Presentation and Panel Moderating Secrets From an International Journalist and Speaker

She politely stopped a president mid-speech at the United Nations.

His delegation hissed at her from the front row.

He looked thunderous.

But the UN organizers thanked her profusely for saving their climate change panel from complete derailment.

That moment reveals everything about professional communication excellence.

The Universal Challenge Every Presenter Faces

You want your presentations and panels to captivate audiences and create transformative experiences that advance your professional mission, and when you master authentic engagement through preparation and audience-centered delivery, you create events people refuse to leave.

But you feel uncertain and sometimes nervous because you’re making it about yourself instead of serving your audience, creating boring experiences that waste everyone’s time and money while audiences scroll through their phones desperately wishing for something compelling.

Therefore, you can achieve remarkable audience engagement through the professional techniques Femi Oke reveals in today’s episode: preparation that enables authenticity, courage to redirect conversations, strategic story deployment, and relentless focus on audience value over personal performance.

Meet Femi Oke: Distinguished Journalist and Master Moderator

Femi Oke brings 30-plus years from BBC, CNN, NPR, and Al Jazeera to create transformative event experiences.

She’s moderated for the United Nations, European Union, and major global institutions—sessions where presidents, heads of state, and world leaders convene.

Her company, Moderate the Panel, assembled an elite team dedicated to one mission: creating events people don’t want to leave.

That mission started in a Cape Town elevator. Femi overheard attendees complaining about sessions so boring they couldn’t bear going back.

People spend money and travel far to learn. Making them sit through boring delivery is a crime.

The Mindset Shift That Eliminates Nervousness

I share transformational insight from documentarian Peter Bick that changed how I approach every presentation.

When you’re nervous before taking the stage—flop sweats, dry mouth, racing heart—it’s happening for one reason: you’re making it about you. Your ego is strangling you.

The moment you shift perspective and say, “Everything I’m doing is in service to my audience,” the nervousness disappears.

Femi’s response validates this completely: “I never get nervous when I’m moderating. Ever. And that makes a lot of sense because it’s not about me. It’s about the audience. We’re in service to the audience.”

Place your audience at the center of the story. That single shift transforms everything.

Your audience isn’t against you. They’re rooting for you. They want you to succeed. They want to be engaged and hear compelling stories.

Professional Preparation: The Unsexy Secret to Captivating Audiences

Femi reveals the unsexy truth about captivating audiences: it starts with homework.

Nothing gives you confidence like knowing your topic really well.

Do your research. Understand the organizer’s objectives. Talk to your panelists beforehand. Ask for stories and anecdotes that illustrate topics. Save these for strategic deployment.

Build a narrative arc. Know your beginning, middle, and end. The middle is always the meat—the chunky, juicy part.

Keep an eye on the time. When moderators go 20 minutes over, audiences check out.

But here’s the critical distinction: prepare so you can speak naturally. Don’t write a script.

Femi has seen moderators read questions word-for-word. It kills authenticity.

Preparation creates confidence. Confidence enables authenticity. Authenticity creates connection.

Two Ninja Techniques for Stopping Verbose Speakers

Everyone pauses when they speak. Even verbose speakers pause.

The Ninja Pause Slide: When you hear that pause, slide into it and say, “Thank you, that’s such a good point. I’m now going to move us on because I’ve got other speakers to bring in.”

The trick? Don’t stop talking. Keep going even if they’re still speaking. Eventually they’ll stop and you’ll continue.

The Name Drop: When someone’s in full flow, simply say their name. “Park.” They’ll respond, “Yes?” You’ve stopped them.

Now redirect: “Park, you made great points. Thank you. I’m going to move on.”

These aren’t manipulative tricks. They’re professional techniques that serve your audience by delivering promised value.

The Re-Engagement Arsenal for Drifting Audiences

You glance at the audience. They’re scrolling on phones. You’ve lost them.

Femi’s arsenal: Deploy saved stories from preparation. Challenge speakers with “Can you give me one example?” Move Q&A to the middle instead of waiting an hour. Use the best day/worst day trick: “Tell me about the worst day you’ve ever had at work and why.”

Story has gravitational pull on human attention.

When you’ve got a boring panelist speaking from logic and opinion, break the glass and pull out the anecdote.

Why Recovery Matters More Than the Trip

Something will go wrong on stage. Guaranteed.

Femi’s guidance: the recovery is the most important thing, not the trip.

When something goes wrong and you address it authentically, audiences give you a virtual hug. They’re rooting for your recovery.

Femi was moderating a World Bank session when a panelist kept scrolling on his phone. She called it out: “I love the way you’re multitasking.”

His response? “I’m on ChatGPT checking answers to your questions.”

Shock. Laughter. Applause.

Femi leaned into it. Throughout the session, she’d ask what ChatGPT said. At the end, she had ChatGPT close the session. The answer was brilliant.

