Some Tips for Moderating a Successful Panel
2 min readMay 6, 2025
- Write separate questions for each participant. Don’t just ask everyone the same question! It’s ok if you have one-two “lightning round”-type questions that are the same for each person, but each panelist answering the same question is boring, even when they give different answers.
- Research the participants enough to tailor questions to them. Send them the questions in advance, so they can prepare; even if it’s just a few hours before the panel it’s better than springing them on them in the moment. Especially if you don’t know the panelists well! There is nothing more awkward than asking a question the person can’t answer (either because they don’t know, or worse, because they can’t talk about the topic due to non-disclosure or other limitations).
- Think about the themes you want to address. It can just be 1–2, for a 4 person panel, you can probably do one question each participant/theme, for two total themes; with introductions, panelist back-and-forth, and audience questions, that usually will fill 45 minutes.
- If you give them good questions, panelists will talk for a while. You don’t need a lot of questions to fill a lot of time. Do not overwhelm yourself or the panelists with long lists of possible questions.
- It is tempting to talk a lot yourself. Sometimes it’s true that you are both a moderator and panelist, but make sure that’s the role you should be playing before you give an extended monologue on the topic when everyone in the audience is there to hear from the assembled panelists.
- Pay active attention. Good moderators can make connections on the fly and call out interesting themes that the audience may or may not detect. You may also need to gently interrupt and move the discussion along if one panelist has gone on for a long time, or there is an extended back-and-forth between the panelists that is not productive to the conversation.
