EP 28 Public Speakers Should Maintain Eye Contact for 3.2 Seconds with Audience Members

According to new research from Forbes magazine, the perfect length of time for eye contact for a speaker with the audience is 3.2 seconds.

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Okay folks, what I just did is a perfect example of how nonsense gets disseminated in the whole public speaking world. I just did something irresponsible and I think frankly. Well, let me dissect exactly what happened. There is in fact a new posting on Forbes.com and it is from one of my friendly competitors, Dr. Nick Morgan, who by the way, I think puts out fantastic content on his blog on Forbes on public speaking presentation issues. I've highlighted it before. Good things that I agree with. I think he's a real professional. I think his content is very solid. But I do have a disagreement with him. Here, a post from this week and you can check it out yourself@forbes.com just type in Nick Morgan. Here's the thing. He has a posting that purports to show A new study claims that the perfect length of time for looking at someone giving them direct eye contact is 3.2 seconds. He then goes on to demonstrate and talk about how you should do this as a speaker. Now, I take severe issue with this. I think this is profoundly bad advice. For starters, let's look at how I disseminated it. At the beginning I said, according to Forbes magazine. Well, these days so many so called serious reputable news outlets let anyone blog on them. And hey, I've got blog stuff on Forbes. I'm not knocking them. But just because it's a blog post from a major media outlet doesn't mean it somehow has legitimacy. Again, I like Nick Morgan. I think he puts out a great content, but he doesn't actually cite where this new research came from in any place that I can see on Forbes or on his blog. But beyond that, I think it's the context that is a real problem. If you are sitting down talking to one person. I think by and large 3.2 seconds is probably about the right length of time. But, and this is a huge, huge but when you are standing, giving a presentation, doing a public speech, the whole context is different. He's absolutely right in the story that he talks about that if you look at someone longer than 3.2 seconds, it can seem either threatening or sexual in nature, like you're trying to seduce them. Obviously things that you don't want to mix your messages with when you're giving a presentation. However, again, context is different. Here is what I recommend to all of my clients regarding eye contact, because it does come up very frequently in presentation training. And here it is. What I recommend is pick one person in the audience and just talk to them for full thought, a couple of sentences. Now, that is going to be longer than 3.2 seconds. It could be six or seven seconds. And then you go to another person in the audience and you look at them for a full thought. Now, you're not just looking at the youngest, prettiest people of the sex you happen to be attracted to. Okay. You're doing this equally throughout the room. And if you're speaking to 50 people over the course of a 20 minute presentation, you can give every single person individualized eye contact. And that's what makes it not seem like you're singling anyone out. That's what makes it seem like you're not trying to pick up someone or intimidate anybody, because everybody is getting more or less equal time. Here's what I've noticed though, is when you really look at someone and you hold their eye contact for a couple sentences, sure. Every once in a while, someone will look down or look away and maybe you made them a little bit uncomfortable. Guess what? I don't mind making my audience a little bit uncomfortable because I don't want them so comfortable that they fall asleep or sometimes, even worse, feel that they can pull out their cell phone and start checking email right in front of me. We've all seen audience members do that to speakers because the speakers seem like they weren't really noticing the audience. Here's the other big problem. Beyond 3.2 seconds being too short a time, I believe to really connect with an audience member. When there is a distance of 10, 20, 30, 50, 80ft away, it's simply different than the distance of when you're 3ft away from one person. So I think the 3.2 seconds is too short. The other big problem, frankly, is if you are speaking and you're trying to be interesting and engaging and have good messages and remember your stories, to sit there and try to either look at a stopwatch on your clock or your phone, or mentally count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi. That's insanely difficult. That act alone will trip you up, will tense you up, will likely turn something artificial in your thought process and how you sound. So I think as a goal, as an aspirational goal, to tell someone you need to look at everyone for 3.2 seconds is just horrific. It's horrible advice because it's going to trip them up. It's going to put so much pressure on them, and it's going to seem artificial, almost like an automatic water sprinkler. And it's too mechanical. That's why I do not recommend it. So if you're just looking at someone for a full thought, a couple of sentences, one time it might be four sentences, four seconds. Another time it might be ten and a half seconds. That's okay. In my experience, I've seen some of the greatest speakers in the world do this. Bill Clinton famously does this with his audiences. So does Ted Cruz. So, folks, again, I'm not being partisan here. There are prominent political figures across the aisle who are really great at at eye contact. But again, the context is different. What works when you're talking to one or two people is very different from what works when you're standing speaking to 50, 100, 500, 5000. And that's why the 3.2 second rule really does not work. Here's what you're after with your eye contact. You want audience members to feel like, wow, he really spoke to me. She really spoke to me. And that they're paying attention to me and that they care about me. There's three types of eye contact with most speakers. The bottom 5% of all speakers are sort of staring at their notes or staring at PowerPoint or looking at the clock in the back of the room. They're scared, they're nervous. They are afraid to see their audience. You don't want to be like that. That's just practically demanding that your audience ignore you, pull out their cell phone, like, kind of listen to tj. He can't see me, so I can do whatever I want and he won't notice. That's the worst of all speakers. The next sort of 94.9% of speakers, shall we say, are not staring at their notes. They're not ignoring their audience. They're not doing what I say. They're also not holding eye contact for 3.2 seconds with each person. They're doing some version of the windshield wiper where their eyes could be really quick, it could be slow, but their eyes are looking at the whole audience the whole time. So everyone in the audience feels like that speaker didn't really speak to me. They just spoke to the whole audience. They saw me as sort of an anonymous part of a mass audience. It's not the worst thing in the world, but it does tend to lull people to the point where they just feel like no one can see them. So they can get comfortable they can check their email, they can talk to the person next to them. They can fall asleep. A big, big, big problem. I'll tell you what you should be doing in just a moment.

