The Art of Being on a Panel

Via Media Guerrilla, Guy Kawasaki of Garage Technology Ventures offers advice culled from his new book The Art of The Start in an Always On speaker series. In this installment, ten suggestions for mastering The Art of Being on a Panel. Kawasaki offers a good list of considerations to make your panel experience (and your audience’s) much more relaxed and enjoyable.One of the best pieces of advice is #4:

Err on the side of being plain and simple. Often a moderator will ask a technical question, so the temptation is to answer with a technical statement. This is usually a mistake. Keep it plain and simple: Enough to show that you know what you�re talking about but not so much that it makes you incomprehensible to 80 percent of the audience.

This is a good reminder for most areas of communication, whether writing press releases or addressing a networking group, keeping it simple will win people over. It’s a gifted speaker that can meet all ten of these suggestions, but that’s not to say they aren’t achievable. Finding a balance between providing information and entertaining your audience can be difficult but not impossible.