Speaker 1: How to start a panel discussion as a panel moderator. You know, audiences can be really judgy. Within the first minute, they've already decided whether you're going to be a good panel or it's going to be a ho-hum panel. So you have to knock it out of the park in the first minute. I'm Kristen Arnold, and I'm a professional panel moderator and a leading authority on panel discussions. And you want to be able to hit the ball out of the park right off the bat, having the audiences not only leaning in, but being on the edge of their seats. Let's find out how. Yep, you want your audiences to stick around, even after that first minute. In this video, we are going to be covering the three mantras that need to be circling in your head during your opening, the five elements of your opening, as well as different ways that you can make those elements more engaging and interactive and exciting so that your audience sticks around. Let's dive right on in. For your opening of your panel discussion, there are three things that you need to keep in mind. Number one is to start strong. Start on time. Start confidently that the audience is in good hands. And finally, that you are moving briskly through that opening section. So you want to grab them with a really interesting hook to get started. Grab their interest right off the bat, much like we do in these videos, don't you think? So now that you've spent maybe a minute or two teeing up the topic, now you need to introduce yourself and your role. It might seem obvious and it might be actually on a PowerPoint slide that your face and there's a little thing on it that says moderator, but you need to actually tell people you're the moderator. Your job is to facilitate a lively discussion on behalf of the audience and make sure that we start on time and end on time. Sound good? Let's go. Okay, so that might be a short version of what I've done and you can do something like that too. Always introduce yourself as the moderator and a brief snippet about what your role is. The next piece that you want to do, and this is entirely up to you. You might do it in this order, the final pieces, the final three items, or switch it around. But I always like to say what the agenda is. First, we're going to do this, then we're going to do this, and then we're going to do this so that the audience knows that they are in good hands with you. So I typically will say, you know, we're going to be covering the topic of this. First, I'm setting some ground rules for our discussion. Then I'm going to introduce the panelists. We're going to do some moderated Q&A. Then we're going to open it up to the audience and then we'll wrap up with one challenging question. Shall we? And then we go. So it's very, very quick, kind of high level because the left brain people in the audience want to know, what's the agenda? I once had a board member who said, no agenda, no agenda. Your audience wants to know, where are you driving this thing? Where are you driving this ship? So give them that high level view. The one other thing that you want to keep in mind in your agenda is you want to make sure that you tell the audience how you're going to handle Q&A. Even if you don't have Q&A, that's what I said. So if you want to take questions as you go, or you're taking them on an app, or, you know, letting people submit ideas on the app, and then you're going to take ideas, or maybe you're saving a piece at the end, or the panelists will be available afterwards to answer any of your questions, or you can send your questions to an email and we'll get back to you about what your questions are. Always address, even if it is, you know, we don't, we're not going to be doing any Q&A, which sounds kind of weird, but people are going to have questions. So I would give them the methodology by which they can answer their questions during that setting the agenda piece. Now, honestly, most panel moderators, they have a preference about how they like to do Q&A. If there is going to be Q&A, you have a preference. Just keep in mind that there are different ways that you can do Q&A. You can do a live Q&A where you've got, you're going around running around with a microphone. I call that Oprah style. You could have people line up at the microphone, or if it's a small enough audience, they can just shout it out. Think through how you're going to do that, or maybe the panel, the meeting organizer, is a little concerned about making sure that the questions are moderated. That means that they're looked at ahead of time. So you kind of want to go, well, maybe I need to have them submit the questions in advance, or maybe they're moderated through an app, or maybe we see them on question cards and we can sift through the cards. These are different ways that you can manage the Q&A. So I'm just curious. Do you have a certain preference about how you like to do your Q&A? If you could put that in the comments below, I'd appreciate it. I'd love to hear from you. Another piece in the opening may have some housekeeping requirements. Now, this is all driven by the meeting organizer. They might tell you that there's an evaluation at the end, or maybe a panelist has a handout, or maybe there's a break that needs to that's going to happen, or we have to clear the room quickly because the housekeeping staff has to change the room set. So everybody needs to move outside. Sometimes those housekeeping things, oh, including is this going to be recorded or not? People like to know that. You might want to put in the introduction. Finally, we're getting to panelist introductions. Now, this is an important role that you have, is how are you going to introduce the panelists? Now, hopefully the bios are all written in the program, either the written program that everybody has a copy of, or maybe it's on their iPhone or, you know, their phone, or maybe it's up on a website somewhere. I do not waste any time on bios, like no bios. Shout that out. No bios during a panel. It's like no, no, no, no. But what you can do is tell the name and where they work, and maybe a couple of sentences that are interesting out of that bio. But here's what I love to do is I like to ask panelists, like tell me something nobody knows about you, and it's really fascinating what you get. I've had a couple of people who said they've shaken shook the president's hand. You pick which president you want them to shake their hand on. I've had other people who said, you know, I used to, I went to the Olympics. Wow, I didn't know that about you. Or maybe it just might be someone who says, you know, I love to crochet. I've been crocheting since I was five years old. Who knows? It's just really, really interesting, kind of the little interesting tidbits that make the audience look at the panelists like human beings. Make sure your intros are short. I do not let panelists introduce themselves. And here's the reason why is they will go on and on and on and on and on and you've lost control. I may ask the panelists to give me a two sentence, maybe three sentence depending on how much you want for them to write their intro and give it to me and I still have permission to edit. So that's kind of a nice way of getting them involved in their intro and making sure you're focusing on the right things on their bio. You also have a PowerPoint slide that has your picture and all your panelists in the same order that they're seated as well as their name, their company name, and maybe any social media handle or contact information. So that as they're looking at the panel, they can see who is actually on the panel. So one of the things that you can do after you've introduced the panelists is do something that Mark Sanborn did brilliantly is he made an observation joke-ish and then he said, you know, as I was preparing for this panel, I first had lunch at California Pizza Kitchen and then I strolled over to Cinnabon to get a cup of coffee while I was reading my Forbes magazine and the audience went crazy because the three panelists was the CEO of Forbes, Cinnabon, and California Pizza Kitchen. It was a nice way of wrapping it all up. We've just covered the five elements to a strong opening and if you're interested in more, a deeper dive into this, please go to www.howtomoderateapanel for my free seven-part video course where we'll take a deeper dive. Hope to see you there.