What could have been a disaster became the highlight through improvisational recovery.

The StoryCycle Genie Validation: Finding the Right Language

I ran Moderate the Panel through the StoryCycle Genie before this conversation.

Femi’s response? “Spookily accurate.”

The Genie identified three brand archetypes—Sage (knowledge and expertise), Magician (transforming events), Caregiver (co-production support)—without Femi saying a word.

She knew these were the elements her team delivers. But she hadn’t found the right language for them.

The StoryCycle Genie delivered that clarity in one email.

Sometimes finding the right language creates clarity that transforms how you communicate your value.

That’s classical storytelling wisdom with modern technological precision.

What You’ll Master in This Episode

1. The audience-centered mindset that eliminates nervousness and creates authentic connection.
2. Professional preparation protocols for researching topics, connecting with speakers, and building narrative arcs.
3. Ninja techniques for stopping verbose speakers without losing their respect.
4. The re-engagement arsenal that grabs drifting audiences back to full attention.
5. Why recovery matters infinitely more than avoiding mistakes.
6. How to run with unexpected moments and turn disasters into highlights.
7. Femi offers Business of Story listeners 10% off when working with Moderate the Panel. Mention you heard her on the show at moderatethepanel.com or info@moderatethepanel.com.

Chapters:

Links:

• ModerateThePanel.com
• Femi Oke on LinkedIn
• Femi on X
• Femi on Instagram
• Craft your vibrant brand story with the StoryCycle Genie™
• What users are saying about the StoryCycle Genie™

Deepen Your Communication Mastery: Three Essential Episodes

To amplify your transformation from today’s conversation, these carefully selected past episodes provide complementary classical wisdom:

The Story Strategy That Has Grown Brands by 600 Percent – Discover the proven Story Cycle System framework that creates the narrative arc Femi uses to structure every transformative panel discussion.

How to Effectively Position Your B2B Brand With April Dunford – Master the positioning clarity that makes your message impossible to ignore, complementing Femi’s techniques for commanding attention in any room.

Why Your Brand Story Bombs and How Hollywood’s Secret Genre Formula Fixes It With Greg Logan – Learn how to identify which emotional genre your audience is living in, enhancing your ability to connect authentically as Femi demonstrates.

Each recommendation selected to deepen your mastery through The Business of Story’s archive of classical storytelling wisdom enhanced by modern application.

Transcript:

The Universal Challenge: How Not to Be Boring in Any Communication

Park Howell: Hello, Femi, welcome to the Business of Story. Well, I am honored to have such a distinguished journalist as yourself here on the show to share the one nemesis that we are going to help our listeners overcome today, and that is how not to be boring.

Femi Oke: Hello, Park. Thank you for having me. I appreciate that.

Park: And that could be boring in any of your communication. It could be boring when you’re on stage. It could be boring on a podcast. So let’s tackle that.

Femi: Yeah, so simple, but so easy to just sort of slip into boredom zone, being boring zone. And it means that you have to be creative, you have to be engaging all of the time, which is kind of hard work, but once you get that muscle going, then it’s a lot of fun.

From Radio-Obsessed Kid to International Broadcasting: Femi’s Origin Story

Park: Well, give us a little of your backstory about how you have come up through the ranks of journalism and communication to find yourself now as co-founder of Moderate the Panel. And through that, how you learned not to be boring, although I can’t believe you were ever boring in your life.

