It’s been a while since I made my last Chatter blog.  Truth be told, it’s not due to my extra workload (though I have been busier than before), or the extra time spent working on my speech.  In the past 2 weeks, I have come to realize the skills gap between me and what I want to be as a public speaker.  Ironically, the more I learned about myself, the more I feel that I am inadequate.  And I have learned quite a bit lately, through my own video-recordings, the feedbacks for my contest speech, and the increased exposure to the great speech-delivery posted on Youtube.   It has been disheartening.   As the webmaster of CCTMC, one of my responsibilities is to give pointers to the readers.   Not the best of time to give pointers, when my confidence as a speaker has been quite low.  

But I do want to humbly share with everyone who is reading, one of the biggest truth that has surfaced to my attention in the past month.   No matter what techniques you deploy in your delivery, whether they are enhanced vocal variety, or open body language, nothing is more important than connecting with the audience.  In a newsletter article, I mentioned the benefits of using video-recording of your own speeches, including rehearsals.  I also briefly stressed that the priority should be feeling the connection with the audience.  Now, more than ever, I feel that this is truly the most important aspect of public speaking. 

But how do you make good connection with the audience?   I am really the last person to give advice in this area, since I have never been a ‘people-connector’ growing up.  But, maybe due to my shortcomings, I am able to share with you small ways that I have found improvements, and offer hope to those readers who have experience the same problem.   

Eye contact.  And I don’t mean just scan the audience—but really look at them directly into they eye.  This is one of the most elementary techniques for public speaking…and for a good reason.   Only through direct, sincere and prolonged eye-contact can the audience sense that you’re talking to them.  When you’re rehearsing, in the absence of a real audience, put in a few placeholders in the room and imagine that they are your audience.  For example, I placed a few pillows along the bed and stuffed animals across the sofas in the living room during my rehearsals.  During practice, I consciously looked at placeholders as if they represent an individual.  As I deliver the speech, especially during the key messages, I made sure my eyes were fixed on a placeholder, and not move all over the room.  Indeed, I became quite good friends with my pillows, as well as Ellie the Elephant and Gerry the Giraffe.   In the actual delivery, a good progression for eye contact would be the number of audience members that you concentrate on during the speech.  At first, try to consciously pick three members from the audience:  One on the left, one in the middle, one on the right.   As you find yourself able to concentrate on these audience members, then next speech expand to 5, to one in each row, to all in the front and the back row.   How would you know if you can progress to the next step?  When you can remember the facial expressions of the person you’re talking to.  When you can feel whether the people are interested or bored when you’re speaking to them. 

Of course, the feeling on stage is completely different than when you’re rehearsing in front of inanimate objects.  During my last speech delivery, I was fortunate that the rehearsal paid off, and I was able to somewhat engage with the entire audience with my eye contact.  I was aware of the facial expressions of some members, but not all.  So, obviously there is quite more I can improve on in the next speech.  One feeling that I was keenly aware, is feeling weirdly intimidated to lock my eyes to any audience members for too long.   Maybe it is my shy personality at work.  But again, this gives me a direction of what to work on, and how to tune my emotions on the stage.   If you can untangle all the mixed feelings that you feel on stage, maybe you can also recognize why you’re not able to make good eye contact.  Is it because of lack of preparation, so you’re thinking about what to say, instead of the audience?  Or do you also have this problem during one-on-one conversations?  Do you find eye-contact unnerving?  Why?   For me, perhaps in some way, I wonder if the audience is really interested in my story and my message.  So next time, I will need to meditate, and resolve that doubt before getting on stage.   I would recommend that for the shy types:  do whatever you can to ‘pump yourself up’ before you speak.  Never knew that public speaking involves so much internal psychology.  

For the next Chatters, I will talk about ‘stage movement’ and being ‘100% natural’.