Focus groups are a wonderful way to connect people with jurors and to help them get comfortable with talking to strangers. Sometimes, as trial lawyers, we fumble around with moderating, whether a person just won’t keep talking or you’re having a hard time hitting all questions within managed time.
Focus group moderating is probably one of the most challenging places for most people because we know what we want to present. We can put all that together. But then sometimes, asking questions and facilitating the discussion can be a little bit challenging.
Today’s episode is a quick Focus Group Moderating 101. This is actually a replay of our Facebook Live and LinkedIn video. I’m discussing some things we should be thinking about when moderating focus groups and how we plan for success when it comes to moderating. Otherwise, it can be so easy to get sucked in and pulled down the rabbit trail and get lost – and sometimes, we can have a hard time coming back.
In this episode, you will hear:
- What “moderating” means
- Getting feedback the quickest way possible
- Obstacles to being a good moderator
- How to start the group off on the best foot possible
- Using helpful backstops
- Planning for follow-up discussion
- The importance of writing out questions
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Supporting Resources:
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Episode Transcript
Hi, Elizabeth here. I just wanted to pop in and do a real quick introduction before we start playing this episode because it is coming from a live Facebook, LinkedIn video that I did here recently.
Ready? And I wanted to go ahead and share it with the podcast just in case you weren’t able [00:01:00] to watch it or maybe you’re not on my social media channels, which is totally fine. I’ll put a link in the show notes. But basically what I’ve been doing is I always want to connect people with jurors. I believe focus groups are a wonderful way to do that and get really comfortable with talking to strangers and sometimes we fumble around with moderating and most of the questions that I help lawyers with are about moderating.
How do I handle that person who just won’t stop talking or how can I make sure I hit all these questions in the time that I have? How do I manage time? So I put together a very short focus group moderating 101. With some ideas, some tips and ways that you can use and have a more productive focus group.
So thanks for joining again. And here is our next episode. We are live. If you are joining us, say hello in the chat or put your [00:02:00] name in the chat so that I know that you are here. I appreciate everybody joining live. If you’re watching this on the replay, I would still love for you to put your name or say hello, uh, in the comments because it’s always helpful for me to know like if you enjoyed it or if you have questions.
So today we are going to work through focus group moderating. This is probably one of the most challenging places for most people because we know what we want to present. We can put all that together, but then sometimes the challenge of asking questions and facilitating discussion can be a little bit challenging, right?
Because it’s a group, we don’t know how talkative they’re going to be. We don’t know they’re going to actually engage. So that can always be a little bit fearful. But I want to talk a little bit about what are all the different things we should be thinking about when we’re moderating and how to kind of manage that because it can be a lot of different things.
How can we plan for success when it comes to moderating? Because if we [00:03:00] have a challenge in moderating, we’re probably not going to get as much feedback. We probably can get sucked in and pulled down a rabbit trail and get lost sometimes and it has a hard time coming back. So what am I talking about first is we’re just going to cover the basics.
Like what, what is moderating and whether you are virtual or whether you are in person, the moderator is the person who basically guides, they can deliver the material. They don’t have to, but they can be the person that delivers the material presentations. And then their job is to. Ask questions, facilitate discussion, bring the group back.
Sometimes we get lost on a side trail or based on a comment. So, hey, if you are just joining us, yeah, thanks for the like, just put your name in the comments and say hello so that I know that you’re here. I know we’re just getting started. You haven’t missed anything yet. We’re just going to cover the basics of what moderating can be for a focus group, whether you’re virtual or in person.
But the moderators basically, you know, they’ve gotten a set of [00:04:00] questions or they want to have a discussion on certain points, you know, what I would call your focus group goals. If you’re curious, like what are focus group goals? Just scroll back in the feed. We talked about planning for focus groups a couple months earlier and how to set up and plan for your goals.
Hi, Kim. Thanks so much for joining us. I appreciate that. Thanks for saying hello. So our roles of our moderator, right? So we’re going to. The asking questions, try to hit our focus group goals. We’re going to foster discussion. And that means obviously follow up on points, but also sometimes we have to move the group back right to getting on track.
And one of the big things I think that moderators need to do is manage the time. And that can be sometimes difficult. We need to move the group along. How do you do that in a very gentle way while you still have to manage your time? And like I said, the goal of a moderator is to To remain neutral and get that feedback.
That is also one thing we always have to balance. Right. [00:05:00] Is our job as a moderator is just to get that feedback. And so how do we navigate this? But let’s also talk about what can be barriers sometimes. What can be our obstacles to being a good moderator? And a lot of times that can be participant. Okay.