Femi: I have my moments, usually when I’m tired. But my story, I started on the radio when I was really young. I loved radio when I was a kid. I’d listen all the time. I’d get in trouble for listening to the radio. This takes you back because who listens to the radio now? We have digital ways to listen to audio, but I would be in bed and listen to my favorite radio station. I grew up in London and it was during the era of the first talk radio station in the UK. The US was years ahead. They had talk radio for ages, but we were talking about the 70s and the 80s when I loved radio and I would call in to the kids radio station and the kids radio show at the weekend. And it was dial up phones. All right. So you put your finger in the hole and you’d have to dial up and I would speed dial. So I would know the number of my local radio station. I would speed dial the number for the quiz and I’d be either number one or number two. This is in the entire city of London. It’s got 8 million, 9 million people. So you can imagine how keen I was as a little kid to be on the radio. And then they noticed how enthusiastic I was and asked me if I’d be one of the regular reporters for the Young London radio show that was on at the weekend. So I’d be 14 or 15 years old, wandering around London, doing interviews with big celebrities who were to be honest, very sweet and empathetic because they’re like, this kid, this kid’s weird. Why does she want to interview us? And I started really young on the radio. So by the time I got to university, I was working for the BBC commercial radio. So I had this huge sort of experience before I was even 21 and I went straight into the BBC as a researcher, then a reporter, then a producer, worked my way all the way up through the BBC. And then CNN came calling and I moved to the United States in 1999. I spent a decade at CNN. I spent five or six years working for public radio in the United States when I learned a lot about America, like a lot. You can’t help but learn about what makes America tick when you’re working on local public radio. And then I spent a decade working with Al Jazeera in Washington, D.C. And I always say that this next decade of my life, you’re adding up these decades, you know how old I am. And I say that this next decade is for me. I’ve worked for major organizations, CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera, NPR, and now I’m working for myself. And I’ve used all of the experience, the skill sets that I have engaging with audiences, telling stories to actually bring together a team of international, not always journalists, but communicators who have a gift for moderating, facilitating, emceeing. And I brought that team together, we’re all over the world, and I called it Moderate the Panel. Because I’ve been to too many conferences, too many events, where you know the conference theme is exactly what you need to be there for. You know you can learn a lot, but you are bored out of your mind, which is a crime. Why did you spend that money? Why did you travel that way to go to a conference that for some reason is putting on boring panels and boring events? And I needed to fix that. I’d been bored sitting in an audience and they’re thinking, I could be answering my email right now. I could be writing a shopping list right now. And I should be learning more about my business, learning more about a topic that I cared enough about to go to an event to learn about, but the way it’s delivered and packaged is so boring, everybody switches off. And so I thought, that’s not right. Why would a whole audience not even be looking at the stage or listening to you? How do I fix that? How do I use my journalism skills to engage and communicate with an audience, to engage and communicate with a conference? People have come to see a panel, people who are watching a major event. How do I do that? And I used all of that experience from all of these 30 plus years to do that and passed it on to my colleagues. And that’s what we do. And I know when people come to events that are moderated or facilitated by moderate the panel in particular, but actually any charismatic moderator facilitated, we’ve all seen them. It’s transformative. You want to stay indoors for the whole day. You’re running back from the coffee break to see them, to hear them. They hold it together so beautifully. And that’s what I mean by don’t be boring, because if you’re boring, however important your message is, it’s not going to get over.

The Moment a President Tried to Hijack a UN Climate Panel

Park: So besides journalism and your work in radio, you have done a lot of moderating yourself. Tell us about that time in New York where you had a high level bureaucrat try to take over the conversation and what you did about it and what the outcome was.

Femi: So every year around about September, the United Nations have a General Assembly. So it’s like the beginning of term for everybody. Everybody comes back for the beginning of term. We’ve got heads of state, heads of government, politicians, the great and the good, all converge in New York for a very high level week of discussions, meetings and addresses. I was doing a major panel. This was a few years ago when we were still getting to grips with climate change and what it means for us, the impact of it. And I was doing a really important panel, it was women on the front lines of climate change. And these were women from all over the world where they’ve already begun to see their environment change, the farming change, the food that they’re able to get for their family not available. And so these women were brought together by United Nations to talk about, you know, their experience of what they’re seeing on their doorstep, because the rest of us hadn’t quite seen it yet. But these were people who were literally on the front lines. And in the United Nations, often you’ll get two very important people who will chair the meetings. You’ll get one head of state who will open the meeting and then another head of state who will close the meeting. So we had two presidents sandwiched between the discussion that I was moderating. So we had the little introduction. I got straight into the conversation. It was going really well. And then this particular president, I’m not going to name, but he was a president from south of the equator and very, very, very well known for his strong political stance against the United States. Let’s leave it there.

Park: Fair enough.

Femi: He’d already done the opening remarks and so now we were talking to really the people who were struggling with their lives, their livelihoods and on the platform, and you know that the United Nations platform, it has your name and it all looks very formal. He leant back in his chair and started hissing. Psst, psst, psst. Madam moderator, madam moderator. So for about five or 10 minutes, I pretended I couldn’t hear it. And then I realized that I couldn’t, it was going to go on until my attention was got. So then I said, Mr. President, you have something you want to add. And he started a speech about how awful the United States is, how it misuses its power. And this was many years ago. So we’re not talking contemporary, we’re talking many years ago, how it was evil. And it was this speech to go, I’m listening to it for a couple of minutes, nothing to do with climate change. So this president had already derailed a conversation earlier in the day, which was meant to be an hour and it had gone on for four because he’d interjected with his thoughts. So I’d been warned about it. And I listened for a bit and I just thought, this is not on topic. So I said, Mr. President, thank you for your thoughts. I’m now going to get back to our special guests who are talking about their experiences of climate change. He looked shocked. Nobody had ever told him to. I effectively, I was politely saying, thank you, stop talking, I’m moving on. And in the front row of the United Nations, there were his delegation and they hissed at me and he looks shocked and then thunderous look, but I got back on track, continued the panel. This was when Twitter was Twitter and not X. So on then as it was then Twitter, this delegation, this country delegation, they were like this terrible moderator. She stopped the president from making his speech and they were so awful to me. They came after me. The president looked thunderous, but the event organizer, the UN agency that had organized the event said, thank you. Thank you so much. You saved our session because you were bold enough to politely stop the president from derailing the entire conversation. Now that was nothing about don’t be boring. That was about being courageous enough to tell somebody who was much more important than I will ever be that he was off track, that he was not helping our conversation in as polite a way as I could and then getting us back onto the topic in hand. It was, I will never forget it because I’ve never had anybody hiss at me to get my attention and also hiss at me. It feels a bit like if anyone knows what British pantomime is like, it’s like a theater that’s done during the festive season and it has a lot of audience participation in it. It felt exactly like pantomime during the festive season where the audience are yelling things at you and they’re booing. And I was, that was me, I was in that situation. But I think one of the things that you learn definitely with my journalism background is that you have to understand what your mission is, what your story is, keep on track and make sure you are delivering for your audience. And that was very, very important in that instance. So despite being heckled by a country delegation, I managed to get everything back on track. And I lived to work at the UN many, many, many times afterwards.

