If you're thinking this is going on a bit too long, you know the audience is thinking exactly the same thing. See something, say something, hear something, do something. If the back of this actually fell apart, and it fell down, and I carried on talking, that would be weird. You have to acknowledge what is going on in the room and make it part of your moderating. The final thing I'm going to share with you is timekeeping. Do not be the moderator that runs over time. Respect people's time. I'm going to give you a challenging situation. This event is known as European Development Days. It happens regularly in Brussels. This was 2017 edition, where Europe gets together with developing nations around the world, and they work on collaboration. I think you can probably spot there President Kagame, the then President of Ghana, President Evo Morales, my nemesis, coming back to haunt me. Also, the Queen of the Belgians is there. Do you see that little green sliver of me? That is the Prime Minister of Norway back in 2017. Slightly off camera was the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed. Christina Figueres as well was also there. I was given the task of keeping all of these speakers on time. They were all speaking, all of them. There were at least ten back-to-back speeches. How on earth was this not going to be over time? You can't have that many VIPs, that many heads of state, and keep on time. So I told them about a game. So the game was, when I am far away from the podium, when I step on the stage, you have one minute left to speak, VIP person. When I get closer to you, you have 30 seconds left to speak, Madam President, Mr President. When I'm at your elbow, you need to stop talking, because you don't want me to be that close to you. They all went, okay, fine. Then they made it a game. They would say, everyone was on time. They were perfect. They stuck to their four minutes. Literally, all of them, we came out exactly on time. They made it a game. Madam moderator, I left 30 seconds on the clock for you. Madam moderator, I finished with a minute left. I've never seen so many high-profile, important men being proud to finish early. Whatever it takes, find your timing device. Moderating, running meetings, doing family gatherings, practice as much as you can. Dare to change the way it's normally done. Moderating, I spend so much of my time in events, so moderating is the thing that bugs me when it's not done brilliantly. But for you, it might be something else. What is it that you would like to dare to change? Because we can do it every time we enter in that space where something is driving us crazy, that's irritating us, we can do it. I'm giving you all of these tips. Use them whenever you want to, particularly that one where you get closer and closer and closer to the person, because it's intimidating, but in a very elegant, kind way. Thank you.