So you want to chair a panel?

Joke, of course you don’t, it’s much more fun to be a speaker*.

No one wants to chair a panel: it’s like being an unholy combination of shepherd, bouncer and mum. Consequently, people often do it extremely badly.

Here are 10 tips, gleaned from my tragically extensive experience of hosting, and witnessing, both good and bad panels.

• Make sure you have the right panel.

This seems simple, but it isn’t. I’m not just thinking about diversity (although sausagefests in particular are not only lazy, but increasingly embarrassing, given women comprise more than half the population) but diversity of experience. Do your panellists have sufficiently different backgrounds and expertise to bring out different strands of the topic? If it’s a debate, are they likely to collapse into what my ex-colleague Mehdi Hasan used to call “soggy consensus”?

Don’t be afraid to prep your panel with an outline of the discussion or even specific questions: it’s not cheating. If it helps, give each of them the first question in advance. That way they’ll have something prepared and will have time to settle down and get over any nerves at the start.

The same applies to you. The big temptation when doing any kind of public speaking is to let your nerves trick you into gabbling. Then you stumble over your words. Then you panic. Then you try to picture the audience naked and that never, ever makes anything better because either the front row is hideously ugly and you feel repulsed or they’re too attractive and you feel like a perv.

How do TV dramas often start? With a wordless scene — a horse galloping across the countryside to bring news, a car driving down a lane, a person walking down corridors. What do actors do when the curtain goes up? Often nothing much, for a few seconds. That lets the audience fidget and settle into their seats. And it allows you to compose yourself and feel in command of the situation.

• Have a beginning, middle and end.

Again, it sounds so simple, but think about the time allotted and structure an arc for the discussion accordingly. Where should you start, to set up the topic? And where you should you end? What groups of questions belong together? The aim should be to move from the big picture, setting up the question, to zooming into deeper issues one by one, ending with a pull back to a version of the question that got you started. It probably won’t quite be thesis+antihesis=synthesis, but your discussion should definitely feel as if it had some momentum, and a destination.

• Keep your notes short and accessible.

I prefer index cards, because you can easily hold them in a single hand, shuffle them, and flip them over. Flapping around with loose A4 paper is a stress that you don’t need. Also, writing out three lines to encapsulate your introduction, and then the names and bios of all your panellists, will help you visualise the discussion.

• Don’t let panellists make statements; ask structured questions.

There’s some heinous fashion for asking panellists to kick off with 5–7 minutes on the topic at hand. The only trouble is that they might all end up saying the same thing, or the last person might feel they’ve been gazumped. Far better to give everyone an individual opening question in advance, which you then ask and to which they respond in turn. After everyone has spoken once, it’s a free-for-all.

On the same point, don’t sit everyone in a straight line if you can help it. A deep V is better because then the panellists can make eye contact and pick up off each other. Up to you if you prefer to be in the middle (probably best for more than 3 panellists) or at the end (so you can fix them all with a gimlet eye).

• Be ready to be flexible.

Use your judgment to work out if going off-piste is working, or boring everyone to tears. One of the joys of a panel is the alchemy of getting these people together, in this place, this one time. So sometimes it’s better to let the discussion go a place you hadn’t expected.

• Be firm.

Nervous people ramble. Arrogant bores also ramble. You have an armoury at your disposal. Start by shifting in your seat, then upgrade to looking like you’re going to interrupt, then actually interrupt. If you hear someone repeat the same point twice in a single answer, for the love of god send in the metaphorical SWAT team.

Ditto, if the audience gets feisty, it’s up to you to keep them in line. Remember that the majority is always on your side: they don’t want one or two shouters in the audience to hijack the whole debate. Remind any disruptive audience members that people have come to see the panel, and there will be plenty of time for questions at the end.

Don’t expect panellists to plough on through disruptions. Stop, and wait for the person to be quiet. Most people run out of steam when there’s nothing to react to, and the whole room is staring at them in annoyance.

• Ensure your panellists get equal time.

One of my worse panel experiences was a radio show from Labour party conference. Something had gone awry in the booking and it was like the Last Supper, only with one woman (me). One trade union boss “had to get away early” and therefore was asked two questions early on, then got another. Meanwhile, I sat there for the whole show, got asked one question about how women felt about something, but was otherwise ignored. I was so grumpy I actually complained to the producer that it was a waste of my time to sit for 40 minutes when I could have been doing work which I would now have to pick up in my spare time. To my surprise, one of the men on the panel (who’d been asked two questions) backed me up.

That experience reminded me how irritating it is to feel neglected as a panellist. For both reasons of ego management and basic courtesy (particularly if people have given up their time unpaid), make sure everyone feels like they’ve had an equal turn at the mic.

• Take the first question from a woman.

If you don’t, then you’re much more likely to end up with only men asking questions. (It’s science.) I front up that I want to take the first question from a woman, saying it’s retribution for the pay gap. Trust me, you will not have difficulty getting men to follow a woman, but the other way round is much trickier.

It also helps to flag up your final question before opening up to the audience — literally, say “and finally, before we go to audience questions…” That helps people in the audience get ready for what is often a slightly nerve-wracking experience of standing up in front of a room and speaking.

• Take questions in threes.

Peter Hitchens once described this as a “Blairite trick” which allowed people to weasel out of answering difficult questions. He’s right; but it’s also a way of allowing more audience members to have a say, rather than laboriously asking each one of your panel to respond to a single question before going back out and getting a mic to the next person. Plus, questions often overlap — or even spark off each other. And if you take batches, you can parcel them out better between panellists, giving them equal time.

Also, be prepared for the audience not to have any questions. This has happened to me before, and at that point it’s best just to plough on with more questions of your own. You can always try again after one more question of your own. If they are still catatonic, then give up.**

• Give the audience something to take away.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman talks about the difference between the experiencing self and the remembering self — with the upshot that our memories are biased towards the end of an experience. So don’t rely on the audience to come up with a last killer question. Have something prepared yourself, and try to make it either a) upbeat, or b) useful. So: “what’s your favourite [x]?” or “what’s one thing that everyone here could go away and do?”

Hope that’s useful. Any tips to share? Drop them in the comments.

*being a speaker is like that bit from Alan Partridge where he swears after the hour, so technically his colleague is hosting. “I’m a guest, you failed to control me, check the small print on your CONEtract.”

**After I asked for feedback, Richard Young wrote to say that he’s against having a Q&A at the end of a session, because it can become a “nit-picky whimper”. He recommends instead using a live question/poll AV system like Sli.do to drop in audience questions. “I tend to see an interesting one and get the audience member to ask it live. “We have an interesting point on role modelling here from Fiona — where are you Fiona? Let’s get you a mic…”

Richard adds: “I usually tell the crowd at the beginning to gesture any time they’d like to make a comment or question. If the audience is very slow, I might throw a panellist’s contentious or anecdotal point out for a show of hands from the crowd, then pick on someone to comment. It very rarely fails (although your roving mic people need to be on their toes).”