Communicating on a Panel

What's the most effective way to communicate? If you've been asked to appear on a panel, a panel discussion, you're seated. It's not your keynote address. You're not speaking for an hour. Here's the problem with panel discussions. People think, oh, it's just a panel. I'm not giving a keynote. This will be easy. I'll get up and wing it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. A panel discussion is still an opportunity for you to be in the spotlight. It's still an opportunity to. For you to fail to meet expectations. To meet expectations or to dramatically exceed expectations. Why not dramatically exceed expectations? It's still an opportunity for you to make a bad impression, communicate a horrible message. It's an opportunity for you to communicate nothing and have people remember nothing. It's also an opportunity for you to communicate specific positive messages that you wanted and have people remember them. So if we know that in advance, you need to go into it with the idea that you want to exceed expectations and you want people to remember specific messages you have for them. Now, in most panel discussions, they do give you time to make introductory remarks. Maybe it's 10 minutes, maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's three minutes. Guess what? The Gettysburg Address was only two minutes. So you can still plan, you can still prepare. You're not going to use PowerPoint slides, most likely, but you can certainly have notes, you can have an outline. Make sure you have something interesting to say to this audience. If you only have three minutes, focus on one interesting insight that you think no one else is going to talk about that may appear to be new to this audience. And tell a story to back it up. Deliver real value. Don't waste time. Oh, it's so great to be on this panel. What a distinguished group. I'd like to thank Jim Smithers for that wonderful introduction. Blah, blah, blah. Well, I don't have a lot of time, so let me just give the microphone to my colleague here. That's how so many people waste their opportunity on panels. And they figure, well, I'll say something interesting when the questions come up. Maybe, maybe not. But why not just start right out of the gate saying something interesting? It is a speech. You might not think of it as a speech, might be a boring speech, but it's still an opportunity for you to speak, an opportunity for you to make a great impression. So plan just as you would for a keynote practice, practice on video. Make sure you have interesting, memorable ideas for your panel appearance.