Took in a Toastmasters’ speech contest tonite. I’m always challenged and entertained by what folks can come up with — the human mind is so creative! But I suppose it’s what I do that makes it tough to get past what I consider to be critical elements that need to be fixed. Tonite’s peeve was a speaker (whose speech was otherwise fantastic) who had eye contact with only two people in the audience. One on the left; one on the right. He bounced back and forth between them. His wait times were good, but there just was no variety in where he waited.One of the goals of personal communication to a group is to make every person in the group feel like they’ve been connected with at least once. In large groups, this isn’t possible, of course, but a speaker can use areas to connect with and everyone in the vicinity can feel a part. Tonite’s audience was small enough every set of eyes could have had some ‘face time’. But they didn’t get it. Since I wasn’t one of the chosen two, disinterest soon reared its ugly head. I just wasn’t convinced the speaker wanted anything to do with me.
Connect with your audience — all of it.
