Frank Sesno

Ask for Success: How Questions Can Inspire Confidence, Mission, and Creativity at Your Organization

In this talk, author and master interviewer Frank Sesno explains how you can use something you probably take for granted – the questions you ask – to make your company more innovative, creative, and successful. A single, simple question can be disruptive if you know what you’re after, understand how you listen, and ask more. Sesno, a former Washington Bureau Chief at CNN and now Director of The George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, is author of Ask More: The Power of Questions to Open Doors, Uncover Solutions and Spark Change.

How can you use questions to spark creativity and increase your business? How do effective leaders learn, engage members of their teams, and inspire confidence through listening? How do questions convey trust and create empathy? This talk by someone who has asked and studied questions will provide clear examples and practical ideas to foster a more open, collaborative, and high-impact workplace.

Moderated Panels and Leadership Discussions

Few people are as accomplished or experienced at the art of moderating panels and leadership discussions as Frank Sesno, who combines broad expertise, genuine curiosity, warmth, and humor as he draws out guests and panelists. As an interviewer, anchor, talk show host, and public event moderator, he has engaged some of the world’s leading personalities on topics ranging from business to international affairs, politics to medical breakthroughs, bio-terrorism to globalization. Sesno has conducted one-on-one public conversations with such diverse personalities as Condoleezza Rice, Jack Welch, Madeleine Albright and Yasser Arafat. He has interviewed five American presidents: George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Jimmy Carter. He has conducted high-profile panels, including a sold-out event with five former secretaries of state. And he has interviewed CEOs from Fortune 500 companies, including Bill Gates and Carlos Slim, bringing out their best and most interesting facets and creating a memorable, informative experience for the audience.

The Media and the Message

Social media. Fake news. The fall of legacy media. The rise of conspiracy media. The media landscape has never been more scrambled. Reaching the public is at once infinitely easier and agonizingly harder. Where is all this taking us? What happened to facts? How much “news” is actually in the news these days? Can the media report in ways that we will find credible? Can they “make” people listen?

Frank Sesno has been a correspondent, anchor, news executive, and academic. This talk deconstructs the media, examining what journalists have become and where they’re going. Sesno asks, are we better off with the media we have or are we fighting a losing battle? How can we be an informed public when there’s so much out there that misinforms? This talk will surprise, shock, and anger you, but will ultimately give you hope that we’ll survive and adapt to the information tsunami.

Virtual Moderator

At a time when events, panels, and conversations have moved to a virtual format, having a skilled and experienced moderator who understands the special challenges and opportunities of online conversations is essential. Frank Sesno brings his unique curiosity, caring, and deft interviewing skills to this new world of convening. As an experienced moderator and facilitator, Frank connects audiences and discussants with knowledge and a keen sense of timing and respectful engagement in order to optimize interest, information, and participation. Sesno honed the skills of remote interviewing during his years at CNN as an anchor and talk show host. He will work with you and your organization across various platforms and technologies to maximize the effectiveness of virtual meetings, events, brainstorming sessions or community-building. Frank brings offers his subject matter expertise as well as his passion for engaging people to make this new virtual world as engaging as possible.  

There is art to this. Leading a meeting, event, conversation online is not like doing it in person. It's a significantly different experience. Virtual conversations are deprived of the body language, eye contact, and in-person dynamic one has when sitting next to someone on stage or in a room. The group dynamic is entirely different. Participation is more challenging. Sesno knows how to structure a discussion, engage speakers and audience more deliberately, and manage the conversation so a speaker is invested and makes the most of the technology and format.