Kristin Arnold, Professional Panel Moderator asked Patricia Fripp, Executive Speaker coach and member of the US Speaker Hall of Fame to share her thoughts on what to do when a fellow panelist takes more airtime than the other panelists during a panel discussion at meetings, conferences, and conventions.
Video Transcript
Kristin: What do you do when a fellow panelist attempts to hog all of the attention?
Patricia: Well, I am in circumstances when I am with three other high-level speakers and we sit on high stools and we answer questions and we often go back and forth and ask each other questions. We do have one that has a tendency to try to hog the attention.
Again, what we see in others, we often realize that we have done ourselves. I am a great believer in being yourself. However, we have to be ourselves in an appropriate environment and when you are on high stools answering questions and you are really sharing the spotlight with others, one of my friends, he gets off and almost goes and does his speech upfront, which makes it very difficult then to make eye contact with each other or lean forward, like now I have a contribution. And what I see is, I probably went when I was younger, I might have done the same.
And I am not quite sure, except every panel, every format, every event needs an after action analysis. What went right, what went wrong and if you have business associates, which in this situation you do and we’re all equals then it might be not so much that you did this, but I felt that although it wasn’t your intention the audience might have believed the impact was that, they thought you were trying to out-stage everybody else.
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Kristin Arnold, professional panel moderator, and high stakes meeting facilitator is on a crusade to make all panel discussions informative, interactive, and interesting. Specifically, she wants to help YOU become a better panel moderator. Why? Because 95% of annual meetings have panel discussions – and according to the 2014 Panel Report, it’s a fifty-fifty proposition they are any good at all! Expectations decrease dramatically when your attendees walk in and see the traditional draped head-table with microphones on short stands. There are sooooo many other ways to have a stimulating conversation! So let’s increase the probability of success for your next panel discussion with these resources.
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