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Smile at Your Audience

Techniques > Public speaking > Speaking Tips > Smile at Your Audience

Description | Example | Discussion | See also

Description

Remember to smile at your audience. Look around. Smile as if you like them. Smile as if you are really happy to be there. Smile as if you are delighted to be able to share your knowledge with them.

Never try to force a smile -- you will likely appear to be false or grimacing. If you have problems smiling, look down, remember a time when you were really happy. Let the warm feeling build up in your body and whoosh up into your face. As the smile spreads, look up. Look at a person towards the side, then sweep across the audience, locking your smiling gaze for a fraction of a second with several people across the room.

Example

A speaker walks up the steps and to the lecturn. He looks briefly at his notes and then looks up and slowly around the room, smiling cheerfully. 'Hello everyone', he says. 'It's really good to be here with you today'.

A speaker makes a point that he wants people to remember. He says 'You know I was amazed when I discovered this. It made me so happy.' He then smiles and looks at a few people.

Discussion

When your are focused on remembering what to say and ensuring you get the right words out, it is easy to get lost inside your head. When you do this, you can lose an audience. If they bother you, think you are talking with just one person. Pick a person in the audience and look at them and smile just as if you were in a one-to-one conversation. Then skip to someone else.

Avoid smiling all the time as you will look nervous. Especially when making a serious point, ensure you have an appropriately serious expression. A simple rule is that when you want the audience to smile, you smile. The easiest way to do this is simply to be happy. This may need a certain amount of self-control but it can be done, for example as described above.

See also

Smiling