49. Bill Clinton’s Talking to Me!: The Power of Group Dynamics

A young woman—let’s call her Grace—was a participant in a Power Presentations program where she learned the fundamental methodology of treating every presentation as a series of person-to-person conversations. She came up to me after the program to share a relevant personal experience

Grace had been involved in organizing an event for the Graduate School of Education of the University of Pennsylvania, at which former President Bill Clinton was to speak. When Mr. Clinton got to the auditorium, he saw that most of the audience had clustered in the back rows, leaving the front rows vacant. (Perhaps the educators were copying students who sit at the back of the room to avoid be called upon by the teacher.)

Mr. Clinton asked Grace to invite people to move forward, which she did, and then she sat in the front row herself. As his speech proceeded, Grace observed Mr. Clinton’s celebrated charismatic style. She was particularly aware of his person-to-person approach and saw that he made eye contact with her quite often. She assumed that he was paying particular attention to her because of her role in organizing the event and because of their exchange about the seating arrangements. But after the speech, Grace spoke with several other people in the audience who reported that they thought that he was paying particular attention to them.

Grace—and all the other people—were experiencing the power of group dynamics. Underlying those dynamics are two powerful forces. The first force is social. When a speaker moves around the audience, engaging one person at a time, and then returns to any one person, that person feels a direct connection with the presenter and a shared connection with fellow audience members.

The other dynamic is the depth-of-field factor in human vision. At a certain distance from the front of the room, audience members cannot see exactly where the presenter’s eyes are focused. Think of the time you were in a classroom and the teacher called on someone by gesturing in your direction. Because you couldn’t see exactly where the teacher’s eyes were focused, you looked around and said, “Who me?”

Those same dynamics are available to you whenever you present—but only when you treat every presentation as a series of person-to-person conversations. If the technique can earn Bill Clinton millions of dollars in speaking fees every year, it can work for you.^F49.1