There’s a specific kind of professional I meet all the time: someone who has organised or contributed to more events than they can count, who knows exactly what makes a panel work, who could tell you in their sleep what goes wrong when a moderator loses control of the room, and who has never once picked up the microphone themselves.

They know everything about how an event should run. They’ve just never stepped into the room as the person running it.

I see it constantly in CVs. Communicators with a decade of experience in logistics, speaker management, run-of-show — and zero experience moderating. Not because they can’t. Because moderating events, in person or online, is one of those skills nobody quite teaches, and almost everyone assumes you either have or you don’t.

You don’t have to be born with it. I certainly wasn’t.

Moderation is a trained skill, not a personality trait

A few people do seem to be naturals, very comfortable on stage as if they’d been there their whole lives. Most of us aren’t. I learned to moderate the same way I learned everything else in this career: through 25 years as a journalist and international communications consultant, on stages, in studios, with a microphone in my hand, making mistakes and getting better at handling them.

Public speaking and event moderation can be trained. It isn’t easy, if it were, it wouldn’t be valued the way it is — but knowing how to hold a room, manage nerves, keep time, balance voices, and recover when something goes wrong technically or substantively: that’s a skill like any other. You can learn it deliberately, and you can practise it in a low-stakes setting before you’re doing it live in front of the people whose opinion of you actually matters.

That’s exactly the gap I built this training to close.

Why I refuse to leave moderation to “the usual few”

I don’t think moderation should stay in the hands of a small circle of people chosen because they’re naturally charismatic, or because of the position they hold. Meanwhile, the people who actually understand the subject matter, technical experts, policy specialists, communication professionals with real substance to add; stay in the background, when they’re often exactly the ones who should be leading the conversation.

Not to check a box but to turn an event into something people actually leave having learned from, a real dialogue, not a formality.

That’s the gap this training exists to close, and it’s why I built two levels instead of one.

Two workshops, two starting points

Ahead of the 2026–2027 season, I’m running the several Moderation workshops:

• Introduction to Moderation (Beginners level): for anyone who’s been asked to moderate a panel, roundtable, or live event for the first time and wants the essential tools to prepare with clarity and confidence. No previous experience required.
• Intermediate Moderation: for those who already have some moderating experience and want to handle higher-stakes situations: difficult speakers, conflicting viewpoints, discussions that go off track, and keeping a complex conversation flowing under pressure.

Both are built the same way: two hours, live online, split into a one-hour masterclass and one hour of real practice, not theory you forget by the following week. Groups are kept deliberately small (only five people per session) so the feedback is actually personalised, not generic. Every participant leaves with a course guide, a recording of their own practice session to review, and access to our LinkedIn Academy Group to keep learning and exchanging after the workshop ends. You also receive a certificate of completion.

This is your two hours

If you’ve been organising events for years and never stepped onto the stage yourself, this beginners’ workshop is where to start. If you’ve already moderated a few times and want to be ready for the harder rooms, the ones with real tension, real disagreement, real stakes — the intermediate level is built for exactly that.

Either way, the point isn’t to become a different kind of professional. It’s to stop stepping back from a skill you already have most of the ingredients for.

Explore the Moderation Workshops details, upcoming dates, and register here.