The Power of Eye Contact by Michael Ellsberg

[joshua]

Given how easy it is to learn, understanding how eye contact works has a disproportionately large effect on how we interact with people.

Eye contact signifies attention. Where a person’s eye are looking tells your where their attention is directed.

With this in mind, the following is a simple five step protocol to becoming an eye contact master in less than two weeks:

Step 1: Eye Gazing

If you look at someone in the eye for 3 minutes you will have been exposed to more sustained eye contact that 95 percent of the population.

Begin by sitting about two feet apart. Ideally there should be nothing in between you. Having a table or something else between you just lowers the intensity of the exercise.

Keep a neutral expression. Eye contact is generally associated with intimidation or seduction. Neither are called for.

Most people don’t know where to look. Though there are no rules to eye gazing the best results come from looking at the whole face with their eyes in the centre of your vision.

Make sure you keep a soft gaze. You can control how harsh your gaze is by how intensely you focus on one point. You want to aim for a soft, warm focus.

This isn’t a staring contest. It is ok to giggle, laugh and scratch your nose.

Sometimes the other persons face will start to morph. This is completely natural and quite an interesting experience.

Step 2: Colour Snatching

Make infinitesimally brief eye contact with people on the street. You want to maintain eye contact for just long enough to see the colour of their eyes.

If people sustain eye contact with you it is important to smile. Genuine smiles come from the eyes. The trick is to make sure your jaw is relaxed when you smile.

Step 3: Showing Involvement

Make longer eye contact with strangers such a waiters, sales clerks, and cashiers.

3 to 5 seconds (or heartbeats) is enough to show sincere involvement.

When you break eye contact (and you always want to be the first to break eye contact) look to the side of their face instead of down. If you look down it is unnecessarily submissive. If you constantly force people to look away it is unnecessarily intense.

Step 4: Learn to Dance

Make substantial eye contact during conversations with friends, family members and co-workers.

Don’t stare at people awkwardly when they talk to you. Increase the amount of contact you make intermittently.

One of the central keys to effective eye contact is to be aware of the other person’s comfort levels. Eye contact will generally increase tension whereas a smile will decrease it.

The goal is not to increase eye contact per se, but to adjust it to the right level so that there is a genuine connection. Eye contact is generally taught as a technique, which doesn’t make sense. It is about person-to-person contact and that is ultimately down to presence.

Connecting with people is not something you do. It is something you allow. If you are trying to connect with someone you are operating from the assumption that you are somehow disconnected. Good communicators are aware of this so they only direct their efforts to uncover a connection that already exists. All anyone can do is allow it to reveal itself…through availability.

Increasing the amount of eye contact that people who know you are used to is strange at first. As you start to increase eye contact you can compensate by increasing physical proximity to keep things comfortable.

Step 5: Look a stranger in the eye

Make substantially longer eye contact with people you have just met.

If you have worked your way through the last four steps sequentially and progressed gradually then you will be able to calibrate a situation well enough to develop a genuine connection with a complete stranger.

The book then goes onto applying the benefits of paying attention to eye contact in business, love, spirituality and otehr aspects of life.

[Zannie]

Very interesting

[Fran]

Reading that review it strikes me that one point overlooked (but perhaps it is mentioned in the book) is the issue of cultural difference. I think I read somewhere that in some African cultures, for example, it is considered highly offensive to look someone directly in the eye and cultures where sustained eye contact would be considered intimidation and possible aggressive.
It is a very delicate art and cultural nuances are important.

[Zannie]

I know Aborigines it is a sign of respect NOT to make eye contact.

[joshua]

Surprisingly its not mentioned in the book. The book is written for an educated american audience. The lack of any cultural variance actually drew me to the study of microexpressions. A body of work conducted by Dr. Paul Ekman, who is the basis for the character is teh TV show Lie to Me. he has some really interesting work on cross cultural expressions and provides mini courses in his website. A side note, I know, albeit a interesting one.

[Megan Young]

Sounds interesting