Under just about any circumstances we know, without needing to be told, that it’s important to maintain eye-contact. One-on-one or one-on-many, the same general principle applies. If you don’t look at me, occasionally at least, I’m going to get turned off pretty quickly. Leaving aside some interesting cultural variations on this theme, one question that constantly recurs is ‘how can I hope to maintain eye contact with an audience of more than 20 or 30?’.

The risk of presenting to an audience of, say, 100 or more is that in order to fulfill our part of the bargain we’ll be tempted to weave our heads around from top to bottom and side to side not unlike a set of windscreen wipers in a strong breeze. Uncomfortable for the presenter and distracting, rather than reassuring, for the audience.

The skill here is to adopt not the X factor but the ‘X scan’. Imagine an auditorium in front of you. When you want to make a particularly telling point, or to summarise, or to put a general question (these are good moments but by no means the only ones) look at your audience from the top/back left corner of the room and scan slowly over the seats to the bottom/front right. Then continue up to the top/back right and so across the sea of attentive faces to the bottom/front left. Or, of course, the other part of the ‘X’, whichever side of the room you take in first.

If you get the timing right you will add greatly to the moment but, in any event, everyone in your audience will feel as if you have made eye contact with them. One consequence of which will be, with any luck at all, that you’ll receive the presenter’s greatest bonus, namely several nods and genuine smiles by way of reciprocity.

There’s lots of energy in those moments. Use it to keep yourself fizzing and to keep the energy levels in the room flowing. About which, more soon.