In this instructional monologue, Charlotte Kemp clarifies the often‑confused terminology surrounding public‑speaking roles. She systematically defines speakers/keynote speakers, facilitators, moderators, trainers, coaches, and Masters of Ceremonies (MCs), emphasizing that each role carries distinct expectations, skill sets, and client deliverables. Kemp advises professionals to first ascertain exactly what a client believes they are hiring for, then align their own service offering accordingly. She discusses how to present these roles on résumés and LinkedIn profiles—highlighting when to list a function (e.g., MC) and when it may be omitted if not a core strength. A special focus is placed on the keynote speaker: traditionally the opening address that sets the conference’s tone, yet the term is frequently over‑used for any 45‑minute stage talk. Throughout, she stresses nuanced understanding to avoid mislabeling and to market oneself accurately in the speaking industry.
Chapters
All right, now here's another way we can distinguish between different kinds of speakers, and these words are not necessarily interchangeable, but very often we, we do use them as interchangeable expressions, but we want to try and be clear. We often talk about speakers, facilitators, and moderators as if they were the same thing, and they're not. But again, please find out what the— what your client actually believes it is that they are hiring you for. A speaker or a keynote speaker normally stands in front of an audience on a stage sharing content, and there should be some engagement. A facilitator and/or a moderator often handle kind of training where they are sharing content with the audience, guiding them through something, facilitating them to learn, and through a workshop of some kind, or moderating a panel. We have trainers, of course, and there are many trainers in the speaking world, and we eventually don't make a distinction between them because some people could speak and then get a whole lot of training from that, or they could be training workshops and then be invited to speak at a conference to tie up their lessons. And then we have coaches. Coaches typically deal with a client one-on-one. They are assisting one person to develop some element of their life and make some progress. But we find many coaches as part of the training, moderating, facilitating, and speaking world, and we certainly welcome them. You'll find most associations around the world have a number of coaches, people who are primarily coaches and they do some speaking on the side. And you'll also find many, many speakers and trainers who have added a coaching element into the product offering that they give to their clients. And then you have the Master of Ceremonies, the MC. It's really important that you work out for yourself whether you are a good MC or not because it is a particular skill set to be able to handle, you know, the whole audience, keep the audience engaged, manage all technical things behind the scenes for the client, introduce and position other speakers so that the light shines on them. It's a really nuanced task. Some people do it very, very well, others do it very poorly. For professional speakers, I think it is a skill set that we should learn, but not necessarily something that we would put at the top of our CV if we are not actually really good at being an MC. I'm going to make one more distinction here about the phrase keynote speaker, again, just because it's the kind of phrase that people throw around without very often understanding what it means, and you need to be clear about it again so that you can ask the right questions from your client. The keynote speaker very often was the opening speaker at the start of a conference who would position what the entire conference was about, position the tone of the conference, and set up the other speakers afterwards to be able to slot in in terms of what was going to be delivered to the audience. It literally is that keynote at the beginning of a symphony to which all the rest of the musicians would make sure that they were in tune with that one keynote, and that is what we should be doing as a speaker. We very often use the phrase keynote speaker to refer to any person who speaks at any point on the stage, anyone who speaks in front of an audience or from a stage, or any speech that is about 45 minutes in duration. And where that length of time comes from is also debatable. So, while the keynote speech is supposed to be just that very first speech, it's used very often for any other kind of speech for a conference, and it is an expression that we use. There isn't a distinction necessarily between keynote speaker and professional speaker. We would assume that the keynote speaker would be a professional speaker, but not necessarily. A keynote speaker could be someone who has a lot of experience in an industry or profession, and they're going to set up a conference. Maybe they're the managing director or the founder of an organization, and they've got really good speaking skills. But we don't need to make a distinction between keynote speaker and professional speaker for the sake of our CVs or for our LinkedIn profiles.
