How to capture audience attention without saying a word, public speaking skills

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] And the more that you catch their eye and then you break it and you go to leave to go look at somebody else, you'll notice that other people in the audience will start straining to capture your eye too. This is the Man's Cool podcast bonus episode. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. On Fridays, I sit down to share some philosophies or stories or concepts that can help make you a tangibly better communicator. And this week a listener, Keaton Krueger wrote me a note, and it was after he had seen a speech that I had given at the largest baking conference in the world. I had been invited by the Grain Foods Foundation in to give this talk, and he had seen a version of it on their Facebook page. They had posted a Facebook Live link, and it was really flattering because he wrote me this note and he said he was very complimentary about how the speech went. And then he went on to ask, when you became better at speaking, was it one skill that really catapulted you forward? Or was it a series of skills? And so I thought that that was a great question because I really pondered it for about a day. And then when I went to write and back, I realized, wait, actually this would make a really good bonus episode. And the reason is, is because what I'm gonna say may not be intuitive. I mean, of course nobody learns like one skill that makes them dramatically better at anything because at, at its core, in order to get better at any skill you have to practice, you have to get out there, you have to do it, you have to fail, you have to figure out what works, figure out what doesn't work.

Vance Crowe [00:01:36] This is true in public speaking, it's true in juujitsu or playing the piano or running a business. It's you just gotta get in there and, and practice and see what works and what doesn't. But it is fair to think about was there one or two things that I learned how to do that really pushed me further forward? And the answer is yes. I, I think there is a skill that I can talk about that really will change the way that you present yourself on stage, the way that you engage with your audience, the way they react to what you're saying, and really will help you get better all the time, every time you practice. If you use this skill, you will get better at, at an exponential scale. But it's a, it's a hard skill to describe because what I'm gonna suggest, if you do it correctly, will be really, life-changing will be very, very helpful. But if you do it incorrectly, it's gonna make you seem really, really creepy. And nobody, nobody wants that, right? You're trying to learn how to be a better public speaker and you don't want the thing that you're trying to make you worse. But you gotta do it. You gotta, you gotta try it. And there's gonna be some times where you're not gonna be very good at it. So the skill is looking at individuals in the eye when you speak to them. And so I think that this skill has several different important functions when you're speaking. The first one is if you wanna grab the attention of a group of people, you can look at quadrants of people or kind of at the outline of people, but never really at them.

Vance Crowe [00:03:12] And you can create the illusion of speaking to a person or to a group. But you're not really doing that at that point. If you're just looking at groups, you're just projecting yourself out there. But if on the other hand, you look at one person and you make eye contact with them, they will make eye contact back with you. It's this weird phenomena. You've experienced it millions of times before You make eye contact with somebody, they make eye contact with you. I pay attention to you. It's going to tell you, Hey, this guy I, I should be watching what they're doing for better or for worse, right? So if you make eye contact with somebody, they will connect with you, you have their attention. And that's a great thing when you're trying to build up energy in an audience. However, it does put you in the position if you use eye contact to gain somebody's attention. You also are now staring at a dragon. And what do I mean by that? Well, when you look at somebody in the eye and they make connection with you, their emotion about what is going on in that moment is going to be written on their face. And what's going on in that moment is you are giving a speech. So whatever they think about how you're doing or what you're saying or how fast you're saying, or how much they agree with it is going to be written right there on their face. So you will have grabbed their attention and now you will be looking and getting real time feedback that will help you know, how am I doing in this exact moment? And here is why this skill is so tricky to master.

Vance Crowe [00:04:45] On the one hand, this is great, you want all that information. You wanna know, should I be speeding up? Is am I making the crowd angry? Because it helps you, you know, make those slight adjustments up on the stage. And this, and this doesn't have to be just on a stage in front of crowds of people. It could be at a wedding, it could be while you're standing up in a business meeting. It could be any situation where you're speaking to a group of people. If you make eye contact and you're saying something, you look at them, you can see how they're feeling about what you're doing. But you have to then react. And you can't let yourself get lost in the moment because if you let yourself get lost in the moment, you're either gonna lose your train of thought or you are going to be looking this person in the eye for more than three or four seconds, which if you do things get awkward fast. That's the other side of this advice. You wanna look people in the eyes, but you only wanna do it for the completion of one thought, maybe three or four seconds, maybe five or six seconds. I, I don't know an exact timing. You can't just plan it out like that. It doesn't work as a cookie cutter template, but you've gotta be saying what you're saying, delivering an idea to them, then breaking eye contact and making eye contact with another person and completing another thought. And if you do this properly, you are gonna get real time feedback, not just from one person or two, but you can make eye contact with 10 or 11 people while you're standing on a stage and they will give you the temperature of the rest of the room.

