Eye Contact Makes Your Presentation Stronger

Sometimes when people ask me for tips  to make a more powerful presentation, I am almost embarrassed to tell them that making better eye contact with the audience is the first step.  I’m embarrassed because the answer is so easy and, in my mind, so obvious. Yet, many speakers just don’t connect with their audience primarily because of lack of eye contact.

 

The reasons eye contact is so important are many.  It is human nature for people to be more inclined to believe what you are saying if you look them in the eye when you say it.  Making strong eye contact keeps your audience more attuned to you, as well.  When you look someone in the eye, they tend to look back.  So, if someone in the room is starting to wander from your remarks, try catching their eye. You’ll find it  pulls them back into the fold.

 

A good rule for eye contact if you are in a small setting of up to 20 people is to move your glance around the room as you speak, connecting with different sets of eyes for about a half of a sentence. Then move to the next person. Be careful not to literally go down the row looking into a person’s eyes, then the person next to them and next to them. Instead work the whole room. Look at someone up front for a half sentence, then back then to the right then to the left.  Stay alert  for anyone who is not paying attention and work to connect eyes. That will pull them  back into the presentation.

 

While it seems easy to achieve this technique while making a presentation, it is harder than it looks.  I’m reminded of attorney who was in a workshop with me.  He said that as he listened to my lecture on eye contact he thought how silly it was that I was spending time talking about something so obvious.  But then, he stood up and gave a presentation himself, which was videotaped, and said he was appalled at how poorly he actually looked directly at people in the audience. He checked the tiles on the ceiling, he looked at the carpeting on the floor but did a poor job connecting with real people sitting in front of him.

 

Follow these guidelines when making a presentation. Don’t speak unless someone’s eyes  are connected to yours.  If you need to look at notes or for any other reason get distracted, stop talking, pause, read your notes, but then reconnect with the audience members.  If you are using PowerPoint, never turn your back and read from the slides.  Look at the audience.  If you do need to see where you are in PowerPoint, stop talking, turn briefly then return to the audience.

 

Having strong eye contact is like holding someone by the lapels as you tell them your story. When you lose that eye contact link, you’ve lost hold on the audience.

 

Don’t do that.