Finding Courage Through Professional Mission: When Your Job Is Bigger Than Your Fear

Park: And I’m curious, Femi, at that moment when you knew it was derailed and you had to get it back on track, did you have to find courage to do that or was it just your own professionalism? Courage was in the background, but your own professionalism that says it is my job to get this session back on track regardless who is derailing it.

Femi: I definitely feel when I moderate, when I facilitate, my job is to make sure I deliver what we promise at the beginning to the audience and also to the organizers who invariably spend months, sometimes they spend a year putting events together. So that is my job. You know that phrase, you have one job. That is my one job. So I am really comfortable in that space. And as I’ve become more mature in my work, I’m even more comfortable in that space about working out how do I do this in a way that is respectful but firm? And people have said to me in the past, you are scary. And I was like, no, no, no, I’m not scary when I moderate, but I am very firm. So sometimes you have to stop very important people from speaking. How do you do that? How do you stop them from speaking? How do you get something back on track? So I think I have it within me, it’s part of my skill set, but I suppose it’s a boldness as well. I’m really comfortable speaking to people who are incredibly important, very famous and guiding them. Because in my expertise, I have an expertise that they don’t have and I’m very comfortable doing that. But what I did have to do, Park, is find the words in that very high level situation. How do I find the words to thank the president for his intervention? Now we’re going to get back to our special guests who’ve come from all over the world and thank you very much, Mr. President, but now we’re going to move on. I was thinking about how do I phrase this? Obviously not well enough for the delegation who were hissing and heckling me, but definitely enough for the president to then lean back in his chair and realize that I wasn’t going to allow him to take over the session to make political remarks about the United Nations, which weren’t appropriate at that particular point in time. So I think it might be a little bit of inner boldness, but I think I was born with it.

Park: And he then provided you the respect that you earned to take back over that session. How did you feel after the fact, especially when they came after you on Twitter? Was that demoralizing in any way or did it just strengthen your resolve?

Femi: I felt that I was really comfortable with what it was that I’m booked to do. And it made me realize that above all else, that I can’t be intimidated out of doing a good job. And sometimes it’s hard as a facilitator not to be intimidated by very important people or people who feel that they should be deferred to. Politicians are a great example of that. So I’m thinking about that. And then on Twitter, I spend a lot of time on Twitter, now X. I don’t spend so much time on X. I used to be on Twitter five or six times a day, regularly having conversations. I have friends who I’ve met on Twitter who I now know in real life. So it was just a wonderful place to have those engaging conversations. Part of that is being able to answer those conversations, speak back so I didn’t hide. I did have those conversations with people on Twitter, but also understanding when you need to stand back and probably best not to say anything. And then within a day, Park, it had all gone away and everybody had moved on to whatever the next story was. And as a journalist, you don’t want to be the story. I don’t want to be the story. If I’m the story, something’s gone wrong.

Professional Preparation: The Unsexy Secret to Captivating Audiences

Park: So like you were saying, you have developed a skill set over your life to be able to handle that. You have a gift for doing it. What do you say to listeners that they might go, okay, well, that’s great for Femi. She has this international broadcast experience and is standing on the stage in the UN, but I’ve just been invited to make a speech or moderate a panel with my industry and I’ve done it a couple times, I’ve never felt comfortable doing it, what would you tell them?

