Panel discussions: some ideas on how to prepare and navigate them

I had the privilege to speak recently at two outstanding industry events: FOMLA and Unbound Miami (thanks to Jeremy King and Daniel Seal, respectively, for running the risk of having me!), under two very different setups: a keynote and a panel conversation.

I′m as far as it gets from an expert on this matter, so more than using these lines as your reference guide or go-to prep guide, I only wanted to share some of my thoughts around the preparation towards partaking in a panel discussion with the hopes this sparks some of your own advice in the form of comments or observations to what you find in the following lines. In a selfish perspective, I will surely end up learning more from your thoughts than you will from reading this post!

I believe that if you were trying to make comparisons (which I′m not), you could easily argue in favor of Panel discussions being even more challenging than keynotes. Think about it: you control (almost) 100% of what happens during your keynote, whereas in a Panel -regardless of how well you′ve prepared for it- the conversation may take a wide array of courses.

Let me start by the “easy part”, which is referring what I personally believe never changes regardless of a keynote, panel, or any other form of public speaking: respect to the audience, and hard preparation. The first a little bit of an end goal achieved through the second.

In favor of simplicity, I try to break down my top three advices of how to prepare and deal with a Panel:

1.      Prepare for the many potential courses the conversation may take. If you are lucky enough to have great moderators like I have had (Andrés Claudio from Hearts & Science, Elena Basic from IvyExec.com, in the most recent events), chances are you will stay on topic and with a pre-arranged navigation chart of how the panel will unfold. A good place to always start preparing is to clearly articulate the main idea you will take to the conversation. Then, investigate the perspectives your fellow colleagues in the Panel may bring to the table, and think how your idea supports or differs with theirs. This is the essence of a panel, contrasting ideas between participants;

 2.      Build from your fellow panelists′ perspectives in your interventions. The unmistakable evidence that advice #1 has served you well, is the fact that you will suddenly find yourself able to build from the rest of the participants′ points of view, be it to support them or to express your unique perspective around it.  Back to the respect for the audience (it′s always about the audience!), they are sitting there in hopes of listening to the wonderful things you have to say but also to hear the rest of opinions represented in the Panel. This is really where the magic happens. If you′re able to connect your participation with that of someone else, you will be helping the audience navigate a collection of ideas unified under a common umbrella beyond that of the topic, while at the same time driving a consistent conversation they can learn from in an orderly fashion;

 3.      Be particularly structured in the beginning and end of your interventions. Quick math: in a 45 mins panel there can be up to 35 different individual interventions (balance of time will be the moderator asking questions, or Q&A from the audience). That′s a lot to process even for a very engaged audience. You may want to facilitate this by being very structured right at the beginning of your interventions, and at the very end as a wrap up. That way you not only enable a better understanding of your point of view, but you also facilitate a fellow panelist or the moderator to use the points expressed as a transition towards either the next intervention or a shift towards a different topic area. An infallible advice is to use the old rule of enumerating-developing-summarizing. You start by enumerating the topics/thoughts, you then develop them in the same order, and you wrap up by summarizing what you just spent your minute or 90 seconds talking about;

4.      Be comfortable (and humble) with silence. It′s okay not to talk during a specific question. Many times we feel we need to provide our point of view no matter what. Well, that′s not the case in my humble opinion. The single measure of success in a Panel is that the audience walks away with a clear contrast of ideas and points of view; not that every participant gets to talk at every single question. So, be comfortable with playing bench in one or more questions. The easy criteria to decide if it′s worth using the mic then becomes whether the audience will walk away with some more added value because of what you said. If not, embrace silence and be comfortable with it.

 Thank you for making it all the way down to the end of this post. As stated at the beginning, this is by no means intended to be a lecture or a written-in-stone type of declaration. I simply hope we stimulate collective learning by exchanging some thoughts around the ideas herein contained…same as we would in a Panel!

Thanks for reading!