And most of the time people are not intentionally trying to slow the group down or to get them sidetracked. But it happens pretty much all the time. every group you’re going to have. And so the moderator’s group job, right, is to, let’s go to somebody else. Let’s move this along. And sometimes participants do intentionally try to take over the focus group.
And they want to dominate the conversation. And your job again is to remind, let’s everybody needs to have their own feedback. Sometimes technology can get in your way and that’s whether you’re virtual or in person. I’ve had that, that issue where I just can’t get my PowerPoint going, or I just can’t get, you know, the [00:06:00] technology, whether it’s virtual and my zoom goes out.
That can definitely complicate things. And so what I always like to do is start the group off on the best foot possible. So the one, number one thing that I do as a moderator is. It’s set out expectations from the very jump. And that means I just tell them what we’re going to do today, you know, what they can expect and typically what people can expect in most of my in person or virtual focus groups is they’re going to see a series of presentations and then they’re going to have, they’re going to be asked questions and then we’ll have discussion.
And I always tell them, you know, you can expect sometimes the, the presentation is 15 minutes, sometimes it’s 20 minutes. That way though. They know not to interrupt. And sometimes I just say that, Hey, this is kind of what you’re going to be doing is we’re going to listen. And then we’re going to discuss and you’re all going to take notes.
And I always remind them, I don’t need your notes. You, those [00:07:00] are for you. A hundred percent. I also tell them we’re going to have breaks. And I tell them that everyone’s opinion is important. So we’re going to ask everyone to share. Now, what am I doing? I’m just setting the expectation of what, They know it’s going to happen when they to talk, when to ask questions that is going to help so much because when you get in, to moderating and you get to those discussion points and sometimes you go way off track and say, Hey, you gotta come back.
Remember, or we have somebody who’s dominating and say, Hey, remember today is about gathering everybody’s thoughts and opinions. So I’m going to really appreciate, I’m going to jump now to Jim. Jim, what’s your feedback? Right. So that again, just gives you that backstop. Remember you set the rules out on the front.
I always think that that is so helpful because it gives you that backstop. If you need to step in and say, Hey, we got to get everybody’s opinion. And the only thing that I tell them too, is when we’re going to stop. This is our break. And this is where we’re going to stop. We’re not going to go over [00:08:00] that way.
They know I’m going to a hundred percent respect their time. And we’re going to finish on time. That also is another really great tool to use because time is of the essence and you have to ask certain questions. You’ve got to get this feedback. And so I always enjoy using that as a backstop. Like, Oh gosh, I really wish we could discuss this a little further, but I now have a new question for you, right?
But now you’ve moved on and everybody’s like, okay, she’s just moving the group along. We were limited on time. Those are some really helpful things that you just plant that seed in the front and then come back to it later. And those are really helpful backstops when you’re coming to dealing with complicating factors like long winded participants, or if you’re running out of time on technology or just generally in the group.
And that’s kind of one of the things that I always. try to build into is I always plan to have a great discussion. Like I never, there’s, we can always think of more questions. We’re really good. Lawyers are great about [00:09:00] thinking questions. What I always like to do though, is just plan for really broad questions.
And then Follow up. Like that’s the beauty of sometimes the easy simplicity part of being a moderator is just ask a really broad question to get discussion going and then just follow up right on someone. Hey, so and so said this Judy. Did you have that thought or you know what? What’s your take on that?
Boom. I’m just being real neutral. We’re just having discussion right and just flowing along. I think that’s sometimes one of the snags to, to moderating is we can really plan to have a whole lot of questions, but not really plan for that follow up that discussion that we really want to foster. And so that’s why I say I write out when planning for a group and what I’m going to be doing for moderating is I always want to think about.
What do I need to grab from them before our discussion? And so if you’ve done focus groups with me or you’ve seen some before, either whether we’re in person or [00:10:00] virtual, we always have them do a written question first. So if we’re virtual, we’re going to be putting that in the chat. You can also use the poll if you’d like.
I particularly don’t lean too heavily on the polls because I really like the flexibility of changing up the questions at the end and just typing those in. the chat and then people being able to put their chat, put their response in the chat. Obviously from a person, they’re just writing it down, but I always try to think about what are something I want to lock in before discussion.
So if I’m a lock in something, then I’m going to use the, using the chat that takes away time, right? So we’re always trying to manage that time that we’ve got with people to make sure we get all the feedback. And then once we lock in our written votes, whether it’s in chat or on a piece of paper, then we have our discussion and we’ve got a jumping off point.
