From Behind the Desk to the Front of the Stage

CHAPTER 11

Hosting and Facilitating Events

Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.

—Winston Churchill, British politician and wartime prime minister

Good presenters are frequently asked to combine a speech with hosting a panel session at a conference or to chair a whole conference session or to act as a facilitator for a roundtable discussion. This requires the effective deployment of many of the techniques discussed in the earlier chapters, but now combined with people management skills.

Let us step back and consider what is a chair or facilitator there for?

Traditionally, the role of a chair was fairly passive, just calling people to speak at meetings and conferences as they indicated, sticking to a timetable, and if ...