First and foremost, you must deal effectively with your own emotions, ego, hang-ups, inhibitions, and fears. This will release you to focus on the audience is their attention level. A trainer must prepare thoroughly, believe in the message behind the words, and be committed to attaining his or her objective. But most important is a continual awareness of the audience members as individual persons, and not as merely a faceless mass.

There is only one way to find out whether or not an audience is paying attention. That is to look at them, not through them. The best way is to look at individual faces and directly into their eyes. This reveals whether they are looking and listening, and forces them to do so if their attention has wandered. A trainer should make every effort to get and hold eye contact with the audience, since it is the only way to talk directly to people. This may be difficult with larger groups. Sometimes it is necessary to concentrate only on the first few rows and use them to gauge the rest. Yet it is possible with a little practice to look into the eyes of people fairly far back even in a large audience, or to make them sense eye contact.

During a presentation, if possible, physically arrange the audience so that they