Keep Your Eyes on Your Audience

As the speaker, you are expected to deliver information -not to put on a performance. The best way to keep from playing panther on the prowl is to look directly at the audience as one composite person-not as a collection of people and to speak directly to that audience.

The late Senator J. Hamilton Lewis of Illinois was a fastidious dresser, and during a political campaign his party requested that he address a meeting back of Chicago’s stockyards. “J- Ham” demurred, insisting that the crowd would view him with disdain and ridicule him, an attitude that could hurt rather than help the cause. However, after considerable pressure the Senator, who rated with the all-time greats as a personal press agent, relented and consented. As he told the story later:

They did what I expected them to do. Their disdain almost made me feel shame. It was written on their faces and it registered in their raucous greeting. Yet I carried on, determined to gain control of that crowd. I stared directly into their faces. Two burly pig-stickers immediately before me were noisier than the rest and I decided that I would bear down directly on them.

As I developed my subject, I saw their supercilious stares disappear and finally their lower jaws began to droop. As I came to the climax of my talk I received one of the greatest compliments of my oratorical career when one big bruiser whacked the other’s knee and said, “Ain’t he a S-O-B!” That incident dramatizes an important key to success: Keep your eyes in contact with your audience at all times. The effectiveness of many speakers fails because they do not look directly at their listeners. Many speakers who keep their eyes fixed on their listeners in ordinary conversation, gaze at the wall, stare at the ceiling or look out the window when talking to an audience.

Keep a close sense of communication for this not only keeps you close to your listeners but it also permits you to correct your range when people seem to strain forward or cup their ears to hear.

Tags: public speaking

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