Panel Discussions

‘Hello and welcome to this book. Thank you for coming – you look like a fabulous audience, I have to say! I’m Penny Haslam and I’m delighted to be here right now. 

AND I am really looking forward to sharing my experience to help YOU become a successful moderator who knows exactly what to do when you run your own panel discussions. You’re going to get lots of ideas for both face-to-face panels, in person, and when you’re moderating or taking part in a Zoom version. Other online communication platforms are available. (Cheeky smile. Audience laughter.) 

A bit of background about me before we get started... I’ve been moderating panels for about 15 years. I’m also a professional speaker and I run my own training and coaching business called Bit Famous. It helps people communicate with confidence. 

In a moment, I’ll introduce our brilliant panellists who bring their passion, expertise and sparkling wit with them... No pressure! (Audience laughter.) 

But first let’s find out more about YOU, the audience. How are you feeling about panel discussions? Put your hand up if you’ve never taken part in a panel but would love to know how to do it. That’s most of you. Now, put your hand up if you have taken part but would like to know how to be exceptionally brilliant at it. 

So that’s all of you covered. Well in that case, you’re going to love this book – so let’s get started by meeting the panellists. First of all, sitting on my right is...’ 

Ha! Not really. It’s just me writing and you reading. But did you feel the energy? 

And that is how I begin most of my scripts when I moderate a panel discussion. It’s how I start the ball rolling and get the room energised. 

Because I’ve been moderating for quite some time now, I’ve got a lot to share with you – including how to write a script. I’ve also been training and coaching people on the subject for several years. 

Taking part in a panel discussion is a great opportunity to ‘be seen’ and is enormously valuable to your career or business. When you take part in a panel, you get to shake hands with the whole audience in one go. Time efficient or what? 

Whatever your role on a panel, you need to display high levels of confidence. Often you have to assert yourself with a line-up of experts and bring the audience along with you as a self-assured performer. 

So, these are jobs like no other, combining live stage presence and performance with a nimble on-the-spot navigation of topics and questions. It’s also nigh-on impossible to compare how you do it with the way other people might do it, because you’re alone in this role at the time of doing it. 

But don’t let any of that put you off, because it is possible to develop your way of doing things and polish your performance, the more you do it. And it can be thrilling and rewarding. 

My primary aim with this ‘how to’ handbook is to share my years of experience with you, my pro tips and techniques, so you too shall go to the panel discussion with ability and knowledge. 

My secondary aim is to rid the world of boring panels. Seriously. As a professional at this, I strongly believe that a panel discussion should be lively, energetic, inspiring, relatable, interesting and, above all, useful. 

If we can have conversations that stimulate and invigorate human thinking, we can shape and challenge ourselves. Otherwise, what’s the point if, during the discussion, the people listening are considering new and exciting ways to organise their sock drawer? 

All of this is very much in my blood after 20 years as a business journalist at the BBC. There, I was responsible for making programmes that would enrich the lives and brains of listeners and viewers in some way. 

The BBC’s big aims, first laid out in the 1920s by its first director-general, Lord Reith, are to educate, inform and entertain. He was putting the broadcaster’s early audiences of radio listeners and, eventually, television viewers, first. 

Those aims have stood the test of time, so we may as well go with them too. Think of them when you next moderate a panel discussion. We need to have a vision, a standard to reach for, every time we are in front of people. 

Educate, inform and entertain – wherever there is an audience. This book will help you to do that. So, let’s get you skilled up in the art of taking part in panel discussions. 

It’s time to step into your spotlight... 

Penny Haslam

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