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If it weren't bad enough that the presenter gets all screwed up while trying to process way too much
visual information at once, Aerosol Eyes - the act of spraying
the audience with one’s gaze back and forth, never holding eye
contact for more than a second - creates its own set of problems
for the audience.
Here's where it starts to get serious. The problems
for the audience begin when a speaker gets up and starts talking
to a group like this:
"Hi! I'm glad that all of you were able to come here
today.
"What I’m here to tell you is this: that for the
next 45 minutes, I'm never going to have any contact with any
one of you as individuals at all. In fact, as I’m up
here spewing back and forth into the ether, I don't even see you
as individuals - I see you as just this big amorphous blob.
Okay? You are not individuals. You're never going to be
called to task. I'm never going to know whether you're
really paying attention or not.
"So this might be a good time to crank up Solitaire or
break out those Blackberries and just take a few steps back from
this whole program!"
And that's the message that you send - you literally grant
the audience permission to drop back a level or two and let them
know that instead of being participants in an interactive event,
they are merely observers to a performance by someone who
doesn't really know or care whether or not they're with the
program. In other words, you create and foster a real lack
of connection.
Average speakers have trained most groups to think of a
presentation as something where they are indeed observers to a
performance. And as such, most people come to a
presentation and from the very beginning they settle into a
removed state. Think about this. The last time you
gave a presentation, when you started to speak, did you find
some people who were actually looking away, taking notes,
working on their laptops, or anything other that devoting their
attention to you? How did that make you feel? Did it
help your confidence, or do you think it might have actually
added to your anxiety level, even if you weren't 'consciously'
aware of it?
Well, that doesn't happen to people who have The
Skills.
When you get up to speak and engage in behaviors that pump up
your anxiety, the audience never sees quite the level of anxiety
that you yourself might feel, but it still emanates to some
degree. And the problem here is that when you appear to be
nervous, one thing everybody in the audience knows is this:
they're glad they’re not up there. They know that
speaking in front of a group is something that they fear more
than death or taxes.
So although they don't necessarily sympathize with you,
they do empathize with you. They know what you as a
speaker are feeling. If you're feeling confident and
exuding that, and you look comfortable, then that's how they
feel.
On the other hand, if you feel uncomfortable, you set off all
kinds of other signals, because they relate to what it must be
like up there, and they're thinking, boy, why are you so
nervous? "Well, maybe he doesn't know what he's
going to say. I know I hate it when I have to get up
there!"
Contagious
Anxiety
And so your anxiety becomes contagious. Your anxiety
makes them uncomfortable.
The problem is, in order to impart any new information to
people, to a group, you first have to make them comfortable.
That's why companies that can afford it send their people off to
resorts or retreats to conduct their training. They go to
places that are separated from the anxieties and hassles of the
real world, where their every creature comfort is looked after
and where they can be as comfortable as possible.
Nobody listens to anything unless and until all her basic
needs are taken care of. You know this to be true.
Sitting in the audience, if you're cold, you're thinking about
how to get warm. If you're too warm, you're thinking about
how to get cool. If the program's been going on too long
and you're hungry or you're thirsty, you're thinking about that.
If your buttocks are sore you're thinking about when you'll get
to stand up. If your bladder's full, that's your Number
One priority. Number One priority is when is this going to
be over, so I can hit the restroom? Correct? You've
been there.
Anything you do to make an audience feel uncomfortable gets them
thinking about something other than your program.
And if you want to achieve true knowledge transfer, which is
what a presentation is supposed to be all about, then you, the
speaker, and every individual in the audience, have to be on the
same page, on the same wavelength, every step of the way. You
can't give them any reason to be thinking of things other than
your message.
Truth
be told
Another problem: in Western cultures, we tend to associate
eye contact with veracity. If we want to know if
somebody's telling the truth, we ask them to look us in the
eye. We expect people to look us in the eye when they answer a
direct question. We associate eye contact with telling the
truth. With the possible exception of presidents of the
United States
, it's very difficult for humans to just look someone in
the eye – and lie. We don't do it very well.
We associate direct eye contact with telling the truth, and
looking away, or not maintaining eye contact, or even eye
avoidance, with not telling the truth.
So when you get up in front of a group and never, through your
entire presentation, ever really have direct eye contact with
any individual for more than a second or so, you're sending a
message. You’re
sending a message, both consciously and subconsciously, that
there's some reason you can't look them in the eye when you
speak to them. It's a very bad message to send. And
it's especially bad if the purpose of your presentation is to
convince people to trust you!
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