Femi: This is such a good question. I work with people all the time who are in that position and my team do, because we train people to moderate and how to speak as well. So first of all, do your homework. There’s nothing that gives you so much confidence as knowing you know your topic really well. So do the preparation, do some research, find out, what is it that the organizer wants you to do if you’re moderating? What are the key points that should be made? And then also talk to your panelists. This sounds so simple, but I’ve seen so many people who don’t do it ahead of time. Have a little chat, get together online, see what their main points are, see what their expertise is. Because sometimes a panel is put together in a boardroom or in an office without the panelists being involved. And then they’re told, we’d like you to speak on this and this and this and this. I like to work on a panel or discussion where I go to the panelists and say, this is our subject matter. What are you passionate about? What do you know about? What points would you make that if you were sitting in the audience, nobody would think of that they would think this is so valuable. What will they remember in a year’s time? And so I build the discussion from the expertise of the speakers and then say, and this is the storytelling element. What is the beginning? What is the middle? The middle for me is always the meat. Like what is the chunky, juicy part of the conversation? And then how do I end? How do I want to leave this audience? It might be a call to action. It might be a rallying cry. It might be just a great piece of advice or a quote. And then I put together a narrative arc for the discussion. And I would say to people who are preparing for panels, who don’t have my journalism background, do that. So do the prep. Do the research, speak to your panelists, get together a good narrative arc. So how do you start? Where are you going? How are you ending? Keep an eye on the time. It seems quite a simple thing, but when people moderate, sometimes they say, oh, just one more question. They’re already 20 minutes over and the audience is just like, oh, when is this going to end? And the speakers are, I’ve got a plane to catch. Why are we still going on? So that respect for time and timing differentiates somebody who’s really like maybe a chatty, charismatic speaker and somebody who really knows how to moderate. So be cognizant of the time and what time you’ve got for each section. And then I would say craft a beautiful beginning, like a show stopping beginning. And it can be very simple. It could be an idea. It could be a thought. It could be a quote.

Park: Can you give us an example of that?

The Show-Stopping Opening: How to Hook Your Audience from the First Moment

Femi: Yeah. Let me think of one that was a ha. All right. So this was at the World Health Summit in Berlin, and this was last October. And we were talking about communication and non-communicable diseases. So things like diabetes or cancer, things that you don’t catch, but you can suffer from. And it was about communication. How do we communicate this information? And so I started by walking around the audience and asking them how they were feeling and what conditions they have. And they were telling me, I’ve got high blood pressure or I’ve got diabetes or I’ve got a chronic backache. And then I said, so if you had all of those conditions, would you expect it to be delivered, that information to be delivered to you on a piece of paper or on an email, or would you like to have a one-on-one communication? And we literally did an example. We did an example of what talking to somebody with an illness or a condition is like compared to just writing something off and then giving it to them. And it was such a vivid example of how do we communicate health to each other. And I found out the most extraordinary things. I didn’t know what I was going to get. I was just prepared to run with whatever it was. And then the audience got really into it. So I’m just thinking, this audience is very giving, very interactive and opted for being interactive. And it was just such a powerful way to explain how do we communicate health? Do we talk to each other or do we do it in a very high level, which means that we cut out the person and that conversation engagement with the person. And that, I thought about that. I was like, how do I start this session? How do I make it different? And leaning into what the audience can bring is one way of making it different.

Park: And in doing so, you were inviting them into the story immediately within that session. So they are now active participants, not just casual bystanders.

Femi: 100 percent yes.

Professional vs Amateur: Why Payment Doesn’t Define Excellence

Park: What makes the difference between an amateur speaker, moderator, and a professional one? And maybe you can tell us and back up your points with your hapless moderator in Brussels story.

Femi: So often when we talk about professional and amateur, it’s about money. One gets paid, one doesn’t get paid. That’s a small element of it, only a tiny element of it, because sometimes you can come across moderators who aren’t paid, but are not doing their best work. Let me say that to just put it politely. And I think the difference between an amateur and a professional isn’t necessarily payment. And I’ll tell you why is because when I worked at CNN and I worked for CNN for a decade out of Atlanta in Georgia, as journalists, we weren’t allowed to take money for events that we did. So I did a decade of events for the United Nations, European Union, for major, major institutions. And I wasn’t being paid, but I was a professional moderator. So I think it is your approach, your seriousness, your preparation, your dedication, and then a combination of skills. It’s about being able to time an event, being able to judge. Is the audience with you? Are you watching your audience? Are they engaged? The minute I see an audience scrolling on their phone, getting out their laptop to type on their lap, I know that I need to do something really fast to grab them back, to re-engage them in the conversation. What do I do? So you’re watching your audience. You’re also working out what is your brief? What am I here to do? So if you go off topic and it enhances the conversation, good, but you know you’ve gone off topic. You need to create a rapport with your speakers, which means that you connect with them. Sometimes if they’re very important, they won’t have time to do it beforehand. There were very few presidents and heads of state that will say, sure, Femi, let’s have a little chat on Zoom on Saturday. Although during COVID that happened, I would have little chats with heads of state, they were at home, I was at home. And so it broke down a lot of the hierarchy barriers, but communicating with your speakers so you know, they know what you want, you know what you want, and you can also get some stuff that you hadn’t even planned out of them. So I would just say preparation, preparation, preparation. Do not write a script. Prepare so that then you can talk and speak in a natural way. In real life, none of us walk around our world going, I’m going to the grocery store. Many of us don’t. Some people might need to, but that’s for other health and mental health reasons. But we don’t say, I’m going shopping and then write down, okay, let me, I’m going to go to the cash point and then I’m going to do this and then I’m going to do this and then you read it out. I have seen moderating happen like that and it’s not good because you’re not communicating directly with the audience. So there’s a whole lot of skills that you build up that basically make you take the work seriously and then skillfully share that work with your audience. It’s not about you. And sometimes you’ll get very famous moderators and they will talk about, there was one time I did this and there was another time I did this and another time I did this. And you’ve almost forgotten that the panel isn’t about them, it’s about their speakers. And so that ability to be humble, but also guide and also lead and also allow people’s personalities to come out. It’s such a long list of what makes a professional moderator. It’s their comfort on stage, it’s their confidence on stage, the ability to drive a conversation that it often takes years to get that. But if you have confidence and you prepare, you connect with your audience and you connect with your speakers. You’ve got the basis of what it takes to be a professional moderator and then just work at it, do more, get better, get slicker, connect with the audience. You don’t have to be funny, it helps, but you don’t have to be funny. You have to be authentic. It’s such a long list.

