Page 181 - The New Articulate Executive_ Look, Act and Sound Like a Leader

172 DELIVERY

Even if the words are great, the speech will fail in the
presentation.
The answer is to reverse the procedure. Instead of starting each
sentence with your eyes on the text, begin each sentence actually
looking straight at the audience. Then allow your eye to scan down
to read the middle of the sentence right off the page. Then bring
your eyes back up to end each sentence looking back at the audience
again. Repeat that several hundred times, and you will not look like
you are reading the speech. The correct way looks like this:

Right
Eyes up Eyes up
Audience Audience

Eye contact Eye contact
Down to read

Text

If you like, choose a few faces in the audience all the way from
your left to your right and spend a few seconds with each face, one
at a time, every time you make eye contact. So instead of down-up-
down, you are now doing up-down-up.

The trick is to allow your eyes to memorize the first half or so of
the sentence in silence. Then you bring your eyes up, establish eye
contact, and speak the words. Before you run out of words, you allow
your eyes to return again to the sentence, picking up where you left off
and reading the middle of the sentence right off the page. Then you

raise your eyes again to finish the last part of the sentence. All this you
do in one seamless sweep with no pauses. The only times you pause
are after you establish eye contact (for just a beat, to make sure you
don’t “cheat” by speaking before your eyes are all the way up) and after