When speaking publicly or presenting in a business situation, maintain focus on your audience with meaningful and consistent eye contact.
If you are giving a speech, this would also mean maintaining constantcontact.
If you are speaking in a business setting where your audience is limited to one or two people, then constant eye contact might be intimidating or off-putting.
That said, consistent eye contact remains imperative to developing trust and relationship with your audience.
Consistent and meaningful eye contact is one of the most difficult things for most public speakers.
It's easy to get caught up in our nerves or in our words, losing meaningful contact and connection with our audience in the process.
Remember though that without consistent and meaningful eye contact, you will create little to no relationship with the audience and their confidence in you will diminish.
What do I mean by meaningful? By this I mean looking into your audience's eyes for their understanding, interest, feelings and reactions to what you are communicating.
You intuitively know when someone is truly listening to you and is interested in you and what you are communicating.
Even though you might be the one doing all of the talking in this situation, it is still important that you maintain an active, alert and sensitive search for and awareness of your audience's communication, even if they aren't communicating verbally.
Eye contact is a significant factor in how much people like, trust and believe you.
Your eyes are the gateway to your soul.
Your audience needs to see into them and they need to see you looking into theirs, otherwise their connection with you will be limited to non-existent.
Be certain to cover the entire audience.
Do not limit eye contact to one area of the auditorium or to a few people.
And deliver your message to one person at a time, rather than to everyone in the audience at the same time.