TJ Walker explains how to use eye contact to manage speech anxiety and improve audience engagement. He argues that avoiding notes/screens and the common ‘windshield-wiper’ scanning reduces perceived rudeness and increases anxiety; instead, speakers should look at one person at a time for the length of a thought (a couple sentences) and then move randomly around the audience, giving roughly equal attention. He notes cultural and social caveats and warns against staring at one friendly face or over-focusing on VIPs.
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February 17, 2024.
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How can you effectively use eye contact to manage your speech anxiety? Nothing's worse than being in the audience, seeing a speaker, and they're not looking at you, they're reading their notes, or they've turned their back and they're looking at a PowerPoint slide because you feel ignored. And if you're the speaker, you may think, well, I don't want to look at people. I'll get nervous. The problem is, you are now perceived as nervous and rude to the audience. And if you think about it, that's what actually should make you have more anxiety is this fear of, I look scared in front of people. So you don't want to ignore the audience. Now, what a lot of people do is they're looking at the audience, but they're scanning the whole audience. They're never really making eye contact. They're looking at a group of 20 or 30 people at once, and that can make you anxious. We are biologically programmed prehistorically to fear crowds. Because if you're out in the savannah in Africa and you're completely exposed and every lion and saber tooth tiger and every predator can see you from every direction, you're exposed, they could come and eat you. So that's why we start feeling fear. That's why the adrenaline gets in us. That's why we start sweating. Sweat's coming out of our palms and our feet because our body's telling us, run, get away. Things are dangerous. So that's the problem with looking at entire groups. So what do you do? The famous talk show host and comedian Jay Leno said when he started, he was so nervous, he would just look over people's heads. Not really a good idea. Because if people feel that you're not looking at them and that gives them permission to ignore you and look at their cell phone, that can create a negative feedback loop where you're saying to yourself, I'm not looking at them, but they're not looking at me. We're all ignoring each other. What am I doing up here? That is going to create more anxiety for you. The thing that's going to make you less anxious, the thing that's going to give you the most confidence is that you have a strong feeling of, I'm nailing this. This is going really well. This audience is paying attention to me. They're understanding, they're hanging on every word. They're liking this. That is going to make you completely full of confidence, legitimate confidence. Not some sort of. Imagine everyone giving you a standing ovation and thinking you're beautiful or Some sort of imagine your audience in the underwear. Bad advice. You want to actually connect with your audience and be good. And the eye contact is a way to do it. Now, I already mentioned the worst thing to do is stare at your notes, stare at your PowerPoint, stare over people's heads. The next worst thing you can do is this windshield wiper thing where you're kind of looking at 20, 30 people at once, and you're quickly going through the whole audience. Or think of it like a water sprinkler. You're quickly trying to cover a lot of ground. Don't do that. The most effective way to use eye contact to reduce your anxiety is to look at one person at a time for a thought. Now, when I say a thought, what I mean is just a couple of sentences, one idea, and then go to another person, have a private one on one conversation with that person. Now, this is going to do several things. It's going to relax you. It's going to make you less anxious because you've limited your field of vision. You're no longer looking at 10 or 15 or 20 or 50 or 100 or a thousand people at once. So your brain is telling you, hey, this is easy. I'm just talking to one person. Here's the other thing it does, and it's extraordinarily powerful. Truly great speakers are masters of this. When you look at one person and you really lock eyes just for two sentences, four or five sentences, then they're gonna feel like, wow, this speaker really looked at me. I better pay attention. I better put my cell phone away and actually listen. It puts just a little bit of tension in the lap of the audience member. Now, I don't want to make anyone uncomfortable, but I do want them to pay attention. We've all been at conferences or lectures where you go in and the speaker is just lecturing and looking at notes and looking at a screen. You feel like you could stand on the top of your desk or your chair, light your hair on fire, they'd never notice. They're not paying attention. And because of that, you also feel like you can daydream, you can multitask and send texts to your friends and family and check sports scores and go on social media. I don't want my audience to feel that relaxed. That is the power of the eye contact. When you're looking at them and they see you looking at them and you see that they see you're looking at them, it puts everyone on notice. Now, here's the thing. What gets people nervous Is, oh, I don't want to seem rude. I don't want to seem like I'm staring at someone. You're not. I'm not suggesting you're speaking to 50 people and you stare at one person on the front row for your 20 minute speech. That would be weird. That would weird out the person. That would make everyone else think you're weird and they would tune out because they feel excluded. What you want to do is give more or less equal attention to everyone in the audience. So if you're speaking to 20 people for 10 minutes and you're locking eyes for just four seconds, five seconds, that means you can give every single person in the room individual eye contact several times. Now, please note, you're not just giving eye contact to the one friendly face in the front row, your mother or your best friend who's smiling. There is a school of thought that says, oh, if you're nervous, just look at one smiley face and look at them. You know, that might make you feel a little better short term, but long term, if you know you're making everyone else feel ignored and they're tuning in, that's actually going to make you more anxious. I want to really go to the root cause of anxiety, which is quite often we're afraid we're not going to really help our audience. We're not going to be interesting to your audience. So I want you to use every single tool at your disposal to be interesting to your audience. And that does mean using your eyes. Now, keep in mind a few other things. Occasionally you'll look at someone for four seconds and they will look down and they will feel mildly uncomfortable. That's okay. I'm not going to go up and violate someone's physical space. I'm not going to touch them or hug them or kiss them. But if I'm looking at someone for two sentences, for four sentence, for a couple of sentences, and they want to look down, that's okay. I really don't think they're going to file a lawsuit against you. Now, keep in mind there are people around the world watching this from different cultures. You have to factor what I'm saying through the prism of your own culture. There may be cultures where this is not acceptable, but I can tell you I do have students in 190 countries and I have trained in 45 separate countries. So the advice I'm giving does work most of the time in most places. Can there be differences when it comes to gender and race and social class? Yes, there can. But in general, the advice I'm giving you, I do believe is going to help you most of the time use eye contact to give you more confidence. A few other things to keep in mind. You're not just giving eye contact to the CEO who's the most important person in the room because that's the person who can sign your contract if you're giving a new business pitch. Because that person may be important, but there can be eight other people in the room, account executives who all get to weigh in on whether they want to hire you or someone else. And if they feel ignored or slighted because you are looking at the, the big shot, the most important person in the room, that's going to make you look bad. It's going to make you look like a suck up. So again, the key is you're giving everyone little bits of attention. But it's not quick, it's not the eighth of a second that most people do. It's not that windshield wiper. You're really looking at someone for a sentence or two. One idea, then going to the next person. Now you don't want to do it like this. You don't want to just go around the room. That's going to make you seem mechanical. You want to give your eye contact randomly, here, then here, then here, then here. And I'm just making that up. The point is it needs to be random. Once you really learn how to use eye contact the first effectively, it's going to be a secret weapon. People are going to feel like, wow, I don't know what it was, but that speaker really connected with me. I really felt like I had to pay attention. That is the power of using eye contact the right way to build your confidence and your effectiveness. Every time you speak.
