Thin Smiles, Thinner Audiences!

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Yesterday evening, our bank invited us to a presentation by one of their insurance consultants. Since I am in the business of presenting, I always love to be part of the audience. I did not know at that time that I was going to run into something I have never experienced before!

What I encountered was a thin smile. The presenter had this thin smile plastered on his face right from the start to the end of his presentation, and that lasted for a good hour and a half. Fortunately, I had my tablet with me. So, I used it to good advantage to pencil all my thoughts immediately!

Before we get to these thoughts, what exactly is a thin smile? Fortunately I found a picture on Microsoft Office that shows exactly what I encountered!

We all do realize that the opposite of a smiling speaker is a grumpy one. Yes, that’s not a great alternative. Yet, how many of you can tolerate a speaker who has a thin smile all through his or her presentation? So what is the correct balance between smiling too much, and just being happy? Here are some thoughts to share. You can use these as guidelines to help you prevent a death-by-smiling experience.

1. Don’t smile too much. The audience may think that you are laughing at them.
2. Also if you smile too much, the audience may think you are covering up your lack of confidence.
3. Smiling also has quite a bit to relate to the topic of your presentation. If you are discussing something funny, it might work. However, if you are doing a session on bankruptcy or some other negative topic–then the smile may be a huge liability. Our presenter was talking about insurance, and most of that related to benefits after the death of an insured person–the continuous, thin smile was completely out of place.
4. Smiling distracts the audience from your speech. At this point of time, you have lost the attention of the listeners.
5. If you smile too much, your audience will avoid eye contact with you. That may be detrimental to the reason and objective of your presentation.
6. If your audience does not find the topic of your presentation funny, then, it’s not funny if you smile.
7. Presenters who smile too much may come across as insincere, insensitive, unconcerned, and untrustworthy.

Now by extolling the virtues of not smiling, I do not mean that you should not smile at all. You should certainly smile when appropriate, especially when you are directly speaking with a single member of the audience. And a “thin smile” is something entirely different from a regular smile–the former seems plastic and lacks involvement, while the latter also results beyond smiling lips to smiling eyes. And a smile that stops after a few seconds is always good. Soon thereafter, you can get back to talking in your most business-like, neutral tone so that you can continue to hold the attention of your audience. And they will believe in you.