Vance Crowe [00:06:16] And the more that you catch their eye and then you break it and you go to leave to go look at somebody else, you'll notice that other people in the audience will start straining to capture your eye too. If they see you paying attention to other people, they want you to notice them as well. And it's a wonderful flow like feeling. And it really gives you the sensation of riding on a wave. And eventually, if you've done it enough, when you're making eye contact, you don't have to consciously think, oh, break eye contact with this person and move to another, or let me read the emotions on that person's face. It just comes natural. But the difficult part about gaining this skill is you gotta look at that dragon. You've gotta be able to handle that. The feedback that their face might be giving you might not be good. And then you still have to have the presence of mind to break eye contact with that person after a few seconds and move on to another person. But it is entirely worth it. That single skill transformed how I interacted with the audience so dramatically that there's no going back. There's no if, if I were to get up on a stage and then just to pretend to look at people or look in quadrants, I would stumble and fail now because I need that connection with the audience. And really, even though you're not doing that right now, you need it too. So the difficult part about taking on this skill is not that it requires intellect or sharp wit or you know, the ability to think on your feet.

Vance Crowe [00:07:48] You don't need any of those. You just need to have the courage to look someone in the eyes and the ability to just keep trying it until you figure it out. And it took me a long time to be able to do it naturally. But the thing that will really accelerate your progress on this is the next time you give a speech, you're standing up in front of a group of people and you try and make this eye contact and you're reading the emotion that is on someone's face as as you look them in the eye. And then you break away and you go to somebody else. Remember those thoughts and then that night or the next morning, sit down and write it down. What did you see on their faces? This process of sitting down and writing it out and saying, this is what I saw, this is what I felt, this is how it went, is going to capture how well you're doing. And it will help you reprocess that speech so that the next time that you get up there, it's just a little bit more automatic and it's a little less scary because you realize they didn't give me some terrible death stare or some, you know, look at me with horror as I said these things. And instead, I got this information which helped me react and adapt this way and next time I wish I could react and adapt in this even better way. And I think that that act of writing it down is what will take this skill from being something obscure that you're kind of thinking, oh, I should make eye contact with people more often to something concrete. And it will give you a way to look back on how you're doing and help you feel like yes, you are making progress.

Vance Crowe [00:09:24] So I'm gonna wrap up for now. If you've enjoyed this, make sure you check out more podcast episodes on Fridays. I try and release these bonus episodes. Also, if you are in any way connected with the university system right now, whether you have a kid in college or a cousin, then I think you should consider looking into the South Dakota State University Collegiate Farm Bureau conference. They're holding it between October 11th and the 13th. And it is one of the coolest conferences that I've heard anybody put together. They are trying to say, we are college students and we want to put on a conference that lets other college students come in and see what we do in this world of agriculture, how we are getting better at social media to be able to explain to others the value of things like genetic engineering and how we treat animals on the farm. And they've invited me and a few other people, a guy named Derek Josie in to, to talk and to try and say things that will help the students get better faster. And I think this is gonna be a hell of a networking opportunity. I think it's gonna be a chance for young college kids to get around other ambitious college kids that are making things happen. So I'll leave a link to the event in the show notes. You should check those out and share them to help these students make this conference as big and wild as a blowout as I know it can be if you're not involved with college, but you found these interesting.

Vance Crowe [00:10:55] Know that I travel around the country to give talks about how people can become better communicators or how to think about how ideas move into culture. So if your industry is getting an unfair rap in society, I can help you think about, well, what is it that we can do to help you have better conversations with the broader public? It's what I love doing and it's why I'm here. If you don't have either of those two things, then just swing by on Twitter and say, hi, I am at Vance Crowe and I love, love, love when people reach out and say something. Thank you so much to ke and Kruger for the question this week. It helped me really think through some things that I think are important. And thank you so much for listening. I deeply appreciate your attention and I hope that you found this valuable. Thanks so much and have a great week.