Episode #190: One Critical Key For Both Online and In-Person Presenting Success

Lockdown has ended in Japan and we are caught in a sort of phony war, where neither online nor in-person has won the ultimate battle for audience attention. Online is still more prominent at the moment, but the cobwebs are being cleared away and the dust wiped off the “live and in the room with you” presenters. These two major delivery vehicles are fundamentally different.

Trapped in a tiny box at the top of the screen, we do our best to engage our audience when we are online. Our virtual background is perhaps marginally better than our humble abode’s interior. All the stickybeak viewers ponder about the backgrounds of our homes, wondering what we have there on the shelf or the wall, rather than paying full attention to us as the speaker. The alternative is the green screen technology virtual backgrounds being employed. They are definitely dodgy though, as whenever we move, half of our head is quickly cleaved off the screen. The reality is that, as presenters, we will have to become like the skilled samurai of old, in the Miyamoto Musashi tradition of nitoryu or two swords mastery. We will have to become the modern masters of the presenting weaponry needed for both mediums.

Travelling to give talks may become redundant, as organisers have discovered they can run events virtually. The time, cost and general wear and tear factors speak in favour of everyone staying in the comfort and safety of their homes. Thankfully, battling through airport security may become a less frequent unedifying experience than it has been. So even if getting in a room, together with the multitude makes a comeback, the odds are that we will continue to be called upon to present online.

There is one key thing we need to do for both worlds - make expert eye contact.

On screen though, this is rather tricky. You have people faces right in front of you on screen and we are trained to talk to people’s faces. The camera however is usually located many centimetres above or to the side of these faces. On most laptops and desktop computers, the camera is zeroing in on the top of our head and even though we are looking at people’s faces, we have no actual eye contact with anyone.

We are allowed to look away, to consult our notes, so we don’t have to maintain constant eye contact with the camera. Most presenters though, cannot manage to make any eye contact with the camera, so their ability to engage their audience is shredded. It takes concentration to suspend the reality you see in front of you and shift your eye contact to the camera and away from the faces on the screen.

In the face to face audience situation, we still have plenty of amateur and dud presenters who don’t make eye contact with their audience. This is such a waste. We are no longer trapped in a little box, we are now full form and on stage. We should be making expert eye contact with the members of our audience. When we are online and on screen, we need to keep looking at one single point - the camera. But in the live situation, we need to move that eye contact around. We select someone in the audience and for the next six seconds we speak to that person, as if they were the only person in the world. We then move our gaze and repeat the process with the next person. We do this right throughout our talk and try to make eye contact with as many people as possible.

On screen, we cannot easily tell the reaction of the audience to what we have said, because either their cameras are off or they are also in a trapped in a little box in the corner. In real life though, by constantly using eye contact we can see if our audience are agreeing with us or if we are losing their attention. We can adjust our flow, energy or content to suit.

Audiences who are multitasking, while participating in an online event, are a nightmare for the speaker. One good tactic to deal with multitaskers is to stop speaking. It works in both the live situation and online. When we inject a pause, we break the rhythm of the talk and the audience members brains record there has been a change and now they need to pay attention again. Their brains are thinking the talk is over, so they engage with the speaker again, because they think it is time to get out of there.

Online is going to remain an important medium for presenters and we will be back in person at some stage soon. However, it is not a great joy being hopeless in one or both mediums, so let’s at least get this one element of presenting right. Eye contact is a super power when you know how to use it, so let’s make sure we master this facility as presenters, every time we present.