{"id":328,"date":"2009-05-12T08:21:14","date_gmt":"2009-05-12T07:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.elementally.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/?p=328"},"modified":"2009-05-12T08:21:14","modified_gmt":"2009-05-12T07:21:14","slug":"the-eyes-have-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/the-eyes-have-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The eyes have it&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/choppingphotos.com\/thumbs\/widen-eyes50.gif\" alt=\"eyes\" \/>Holding eye contact is a bit of a strain for many of us. For many people, there are only a couple of reasons for looking someone straight in the eye for more than a second or so &#8211; sex or violence! Keeping eye contact makes us feel anxious and we avoid it out of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcshyness&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, not looking at your audience makes them feel you&#8217;re not interested in them, so they&#8217;re less likely to be interested in you&#8230; and in what you&#8217;ve got to say.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s tip is pretty simple, really &#8211; but it takes a little time to get it right so don&#8217;t be put off if you don&#8217;t manage it straight away. The trick is this &#8211; simply soften your focus as you look at your audience: that way you don&#8217;t look at any one person in your audience necessarily, but you look at your audience as a whole. That can be a lot more comfortable for people who are anxious about their performance&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>It also has the added advantage of meaning that you&#8217;re more likely to notice if something unusual is going on in another part of the auditorium &#8211; such as someone not paying attention!  :) <\/p>\n<p>It sounds too simple to be true, but it&#8217;s remarkably effective. One note of caution, however&#8230; it&#8217;s important not to let yourself look simply \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcdopey&#8217; when you soften your focus. That means you need to make sure there&#8217;s plenty of animation in your facial expressions and gestures as you do it.<\/p>\n<p>Give it a go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Holding eye contact is a bit of a strain for many of us. For many people, there are only a couple of reasons for looking someone straight in the eye for more than a second [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation-tips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.awareplus.co.uk\/presentation-skills-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}