Public speaking : eye contact
I was recently talking to someone about public speaking and presentation skills. He’d been on a number of presentation and public speaking training courses and as we spoke he kept talking about eye contact and the importance of making eye contact with the audience when presenting. For me, eye contact is a concept; it’s not something you can do. There is no physical contact with the eyes. When people talk about eye contact very often they forget to understand what they mean and what the purpose is.
What do you mean by eye contact?
When I asked this presenter “What do you mean by eye contact?”, he thought for a moment and responded “well you have to make eye contact with the audience, you have to look at them”. I have seen some presenters looking out into the audience just for the sake of it, perhaps because they were told they should have eye contact. Some presenters seem to have that wide eyed look I have seen so many times when people are nervous about public speaking.
Next I asked him “What are you looking for?”, he responded “To build an emotional connection with the audience.”. Although I had heard people say this before, I could see by his response that he hadn’t thought it through, in fact he didn’t really know why he was doing it, and he didn’t know what he was looking for.
What are you looking for?
When I look out into an audience, I am looking to calibrate their response. I want to know how they are responding to me, and how they are responding to what I am saying. Whenever you are presenting, remember that the audience are responding to you, they are responding to what you are saying and how you are saying it.
When you are able to notice how your audience are responding, you can take control and start to adapt and adjust your presentation in order to achieve the desired outcome of your presentation. You can change the direction of your presentation based on how the audience are responding.
Public speaking and presenting is an art and science, there are certain techniques that when used in a skillful way can consistently produce the results you desire.
