How did you start your moderator journey?
I attended a number of events held by the Ortus Club, and a member of the team reached out and asked if I’d be interested in being a moderator. I must have done something which made them think, “He’s someone who’ll be good to lead some of our discussions,” based on how I like to express and bring people into the discussion.
How did you feel your first time moderating? Was this your first time moderating when we had invited you?
It was my first time moderating in a corporate setting. I have run workshops and moderated in different settings, though. Outside of work and the corporate world, I have worked with people on getting them to bring out their thoughts, feelings, and interests in a past life.
That sounds interesting. Do you mind sharing a little more about it?
Yes, I used to volunteer at a life coaching centre called Landmark Education, where we help people understand more about themselves. was for It revolves around the philosophy that the way we react and deal with situations today is a direct result of our past experiences. We tend to automatically react to things that happen to us.
It’s not really that they want to change the way that you react in situations; It’s more that they want you to be aware of why you react in certain ways and give you the power to make a choice of how you want to deal with it.
As opposed to it being an automatic reaction. I’ve also done a fair bit of work with Tony Robbins over the years. Through those experiences, I’ve been involved in working with people or coaching. This has helped me in getting to know people on a more personal level and understand what’s important to them. Essentially what ‘makes them tick.’
How did you get into life coaching? It seems like everything has kind of fed into the moment that has led you to become one of our moderators. What happened before life coaching?
I was quite young when I did this, probably about 18 or 19. It was something that I did on the side while I was at university. It was a case of me just trying to understand my place in the world. At that age, there are a lot of discoveries. They say you have a half-life crisis, and I think that started coming earlier and earlier. It was hitting like 18, 19 and thinking “What am I doing? What do I want with life? What’s really important to me?”
So, at the time, someone recommended it to me. I really enjoyed it. As I do with moderating, I felt like I was giving back and volunteering, but I was getting a lot out of it. In seeing things through other people’s eyes and helping them find their passions, I was discovering more about myself.
The next question is, what do you find most exciting about moderating?
They’re really an opportunity for me to learn more about what’s going on in the market, what the different offerings are, and more about our peers in the market. It’s about talking to other people and finding out the different issues they’re dealing with and the different approaches that they’re taking.
I attended a session the other day where we talked about using external data sources to reduce the amount of manual entry in a process. The session went a little off focus, and we started discussing how we can validate external data sources.
How do you know they’re true? It was interesting. It was suggested, “Well, you should look into 2-3 data sources,” and be prepared to see what the outlier is. At the end of the day, these events are a chance for me to network and get to know what is happening in other organisations, be it financial institutions and even organisations in different industries.
How do you typically prepare to moderate an Ortus event?
There are a few different things I look at. One is primarily the host of the event. Understanding what the driver of them wanting to host, because they’re putting their hard-earned money down, and finding out what they want to come out with at the end. Then, on the other side, it’s all the attendees. Find out a little bit about them, and try to understand what led them to come to the session.
Typically, you can’t do too much background research on the different attendees, but there is normally a survey that helps you understand the primary drivers for their attendance and see how you can bring the two together. In the sessions, I will typically have the host do their introduction, and then I’ll speak about, “Okay, what are we looking to do today?” and give a bit of a kick-start on saying to everyone, “Look, this is what it seems like the spectrum of people is, and why are they here?”
And then I’ll start to go, “Okay, well, what did I think with some of the more interesting responses we may have gotten?” where people have taken the time to write comments in addition to just giving a multiple-choice response. I like to ensure that everyone’s voice is heard.
What differences do you see between participants?
You’ll find there are some people who talk a lot more and try to bring the others in. And I always like to throw a little bit of a controversial question/statement. Well, not very controversial, but something that I like to call my little ‘grenades’ to get people talking. It just gets a reaction out of people and shifts people out of their comfort zones. I always like to have an icebreaker as a part of the introduction.
It’s a great way to loosen people up and get them talking. I used to ask people to describe the coolest thing they have done with ChatGPT. Otherwise, you get the typical “I work at this organisation, and this is what I do.” This just helps people create that personal connection in their introduction.
Someone can choose how personal they want to get with the extent to which one might use the AI. I think that’s great.
Yeah. Some people give you quite insightful responses. I still remember one where a lady asked ChatGPT, “How do I find a good man in Singapore?” A lot of people had things to say about that, but it was funny and memorable. It was something that I still remember today.
Well, it did break the ice. What tips and tricks would you recommend for those aspiring to become moderators?
I think you need to have a good icebreaker. I think you need to bring different people into the conversation; otherwise, you will keep getting the same voice. You don’t want a situation where only the loudest in the room is heard. You want to bring everyone into the conversation. I’m not suggesting that people who talk more don’t have as much to contribute. I think it’s the people who are a little quieter, when you bring them out of their shell, that’s often where you find the biggest pearls of wisdom.
At the end of the day, you really want to understand what it is that has people come there. There’s a reason that people took time out of their busy schedules to come. I think if you can understand a little bit of that, then you can make sure at the end of the session that each person is left with something that they’ve found valuable, and that’s really important because it will have people coming again and again.
You mentioned this earlier: the driver to attend. A part of your preparation is figuring out why the guests attend an event, because each individual has a different story. Where do you look for that information, and what are the hints?
I’m always looking for an attendance list. You can do a quick lookup on LinkedIn if they’re active. I’m not going to go and do a lot deeper and start Google searching people. Otherwise, there are surveys and things that people tend to answer before they come. I like to ask the organisers. Ask them what it is that you just had different people come. What do you think they want to get out of today? Also, I would like to find out from the host what they want to get out of the day. So, it only becomes a mashup across that.
You can’t pre-prep this session too much. Otherwise, it becomes almost a speech. You’ve got to have a few points you want to hit, but otherwise, you’ll see how the session flows. And whenever you think, “Okay, I’m going to go this way,” someone will bring something else up, and you go, “Okay, yep, that’s really interesting, tell us more.” There are times when you need to bring the conversation back, but a lot of the time, it’s actually in those conversations that go down a random path that you learn the most.
I agree. In what ways has moderating contributed to your growth as a leader in the field?
Moderating has helped me practice and bring back to the forefront the skills that I was using many, many years ago and haven’t used for a long time. I think it helps me to help people be heard in practice on helping people be heard in those sessions, and that’s what’s important even in the office when I’m trying to get things done because a lot of what I do is about bringing people together and getting them working towards the same goal.