We have our, we have the responses right here. We can just go around the room and ask about those and then move into other topics. And people expect that, right? Because we said like, we’re going to tackle several different things right [00:11:00] now. We need to move to this other topic and you may be having a great.
Discussion, but you still have to move on because you got to hit all the goals with the time that you got. So again, that’s why using our chat is helpful together. Hey, if you have some good feedback, write your thoughts in the chat really fast so that we can move on. I think sometimes where we can get held up and kind of complicate things is by commenting as a moderator on responses that people give.
People know that that’s what they’re there for to answer your questions and give their opinions and feedback. You don’t have to comment on it, right? And this is sometimes where I think we get a little bit sideways between moderating and jury selection because we always want to thank people in jury selection, move on.
We don’t have a lot of time for that in focus groups. I generally try to just do that once. And I do it when they first join. So I always do a check in with people when they come into the zoom or when they come [00:12:00] in, in person. Hey, thank you so much for being here. You know, because I do, I really do appreciate them showing up.
Cool. That’s generally going to, I don’t have to thank them after every comment or even saying this is good, or I don’t really. Think that way, but that’s a good point, right? We have this kind of pull to like comments. And I say, just resist commenting. If any, if you’ve got, if you just have that resistance, right.
Just say, okay, which is also a good mark for someone to meaning like you’re ready for them to be finished. Like, okay, no, this is a really bad habit for depositions. Like if you’ve ever read probably any of my transcripts and you thought, gosh, she says, okay, after everything, and that’s. It’s because it’s a really hard habit for me because I moderate a lot.
And so it’s one of those cues that I try to use with people to say, okay, okay, now you go Judy. Right. Moving on. Having that kind of cue to like, thank you for that. Let’s go to [00:13:00] somebody else. Another one of those little tools, but I would just say biggest caution is commenting on responses. And I always just say, don’t do it because if you say thank you to one, you got to say, thank you to all.
Now you’re just, there’s a lot of time you’re wasting on that versus just turning and getting to somebody else. And people get that. And one of the biggest Feedback that I have gotten, people who have participated, is that they really appreciate that I took the time to get everyone’s feedback. And I have a couple other feedback too from participants that I want to share with you.
As well, but that was the biggest one was that people really appreciated that. I took the time to make sure everybody got a chance to give their feedback because they’re in the focus group. They know that’s what they’re going to be doing, but if you allow somebody else to dominate or you skip over people, Everybody knows that’s kind of like this group dynamic that you have to also manage as well, but it’s easy to do as long as you remember.
I’ve [00:14:00] got to ask every person and it’s okay to lean on the folks group and say, you know what? Who have I not asked yet? And they’ll tell you, I haven’t. Okay, great. Didn’t mean to miss you. Let’s go. So. Don’t comment. It’s really, really hard not to, but just resist the comment and make sure you’re just gathering everybody.
That’s the more important thing. I talked about writing out the questions, right? So that we can lock in people’s point of view before discussion. Inevitably, when you get a discussion, people want to change their minds, which is totally okay, but you just don’t want to get stuck in that place where you don’t lock in their feedback and you automatically start discussion.
And what you start to hear is, Oh yeah, I agree with what she said. Oh yeah, and the next person says, Oh yeah, no, I, they said it, I agree with them. And you’re a little bit frustrated because you’re thinking, I want your opinion and you can try again and say it again. Well, I would like to get your feedback on it.
Right. [00:15:00] Ship, sail, they’re probably going to do it. So that’s just a little tip as far as get locked in somewhere in writing and then have that discussion. And then it’s okay to say like, Oh, you know, tell me a little about that. You changed your mind. What was so strong about that? So again, we’re following up instead of having new, I always suggest as a moderator on zoom or even in person, pick the order that you’re going to basically go through people that way, because you’re going to start to see like, Oh, that person’s a little bit of a talker.
That person is really short, that person, you know, and you can start to make sure you’re going through everybody, but you can do it in a way that kind of evens out time as well. And that again, it’s just helping with our time management. Also one of the things with moderating is especially we’re now that we’re doing a lot of virtual is, and even in person, like hands up, like who, you know, who also agrees with that?
Just say it out loud. And the reason that we do that is because we’re recording, [00:16:00] right? So if we raise your hand, you’d have to go back and watch the video. Just say it out loud. It’s the way if you’re reading the transcript, you can say, Oh, okay. So let me just say who’s got their hands up. And so I just verbally say it out loud.
