Guide to Improve Eye Contact in Presentations

Having done my first presentation at office speech craft program, I was advised to improve the Eye-Contact. As a result I glanced each and everyone in the audience at my second speech. But again comments included that I need to improve my eye contact. But I didn't have any idea how. 

Luckily I got a chance to participate Business English Course at office conducted by British Council and it had a good practical session on improving presentation skills, specially eye contact. I felt that I improved my self a lot by following those guidelines. I'm sharing it here.Try yourself and be surprised with your improvements.

Eye Contact Technique

Target one person for one small sentence. If your sentence is too long, then break it into meaningful parts (you can do this from your mind). Look at one person when you say one portion and when you deliver the next part of that sentence look at another person. Remember to cover entire audience.

Lets take an example;

If you are going to say.... Hi, I'm (your Name). I work at (Your Company). My hobbies are watching movies, reading books and playing video games. Let's think if your audience has three columns. Then you can pick one person from each column and deliver one sentence to each of them. You can cover entire audience by following this method. Below image brief the whole idea.

If you have a long sentence like... I previously worked at XYZ Company, the world famous auto mobile manufacturer who invented ABC car model.  When we present this sentence we can identify three different parts as

•  I previously worked at XYZ Company...
• The world famous auto mobile manufacturer...
• Who invented ABC car model.

Then you can deliver one part to one person each.

Practicing this straightly in the presentation is not that much easy. Hence we practiced this in the class room. First we wrote a paragraph with small sentences and practiced reading it loudly in front of the audience, balancing the eye contact. Then we prepared a small paragraph with long sentences and practiced the same way.

It was really easy to maintain  and balance the eye contact in the presentation after practicing it with the method explained above. You can try it by yourself, but if you don't have a class room or audience to practice it, try in front of a mirror imagining you have a big audience. ENJOY!!!

Too busy chopping wood to sharpen the axe?

This is the article I supplied to Exilesoft magazine last time. Hope it will help someone.

He, who wanted to start his life as a wood cutter, bought an Axe and went to the jungle. He earned money by selling trees that he cuts. He wanted to be rich, so he worked hard to achieve his goal.

When days turned to weeks and weeks to months, his productivity went down. The amount of wood he collected each day started to decrease day by day. But he worked more hours till his hands hurt but he was barely able to achieve his margin. He couldn’t collect as much wood as he did in the beginning.

One day he thought, “If I continue like this, I won’t be able to achieve my goal”. Then he sat on a fallen tree and wondered what had gone wrong. Aha... His enemy was right in front of him. His productivity was low due to his own fault. He realized that he was only concerned about his output. He hadn’t spared a thought for the tools he used in his work. He quickly sharpened the axe and started to cut the trees. He realized that productivity was not based on his effort alone but also on the improvement he made.

You may have heard of this story but have you taken this lesson to heart? Do you act in a similar manner in your own career? Think about it.

1. Are you always busy with your job, completing your tasks?

2. Do you also complain you don’t have time to improve your career?

If so you could end up being less productive. It’s true we all have plenty of work each and every day. But be wise enough to manage your work while spending few minutes to develop your skills. If not you will become a person with obsolete knowledge. On that day even your employer will not acknowledge the work you did. They will blame you for your redundant knowledge. 

Let’s say you are given 86 400 rupees every day. If you spend it all without saving any, at the end you will have nothing left. Imagine this 86 400 as seconds you are blessed with every day. If you just waste it without doing anything for your career, you are not investing in your future.

Just think about it and spare few minutes every day to enhance yourself.

Be a person who contributes something towards your career every day.