The Brussels Horror Story: When Audiences Yell at the Moderator to Do Their Job

Park: What about that hapless Brussels moderator?

Femi: So, now I’ve told you the difference between a professional and an amateur moderator. I’m going to take you back to an event that was so horrifying that I will never forget it. So I was moderating at a big development conference in Brussels and it brought together communities from the developing world and the developed world. And it was called European Development Day. So Europe was holding out its hand to the developing world and saying, let’s partner, let’s be together. There was a session that was so intriguing. I went along, I was moderating some sessions, but I always liked to watch other people work and sit in other sessions and watch the audience and see how it’s going. And this moderator had a very high level politician on the panel. And the politician was obviously enjoying talking and wouldn’t stop talking. And the politician went on and on and on and didn’t stop. And the moderator didn’t stop the politician. And the audience started to get uncomfortable, started to shift in their chairs. And then after about 25 minutes of this speaker not stopping and the moderator not interrupting them, the audience started to yell things out like, wrap it up, moderate, stop him from talking. And I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. They were yelling out things to try and encourage the moderator to moderate the session because he wasn’t able to tell this important politician, thank you. Let’s move on. Or that’s a good point. Let’s move on. And if you’ve ever been in that situation, I’m going to give you a couple of tips of what you can do. All of us pause when we speak, even if we speak a lot. We all pause when we speak. In fact, I just did a couple of pauses there. What you do when you hear that pause is like a ninja slip into that pause and say, thank you. Thank you Mr. President, thank you Madam President, thank you Councillor, that’s such a good point. I am going to move us on a little bit because I’ve got some other speakers that I want to bring in or I want to move on to the next point and the trick is when you slide in to that gap, don’t stop, keep going, you keep going so even if your speaker is still speaking, you keep going and keep going on to the next point, keep going, keep going, keep going and eventually they will stop speaking and you will continue speaking and you will move it along. Another trick that I use is you say someone’s name. So they’re in full flow and they’re chatting and they’ve shown no indication of stopping. And you just say, Park. And then Park goes, yes. And you’ve stopped them. And then it’s up to you to decide where you’re going to go next. Park, you made some great points. Thank you so much. I’m going to move on. Or we’re almost at the end of this session. Really enjoyed it. There’s more that we can talk about, but we do that in the coffee break. So those are two tricks that I use. One is to say a speaker’s name. The other is use that pause that we all do when we speak, slide into the pause, keep talking, move things along. So if you’re ever in that situation where you’re trying to stop someone from speaking, you’ve got two strategies in order to gain back control.

Re-Engaging Distracted Audiences: The Arsenal Every Speaker Needs

Park: And those sound like strategies that you have learned over the course of time of being in that situation and like, what do I do now? I’m curious. You are so dynamic and charismatic that you have had to have lost an audience now and again. And in that position where you see them now looking down at their phones and scrolling through their iPads or whatever. Can you take us to the time when that happened and how you wrestled back their attention.

Femi: It’s usually because when that happens, when you see an audience drifting off, it’s because the conversation at the moment is not necessarily gripping them. They’re thinking, I can check my email and listen to this. So what you want to do is something that makes them look up. So I’m thinking about what piece of information do I have that is going to stop them in their tracks and get them to look up? When I did my detailed research, what did I save that I think might be really useful? I often ask panelists, not just for their points, but for their stories and anecdotes that illustrate what we’re about to talk about. And I save them and I pepper them through the discussion. So everybody wants to know, well, what story? What’s the next story going to be? So if I feel that there’s an element of the conversation that’s beginning to dip a little bit, bring up one of the stories. Or you can be a little bit more challenging with your speakers. So speakers are often really good at, okay, these are my points. I’m gonna make my points. I’m on a roll. And all you need to do is, I really like those points, but can you give me one example? Park, you’ve done it several times to me already. Give us an example of how that would work. Give us an example of when you did that. And then the audience sits up because you’re challenging your speaker to stop their flow and come up with something tangible. That challenge, that helps. That helps grab an audience back. And then also we tend to put Q&A at the end of a conversation. You know, so you’re waiting an hour before you do anything with your audience. Sometimes it’s really nice to have Q&A in the middle. Or if you see something and I watch the audience all the time, write something down, lean into their partner or their seat, the person sitting next to them, say something. Because I’m a journalist and I’m always looking to see what’s happening, I will sometimes go to the audience. That obviously resonated with you. Why? What did you just write down? And they are so shocked. They are not expecting it. They’re not expecting to be part of the conversation, but I can confidently know they have something to contribute because they either were writing down enthusiastically notes, whispering to their partner about something.

