Day 604. We all know that when you deliver a speech, you need to speak to the audience. Actually, your audience is generally here to listen to you. Interestingly enough, if you were to speak to a friend, you would probably naturally look at him or her while speaking. Then, why on earth when a lot of speakers deliver a public presentation they look at one or two people, or worse at the screen behind them?
To enhance your public speaking skills, here are two simple tricks to ensure you speak to your audience, all your audience:
- Pick one or two nice faces in the audience and spend some more time looking at them to get comfortable. Your aim is to look at each people in the audience at least once. Try it, it’s fun! However, as some faces will not inspire you for whatever reasons, go back frequently to the ones you pick as your anchors.
- If you need to read your slides, look at your computer screen, never at the screen behind you. The computer! Not the projected screen! Yes, this means the computer needs to be in front of you. Every presentation software can duplicate the screen. PowerPoint even has a presenter mode that displays the note and the next slide. Remember, the screen is behind, the audience in front. Speak in front!
Yes, I know, some of you will say, yes, I know this! But next time, check if you looked at the screen behind or if you did get eye contact with every person in the audience. I bet yes and no, respectively. This requires conscious feedback and decision to look at the audience and not at the screen behind. It may become a second nature, but only with training. Enjoy!
