10 Rules for Being a Great Moderator
Being a moderator is nowhere near as easy as many people think. This article is meant to support you in becoming a great moderator.
Everyone has at some point in their working lives come out of a meeting feeling that it was a big waste of time. People get frustrated, bored, lazy or just plain cynical when meetings don’t accomplish much and there’s little to inspire or motivate. So, we need to do something to break the pattern of boring or unproductive meetings!
Seminars and workshops should be dynamic, entertaining, funny and brave. If you treat your seminar like a lecture, your audience will act like bored students. But treat your seminar like a performance and your audience will be grateful. They will notice the difference!
Believe it or not, the success of a meeting comes down to the moderator.
Whenever groups of people get together, two things are usually true:
1. Everyone sees the world differently, no matter how similar their points of view may be
2. Everyone thinks their view is the right one
When there is a spirit of cooperation and a willingness to arrive at a mutually agreed outcome, disparate points of view can work together, and people go away satisfied that their point of view has been taken into consideration and utilised in some way. That is the role of the moderator.
So being a moderator is about being a calming and pragmatic influence that can make a significant difference to the outcome of any kind of meeting, workshop, event, forum, etc. A good moderation means to make things easier, to smooth the progress of and to assist in making things happen.
Moderation takes practice, so here are 10 things to remember which will help you become a seriously good moderator:
1. Be neutral and objective: as a moderator you are not supposed to participate in the discussion or share your own views, but to be an objective, impartial voice. If you have a lot of things to say, then you should be part of the panel, and not the moderator. You have every right to have an opinion. If you put it on the table, however, you would be taking sides. In the role of the moderator, your personal opinions and feelings should remain unspoken.
Imagine yourself being slightly distanced (physically) from what’s going on; sitting just outside the group so you can observe the dynamic of what’s going on. You may still be sitting right in the middle, but part of you is outside looking in.
Often when people come together with widely differing points of view, it’s very hard to hear the other side’s arguments. What you are demonstrating by being objective and keeping an open mind is that you hear both sides. By keeping an open mind yourself, you actually model effective behaviour from your audience. In my experience, when this happens, it does calm people down and helps them see that there is more than one way to do things.
Being objective and neutral also entails having the ability to craft how a meeting goes, rather than imposing your will and your point of view. As the moderator, it is not your job to answer questions but to raise questions for your audience to reflect upon.
2. Create a nice environment: since the idea is to ease the way for people, it’s important not to put anyone on the spot, embarrass or humiliate them. If anyone at the meeting puts a colleague on the spot, you can take the spotlight yourself or manoeuvre it onto someone else who won’t mind being centre-stage for a while. It's about creating a non-judgemental, objective environment where people feel they can air their opinions without getting shot down or humiliated.
3. Be clear: Your job is to visibly and audibly keep the panellists (or people who will hold a presentation) on track, thus helping the audience feel safe and secure. So be clear about telling people why they're there, what's going to happen, and when it's going to end. Let there be no uncertainty that you're in charge and going to make this worthwhile. Ask short questions and make clear statements.
4. Keep it simple: Clarify! Simplify! Sometimes a facilitator acts as a translator, not only reflecting back what they’ve heard, but also interpreting it in a way that other people can understand. A good facilitator is practiced in understanding the differing nuances, jargon and meanings in what various people are saying and being able to explain that difference to others. A useful phrase is “So what you’re saying is….”. This is because what people mean and say will often be very different from how they are heard. Try to use analogies to help people understand each other.
5. Be prepared: You will need to have a general understanding of the subject in order to be able to steer the discussion. Have ready a set of topic-organised possible questions, provocative statements, quotes from documents, or whatever conversation start