Park: And that’s to warm up a panelist, to get them just to connect with the audience a little bit more and vice versa.

Femi: Yeah, exactly. You can start with it so they get to know them a little bit better and you can decide whether it’s the worst day, the best day, depending on what kind of personality they have. And it’s something that they think about and then they take you to some very unexpected places and it feels fresh and unrehearsed and something that you can just throw in. And it works either at the beginning, it also can work at the end of a session as well.

Park: Yeah. So you said you had two for us. What’s the second tip?

Femi: Yeah, so that was the first one was the best day. Second one was the worst day, depending on which way you want to go. I’m a journalist. So I usually go into the, tell me about the worst day, because that’s juicy. But sometimes the best day can be truly uplifting. So best day works for the end, worst day can sometimes work at the beginning.

Story’s Gravitational Pull: Why Anecdotes Always Win

Park: Yeah, that’s great. Well, as you know, I am all about storytelling and as we do with all of our guests, I ran your Moderate the Panel brand through our StoryCycle Genie, unbeknownst to you and sent you the findings first, the brand assessment, and then the overall recommended brand narrative strategy. And again, I gave it no input because I don’t know your brand like you do. Those that use it would then go in and iterate on anything that they felt like wasn’t working. And what it does, of course, is validates what you’re doing well. It then reveals gaps and highlights missed opportunities that you can easily fix. And it even inspires you in ways to think about and talk about your brand story that maybe you hadn’t considered. So with all that said and set up, what did you think of what I sent you from the StoryCycle Genie?

Femi: It was spookily accurate. There were a lot of areas I thought, this is, you know what is the value proposition evaluation, for instance. And it picked out things that I feel really important, which things like we moderate events people don’t want to leave, which is something that I heard in an elevator in Cape Town a few years ago, which was a beautiful location and there was a great conference going on, but the people in the elevator were bored. And they’re like, I don’t think I can go back. Ugh. And I just thought, what is it that my team does? We moderate events people don’t want to leave. And so your genie picked that out, which is really important to us.

Park: Which means you’re doing a really good job of communicating that.

Femi: It also picked out pain points I didn’t necessarily think were pain points. I’ve got my own particular pain points. I was like, maybe this should be more painful for me. One of the pain points was recruiting enough high level elite moderators, which strangely, because I think moderators understand what it is that we do as a team, which is really deliver professional moderating on a very high level, that moderators get it, so I’m inundated with people throwing themselves at me, wanting to be part of moderate the panel. So a pain point wasn’t necessarily the recruiting. For me, my pain point more is how do more people know about this service? So if they know they’ve got the option to really go high level and have someone look after them and not worry about moderating or facilitating. So that was a pain point that the genie didn’t pick up, but that is definitely something that I feel at the moment.

Understanding Audience Pain Points vs Your Brand Challenges

Park: So let me ask you something just for clarity on that. That’s your pain point. That’s what you are feeling as what the genie is looking at here are the pain points of your audiences, of what you would communicate to them on how you would overcome, help them overcome their problem with your solutions. So the genie is always looking from your audience’s point of view not your brand’s point of view. It’s up to you as the brand leader to say, okay, your pain point is I need to get more people to know about moderate the panel. That is totally, you know, I get that. So how do you do that? You speak to your audiences from their pain point that you can solve for them. And in doing so, you resolve your own pain point because now they get to better understand you, you deliver on that promise and they start telling your story to their world.

Femi: That makes so much sense. And this happens when you read something, difference between reading and then having someone unpack it for you. So that makes perfect sense. Something that also jumped out at me, which I loved, which was the brand archetype assessment. And it said, primary, we’re the sage. So we’ve got knowledge and expertise. And I hadn’t thought about that in that way. The sage. Secondary, the magician with transforming events. Love that description. And then the third, which is really part of our service, which is the caregiver, because most of the team are producers, have been network producers, so we don’t just come in and moderate the event. We actually help you and co-produce it with you and help you work out parts of the business that you might not be experts on, but we are, so we look after you. We don’t just turn up and say, okay, here’s the panel, thank you, goodbye. We look at the flow, how it might flow better. We look at the seating. We look at where people, where the lighting is, the chairs. So all of those things, because overall we want it to be brilliant for your audience. So without me saying that, the genie picked that up. So the sage, the magician, the caregiver, these are great takeaways. I love it. Really, really, really.

