Tool No 10: The Corridor
HOW? Establish a narrow corridor to the one person in the group you are addressing. Complete a whole sentence in that corridor. Pause in the corridor for a second or two after the sentence. Then establish a new corridor with somebody else in the audience.
Good speakers create intimate spaces with their audience in seconds. One way they achieve this is by using corridors, focusing on a single individual in the room and focusing their attention on that person for a whole sentence.
They stay in the corridor during the pause they insert after the sentence, and only then do they establish a new corridor. Many of us are afraid to maintain eye contact – or at least, prefer to avoid doing it for too long. But prolonged eye contact is the most effective tool for building confidence.
The rule of thumb in our Western culture is that silent eye contact is only intimidating if it lasts more than four seconds.
