How to Rehearse for a Conference Panel Benjamin Ball Associates
Make your conference panels discussion work.
If you are on a conference panel this year, make your attendance more successful with essential preparation.
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Now the big mistake people make when they are preparing conference panels is that they think of it as a question-and-answer session. But it’s not like that at all. Two things you should be thinking about: one is giving your audience useful advice, practical advice that they can take away. And the second thing you want to think about is giving them stories, case studies, again.... your experience, so that people can apply. They’re not interested in your opinions, but your advice could be very valuable. Once you’ve got those, then practise. Even if you don’t practise it word for word just at least have a go at it so it sounds good, it sounds impressive. But, most importantly, you feel, and you look confident. That’s how you get a really good conference panel performance.
There are lots of things you need to be aware of when you rehearse for a conference panel. You will have other people who don’t agree with you and actually that’s great because it makes much more lively and interesting. But you need to be able to, not interject in a way that tees off the chairperson. But you need to,...you can use your body language to show your disagreement with something that somebody else has said. And you need to have almost what I would call ‘back of the pocket’ statements of your position that you can suddenly trot out, you know that are simple and understandable and accessible to the audience.
It’s difficult to rehearse for a conference panel, you’ve got more time than you have in a quick paced broadcast interview and you’re much more flexible than you would be, for example, in a formal presentation. So, begin to think about what the talking points are that you would like to get across and how you can get the messages that you want the conference to take away, embedded into those talking points. The key preparation, often for a conference panel, is to figure out a mind map of the kinds of things you think are likely to come up and then the messages that you want to attach to those ideas. That’s the best prep.
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