Body Language in Speeches: Eye Contact

00:00 So how do you make eye contact with an audience when you're giving a presentation? The worst thing you can do, the very bottom of the barrel are speakers who don't ever look at the audience.

00:12 They're staring at their notes, they're turning their back and reading the PowerPoint slides, or they're just looking over people's heads and staring at the clock.

00:21 That's the very worst level of speaker.

00:24 Then there's the level of speaker where they're looking at people, but it's kind of like a windshield wiper.

00:30 They're going back and forth.

00:32 It may be fast, it may be slow, but they're never really looking at any one person. They're looking at the whole group the whole time. Or some people say it's like a water sprinkler when you're going back and forth.

00:47 That's what most people do, and it's not as bad as the person reading, but it's still impersonal.

00:54 When you're in the audience, you don't really feel that personal connection.

00:58 Because of that, it's easier to tune out, zone out, and you can be on the second row.

01:03 That person's looking in your area, but you still feel like you can kind of check your email because they don't really see you.

01:09 That's not what the best speakers do.

01:12 The very best speakers do something different with their eyes.

01:17 They look at one person, not for a minute or 2 minutes.

01:21 It's not a stare down contest, but they look at one person for a full thought, a couple of sentences. They finish that second sentence, then they go to another person and they have a thought, a couple of sentences, and then they go to another person. Now, if you're speaking for 20 minutes to 50 people, you can give absolutely every single person in that room eye contact several times.

01:47 So everyone can feel like you're listening to them, you're respecting to them, you care about them. So it creates a much stronger bond with your audience, gives them the sense that you care about them.

01:59 Because of that, they're going to care more about you.

02:02 They're going to listen to you more intently.

02:06 Now, this isn't an easy thing to do if you're nervous, but it's not fundamentally a hard thing to do.

02:11 It's not like learning how to dunk a basketball or becoming a world class gymnast. It's not a hard skill like that, but it's not something you're going to be able to do the first time.

02:22 Just like that, you're going to have to think about it and practice the eye contact.

02:26 But it can make a huge, huge difference on the impact you will have with your audience.

02:33 So it's well worth it.