Over the years a lot of bad advice has been given to help people get over their fear of public speaking. One particularly bad piece of advice that I’ve actually heard and, worse yet, seen practiced is to pick a spot above your audience and focus there as you speak. Ostensibly this advice is given to help people get over the discomfort of looking at people while you talk to them. It’s one of the worst things you can do. I’ve seen speakers who do this and I always want to look behind me to see what they’re looking at!

As hard as it might be for you, if you want to truly engage an audience you must make eye contact. While difficult emotionally this is something that may, at first, seem easy enough technically. Look at your audience. But it’s not that simple. If you’re talking to a small group of six or eight people you can reasonably make eye contact with each and every person in the group over the course of your presentation. However, if you’re speaking to a room of dozens or even hundreds of people it’s impossible to even see all the eyes in the room, much less make contact with them. In those cases you can ‘trick’ the audience into thinking that you’re making eye contact.

First remember that if you try to physically look toward every individual in a large audience all you’ll accomplish is having your eyes dart around the room in a way that makes you look shifty or deranged. The goal is to appear to be making eye contact but in a way that is normal, conversational and engaging. Start by thinking about how you make eye contact when talking to just one person. Do you stare at them the whole time? I hope not. A good conversationalist will lock eyes with a person for a few seconds then glance away. You glance over their shoulder or down then return to their eyes. If you’ve never paid attention to this before, try to be conscious of it next time you’re talking to someone. And be aware of their eye contact, too. It can be unsettling to talk with someone who either never looks you in the eye or never takes their eyes off of you.

Back to the audience. When talking to an audience you want to practice a version of what you do in one-on-one conversation. Make eye contact for a time, then glance away. Except when you glance away you’re really shifting to look at another section of the audience. When you look at an individual in the audience the people around that person will feel like you’re looking at them, too. So it’s okay to make direct eye contact with one person then shift to another person right near them. After a couple of minutes working that section of the crowd you’ll want to pick another section and make eye contact there. Moving your focus and moving your body on stage should be synchronized and I’ll say more about that in a future post.

What about situations where you’re under stage lights and you can’t make out the faces of your audience? How do you make eye contact when you can’t see any eyes? Those are good questions and the answer is that you look approximately where you know their eyes to be. Human anatomy doesn’t change because you can’t see it! Stage lights can be blinding, but you should still look at your audience not over them. Again pick spots and look about where people’s eyes are. They will think you’re looking at them even though you can’t really see a thing. Focus for a time that is not creepily long or shiftily short! Then move your focus to another section.

Practice this and you’ll become more comfortable. Making eye contact can also help you be more conversational in your presentations. Being conversational is almost always more engaging and personable. If you think about talking to people or a person it’s usually much less intimidating than thinking about talking to a faceless crowd. Eye contact makes the difference.