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Mike
Carruthers:
Just
about everybody hates public speaking; one reason is it feels
awkward. Like who are you supposed to look at?
Jeanette Henderson:
We feel if we look at one person, we're ignoring everybody
else. So we tend to just talk to the room instead of talking to
individuals.
Jeanette Henderson,
author of the book There's
no Such Thing as Public Speaking, says eye contact is critical
to a good talk and good speakers have a secret.
What you do is
you select a number of people in the room. Usually we say three,
one directly in front of you, one off to your right, one off
to your left. And then you just concentrate on looking at those
three people. And the key is you stick with a person for a complete
thought, not just half a sentence here and half a sentence to
somebody else. You want to leave one complete thought bite.
And doing that
has a very interesting effect on the rest of the audience.
Because we are
so inclined from our own ego, if we're in the audience and we're
anywhere near that person that you're actually looking at, we're
inclined to believe, "Oh, they're looking at me."
If you have to
read some or all of your speech, you can end up sounding amazingly
dull.
Like for example
when they're reading, they fall into that reading cadence we
all learn when we're six years old: "I pledge allegiance
to the flag of the United States of America." Or when you're
doing the Lord's Prayer or whatever, it's always the same reading
cadence and that destroys any image of naturalness. But it's
very easy to overcome that, once you're aware of it.
At somethingyoushouldknow.net
I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.
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