From Winging It to Winning: Why Intentional Story Structure Matters

Park: You know, and the way we’ve designed it, it’s built around my Story Cycle System. And what I learned a long time ago, Femi, is that in the advertising world, when we weren’t intentional about our storytelling in our advertising, in our branding, in our communications, we would end up winging it more and hoping some sort of creative idea would really land. But it was when we got really intentional about storytelling and story structures that we went from winging it to winning all the time because we were speaking to that audience from their point of view, solving that singular problem, that act two, if you will, that they really care about and then using these frameworks of the and, but therefore, the five primal elements of a short story for big impact, which by the way, you intuitively use throughout the stories you told us. You probably didn’t know that, but I can break those down to these five primal elements in order that you did it. And then of course our 10-step Story Cycle System. So the idea is when you are looking at these archetypes, had you ever been intentional about it or is this intuitively how you all are coming across?

Femi: The caregiver is intentional. The magician is intentional. The sage is intentional. So yes, we’re intentional about what we bring as a brand. So yes, we are, we know what we have and we’re… I don’t know, that sounds a little bit egotistical.

Park: No, that’s okay, but had you ever thought of them that way before?

Femi: I hadn’t thought of it like that way. So I hadn’t categorized and broken it down. I hadn’t categorized and broken it down in the way that it’s been delivered, but we absolutely know that is what we’re doing, but we hadn’t found the right language for it. So sometimes finding the right language makes it a lot easier. And so it gives clarity. So what I would talk to my team about and what’s important to us as a team and we would work on all those elements. But I didn’t have the right language or clarity of language. And I got that in one email that you sent me, which is amazing.

The Brand Purpose That Drives Everything: Why Moderate the Panel Exists

Park: Well, there you have it. Finally in there, and we’ll wrap today’s show, I’ve got to read your brand purpose statement, because I love it, but I’m curious how you feel it resonates for Moderate the Panel. And it says this, Moderate the Panel exists to empower people to create extraordinary event experiences that advance their professional missions and organizational impact.

Femi: I like that. I like that. It’s what we do. Yeah, it’s what we do.

Park: And you can always iterate inside the Genie too, to take that and say, I like it. Now put it in my words, in my tone, you know, it can even soften it, can harden it, can do whatever. But the point to that brand purpose statement is to answer the question, why does Moderate the Panel exist beyond making money? What is the bigger thing that you do? The impact you have in the world.

Femi: Yes. And we came together as a company because we wanted to make impact. When 30 years ago, when I started moderating, there were very few women on the event circuit and there were very few people of color on the event circuit doing high level events. And I thought, wouldn’t it be great if I just could get a whole team together? Because if I can’t do a job, I have no one to share the work with or who would I refer them to? And I thought, I want to get together a team who cares about moderating as much as I do, who loves it, but who also has the high values that I have. How am I going to address this gap in the market? And I thought, I know I’m going to put a team together. Sounds like a Judy Garland movie. I know, let’s put on the show. So rather than complaining, which we do a lot, we’re like, there’s not enough of this in the business and we need a business to do this. I actually just thought I’m going to do it. I’m going to find extraordinary women, extraordinary people of color who can do these super high level events, who can moderate in a way that is transformative. They can take care of the client. They have exceptional knowledge and stage presence. I’m gonna find these people, bring them together and call them the team, Moderate the Panel. So that’s what I did. And so what you read out to me was very similar to why we came together without you knowing the story.

Park: Well, it just simply went to your website and took your story in the way you are currently telling it. And again, hopefully validates what you’re doing well, reveals gaps and things that you can easily fix in your storytelling and inspires you with the words, as you mentioned earlier, about how do we describe this? Give us the words that explain our archetypes and how we’re showing up in the world and our OOO exercise, our personality traits and how we play off of those. Well, this has been just absolutely extraordinary, Femi, and you’ve got a generous offer for our listeners that if they come to you and say they heard you on the show, you will give them 10 percent off of working with you at Moderate the Panel.

Femi: Absolutely, it’s a bargain.

Park: What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Femi: If they go to moderatethepanel.com, they will find our contact sheet and they can fill that in and it will come straight through to me. Or they can just go to info at moderatethepanel.com and use that email. Either way will get to me.

Park: And let them know that they heard you on my show and you’ll give them that 10%.

Femi: Or of course, so that they can get that 10 percent discount. We’re also on LinkedIn as well. So anywhere that you find on LinkedIn or on the website or using the email and just say that Park sent you and you’ll get the 10 percent discount.

Park: Well, thank you so much for being here, Femi. It’s been an absolute delight.

Femi: You’re so very welcome. Thank you for having me.

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