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In a departure from the format of our regular monthly
column, we would like to offer the opportunity for you to take a
more interactive approach to learning the basics of The Skills. Anyone can
try these exercises either in their personal or professional
encounters, or both, and better yet, no one need know that they
are participants in your learning!
Rather than simply tell you what you should be looking for
in these exercises, we think it would be more fun for all
involved if we held back a little and let you experience for
yourself the most important building block of The
Skills.
Modern presentation theory espouses a conversational
approach to presenting, because that’s the way to maximize
both comfort and trust between you and the audience.
The conversational approach, a modern refinement of the
humanist style first made popular in western cultures by
president John F. Kennedy, is quite a bit different from the
oratory style that most people associate with earlier great
speakers such as Winston Churchill.
The foundation of the conversational approach is proper
eye-contact, and the nature of that eye-contact is quite unlike
the way 99% of presenters practice.
In fact, once you know what to look for, you will
discover that what first differentiates those who have The
Skills from those who don't is the way they engage their
audiences with their eyes. Make
no mistake, proper eye-contact is only one component of The
Skills, but when you understand exactly how you must
look at your audience to be a great speaker, the other
components tend to fall into place.
When you nail down these (surprisingly straightforward) eye
contact techniques, you can deliver to a group of 500 without
ever feeling more anxiety than you would when discussing your
job to friends around a lunch table.
Most people find that hard to believe until they’ve
actually received training in The Skills, but when you get it, it’s rather powerful stuff!
These exercises sound simple enough, but they do require a
bit of vigilance on your part to have the desired effect.
You must practice them at every opportunity for a
week or so. At the
end of that time you will know what you need to know to move on
to the next level of acquiring The
Skills, but only if you make a conscious effort to do what
the exercises ask you to do every day.
Exercises:
1.
Observe others' eye contact. In every situation in
which you interact with others, watch their eyes. Observe
how long they maintain eye contact while they are speaking to
you. Watch how they maintain eye contact while speaking to
others. As often as you can, count the number of seconds they
maintain continuous eye contact before switching to a new target
and note this, preferably in a log of some sort.
2.
In situations where someone is speaking to a group, again
count the number of seconds the speaker maintains eye contact
with each individual. Determine what the average amount of
time is.
3.
Be conscious of your own eye contact. When speaking with
someone, do you stay focused on them? Do you look up,
away, or down while speaking? Or do you maintain eye
contact the entire time you are speaking with someone? How
often do you move away from eye contact and then return?
Do you look at other people for the same amount of time when
talking to one as when you are talking to many?
If you’ve vigilant in your observations,
you’ll probably be very surprised at the amount of time people
hold continuous eye-contact when speaking.
And yet it is this amount of time that sets the tone for
what makes average speakers average and great ones great.
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