Best Practices for Moderators and Facilitators

You need to moderate a discussion or facilitate an event and you'd like to brush up on your skills, to get some practical tips and tricks?

An EU presidency meeting. An international conference. A panel session or a break-out workshop during a network meet-up. A public participation gathering. A project meeting.

At SpeakSmart, we moderate around 50 conferences, panels, workshops, discussions and meetings of all kinds annually. We've compressed our experience into this 1-day practical course. The course is designed to first quickly remind you of the basics and then to bring you up to speed with the latest developments in the art of moderating.

No lectures. In a small group, using discussion and case studies, we'll cover how to:

• have the skills and tools to best fulfil the role of a moderator
• prepare yourself and your participants for an engaging discussion
• design the event and the flow of a discussion
• start the event and capture the attention of your audience
• introduce speakers and topics, break the ice, warm up discussion participants
• keep speakers and events in time and on topic
• accelerate or steer the discussion
• conduct interesting q&a sessions
• wrap up and summarize events and discussions

You also get a chance to ask all your relevant questions, since a substantial part of the course is participant directed. The course works best, if you have a moderating assignment coming up within the next 6 to 9 months.  

Sometimes, participants forget an event as soon as they step outside the room. Other discussions, however, are remembered and recalled for years, because people have been truly fascinated. We would like to help you create the unforgettable ones.

Trainer Margo Loor is the most experienced trainer of thinking-, public speaking- and argumentation skills in Estonia. Since 1998 he has conducted trainings of persuasion, discussion and decisionmaking based on argumentation for managers and professionals, has moderated numerous debates, discussions, conferences and online events. Read more >>

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