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So some of you may say, well, tj, all well and good, but what happens if I'm on a stage and I have a bright light in my face and I can't even see the audience? Well, the advice I just gave you works in that situation. Well, with a minor modification. If you're on a stage, let's say you're at a huge convention in Las Vegas and the stage lights are on you and the audience is dark, this technique still works with a minor modification. Now, you can't literally see anyone, but you can just stare right out in one spot, hold your eye contact for a couple of sentences, don't move your head, then go to another part of the room and do the same thing. And if it's a large room, There may be 20 people in the general area where you were looking all in the dark. And they all feel like, wow, that speaker really talked to me, really addressed me, they cared about me. And it just makes it less distracting for the audience. You also look a lot more confident and comfortable because some speakers, their voice may be good, their body language from the neck down may be perfectly fine, but their head is moving and their eyes are moving the whole time. And they just have a slight look of being dazed and almost overwhelmed by their audience, especially if it is a larger audience. And that's the beauty of focusing one at a time in a random way. You're not going from left to right in the front row and ignoring people. You're. You want it to be randomized so that at any point somebody feels like you could be looking at them. In my experience, speakers tend to focus just on the people right in front of them or the friendly faces or the perceived decision maker. And they often ignore people in the back. They often ignore people to their far left and, and to their far right. When you're a speaker, you have a relationship with the audience. The eye contact is an important determinant in that relationship. It's like any other relationship. If you ignore somebody else, they feel entitled to ignore you. Now, you can't literally, in the middle of a speech, go up and shake everyone's hand and have a five minute conversation with each person, especially if it's a larger audience. But that's why the eye contact is so important, because it makes people feel like you are focusing on them, you are listening to them, you are caring about them. And that then motivates them to want to listen to you and to be respectful. Now, I understand if you're at a typical banking convention, it's not that anyone is going to be throwing rotten vegetables at you or booing you. It's not Saturday night at a comedy club. But by respect, I mean give you their attention. Because it's so many conferences I go to and I'm sure ones you've been to, you see that someone's up on the speech, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like Charlie Brown's teacher. Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. And no one's really paying attention. They're talking to each other, they're making lunch plans, they're talking about who's got the best dinner reservations, they're checking email. And you might not, especially with really large audiences, never get every single person. But the eye contact can be a huge, huge factor in this and really helping you get a much better attention quality from your audience.

A question for you.

Okay, folks, I have a question for you. We take your questions. In fact, almost all the content of this show is simply answering questions that those of you have sent to me. And again, you can always email me questions infoediatrainingworldwide.com or post it on any of the forums where you see this program or are listening to this program or send it to me on Twitter jwalker. But I also have a question for you, and I want to know, what do you think the percentage of the time is when someone gives you too much eye contact if you're in the audience versus too little eye contact? So just say, you know, you can say 50% too much, 50% too little. In my experience, it is 99.9 and a few more nines before there's after the decimal point of not enough eye contact, of feeling ignored by the speaker. And that empowers me to folks, I'm just as bad as the people I'm talking about. That empowers me to pull out my cell phone and check my email because I think I'm so important and something someone so urgently needs to get ahold of me. And that's rude on my part. But if the audience, if the speaker ignores me, I feel emboldened to do that. So I want to know from you, how often do you really feel like you get too much eye contact? I'm willing to bet for most of you it's happened maybe once or twice in your life. Now, maybe if you are young and just extremely good looking, maybe it happens more often. Okay, not a problem. I've suffered in quite a while. But for the rest of you, I want to know what percentage of the time do you really feel like a speaker is giving you too much eye contact versus too little? Again, my suspicion is we remember the one time when it was too much because it made us uncomfortable. We forget the 10,000 times when the speaker didn't give us enough eye contact and we simply don't remember. So please send me your response to that question. Because folks, in order for this show to be a success, it's got to be a two way street. I'm here to answer your questions and I will answer every one of your questions. Unless we just did it yesterday, but I'd like you to answer my questions as well. I'm TJ Walker. As always, thanks for joining me and may all of your speaking opportunities in life be a huge success.

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