So it’s on the recording. And that’s again. Okay. So we’re. People are changing their minds or you’re just recording something very quickly because that’s a good way to gather up feedback very quickly. Hey, raise your hand or I’m going to put something in the chat really quickly so that we can gather your feedback up before we move on.
And that’s kind of one of those, like, how do we save time? Like, how do I get feedback, save time and keep moving? Just use the chat or use that very simple, who else heard that? And also kind of leans that way. And so that can lead me to the last thing we’ll talk about as a moderator that can disrupt.
discussion. And that is when you have somebody who gives an opinion and you’re very curious. This is the opinion you came to hear and this is what you thought. Now you want to, who else agrees with that? [00:17:00] And so you may say like, who else? agrees with that. Okay. But you also love to ask like who disagrees?
Well, okay. Either those positions agreeing or disagreeing is very strong for people and they’re in a group of strangers and there’s probably something that they don’t agree with. So what I always try to encourage people is just asking who’s leaning that way. We do this in jury selection. Who’s leaning that way?
We can say, Oh, okay, George, you’re, you’re going to lean that way. Tell me about that. I’m being super neutral, right? I’m not trying to pit these people against each other, uh, because people really don’t like to do that. Like they don’t, people are really non confrontational. So I always say, if you want to see who is agreeing with the position or point of view, then just say, Hey, who’s leaning that way?
Just a little. If maybe who’s leaning the opposite way, just a little, right? Again, we just don’t want to [00:18:00] pit people against each other because that we can really cycle discussion and we really want to have open discussion. All right. So we’ve talked about a ton of stuff, uh, about moderating and again, just kind of covered our basics.
What is a moderator, right? That person who is managing the discussion, asking questions and keeping track of time. What can complicate our job participants, right? Well, too chatty, maybe not enough. Not chatty enough. Um, running out of time can definitely complicate our job. Technology can complicate our job.
Just stay patient. All I can say with that is sometimes it happens to everybody. It’s happening multiple times. And I’m always super impressed by my participants just hanging out and waiting for me, right? So they know. What’s the best way to navigate moderating? And that would be right out of the gate, starting with a very neutral instructions.
what they can expect and don’t be afraid [00:19:00] to reiterate that and tell them again at the beginning of each presentation or after a break. So that they know when it’s time to have a discussion and when it’s time to ask questions and when it’s just time to listen. And then also writing out questions, trying to just look at your discussion points and figure out what needs to be written down either in the chat or on paper.
What needs to be just Discussion. What can you follow up on? How much time do I have? How many questions do I need to put in there to make sure that we are gathering all of our focus group feedback that we need for the time. A couple other side notes about moderating that can also be uncomfortable and that would be having to kick people off.
And that happens. And it’s okay, because. One, you’ve got to also think about the group. And if the group is uncomfortable, they will tell you they are uncomfortable. They will either send you a chat or they will give you visual cues that tell you that they are very uncomfortable. And I’ve had to do it where [00:20:00] people are at work and I can tell if they’re at work and I just send them a very nice chat privately and just say, Hey, it looks like you’re at work.
You know, we really ask for your full attention. Can we just get you rescheduled for a different focus group? And that’s all it is. It’s not that you’re saying, Hey, get out of here. Just reschedule them. It’s always the nicest way. People have technology issues. I always offer let’s, let’s get you rescheduled.
I know that you’re frustrated. We’re not frustrated. We just know it’s, it’s okay. We’ll get you rescheduled for another one. Most of everybody’s a hundred percent okay with that. You may have more questions, please post whatever questions that you may have in the chat and have, I will get back to them either today or in the future.
If you have any questions, otherwise, you know, we will cover a new topic next week. I will tell you one, a very funny story that happened to me recently. I use, I send out emails occasionally to folks that, you know, use with focus groups, and I also keep track of my participants, uh, it’s a kind of a master [00:21:00] list.
And I actually managed to send a, an email to my entire list of participants, totally my mistake, but it was a very short email and it did ask for feedback. And I got so many great comments, feedback about moderating because that’s what the post was about, or that’s what my email was about. Most of my comments were about how I ran the focus group.
I treat everybody respectfully, professionally that I focused on getting feedback from every single person. And then people even gave me tips about how to kick people out. So it was really awesome, but I will post some of those on the Facebook and the LinkedIn. So you can see what people actually say about being in the focus group and about moderating.
So thank you so much for joining us. It’s going to be a little bit longer. So again, thank you and have a good [00:22:00] one.
