It’s only a slight exaggeration to say Helen of Troy could launch ships with her eyes and Davy Crockett could stare down a bear. Your eyes are personal grenades that have the power to detonate people’s emotions. Just as martial arts masters register their fists as lethal weapons, you can register your eyes as psychological lethal weapons when you master the following eye-contact techniques.
Beloved people in the game of life look beyond the conventional wisdom that teaches “Keep good eye contact.” For one, they understand that to certain suspicious or insecure people, intense eye contact can be a virulent intrusion.
When I was growing up, my family had a Haitian housekeeper whose fantasies were filled with witches, warlocks, and black magic. Zola refused to be left alone in a room with Louie, my Siamese cat. “Louie looks right through me—sees my soul,” she’d whisper to me fearfully.
In some cultures, intense eye contact is sorcery. In others, staring at someone can be threatening or disrespectful. Realizing this, big players in the international scene prefer to pack a book on cultural body-language differences in their carry-on rather than a Berlitz phrase book. In our culture, however, big winners know exaggerated eye contact can be extremely advantageous, especially between the sexes. In business, even when romance is not in the picture, strong eye contact packs a powerful wallop between men and women.
A Boston center conducted a study to learn the precise effect.5 The researchers asked opposite-sex individuals to have a two-minute casual conversation. They tricked half their subjects into maintaining intense eye contact by directing them to count the number of times their partner blinked. They gave the other half of the subjects no special eye-contact directions for the chat.
When they questioned the subjects afterward, the unsuspecting blinkers reported significantly higher feelings of respect and fondness for their colleagues who, unbeknownst to them, had simply been counting their blinks.
I’ve experienced the closeness intense eye contact engenders with a stranger firsthand. Once, when giving a seminar to several hundred people, one woman’s face in the crowd caught my attention. The participant’s appearance was not particularly unique. Yet she became the focus of my attention throughout my talk. Why? Because not for one moment did she take her eyes off my face. Even when I finished making a point and was silent, her eyes stayed hungrily on my face. I sensed she couldn’t wait to savor the next insight to spout from my lips. I loved it! Her concentration and obvious fascination inspired me to remember stories and make important points I’d long forgotten.
Right after my talk, I resolved to seek out this new friend who was so enthralled by my speech. As people were leaving the hall, I quickly sidled up behind my big fan. “Excuse me,” I said. My fan kept walking. “Excuse me,” I repeated a tad louder. My admirer didn’t vary her pace as she continued out the door. I followed her into the corridor and tapped her shoulder gently. This time she whirled around with a surprised look on her face. I mumbled some excuse about my appreciating her concentration on my talk and wanting to ask her a few questions.
“Did you, uh, get much out of the seminar?” I ventured.
“Well, not really,” she answered candidly. “I had difficulty understanding what you were saying because you were walking around on the platform facing different directions.”
In a heartbeat, I understood. The woman was hearing impaired. I did not captivate her as I had suspected. She was not intrigued by my talk as I had hoped. The only reason she kept her eyes glued on my face was because she was struggling to read my lips!
Nevertheless, her eye contact had given me such pleasure and inspiration during my talk that, tired as I was, I asked her to join me for coffee. I spent the next hour recapping my entire seminar just for her. Powerful stuff this eye contact.
Beloved people in the game of life look beyond the conventional wisdom that teaches “Keep good eye contact.” For one, they understand that to certain suspicious or insecure people, intense eye contact can be a virulent intrusion.
When I was growing up, my family had a Haitian housekeeper whose fantasies were filled with witches, warlocks, and black magic. Zola refused to be left alone in a room with Louie, my Siamese cat. “Louie looks right through me—sees my soul,” she’d whisper to me fearfully.
In some cultures, intense eye contact is sorcery. In others, staring at someone can be threatening or disrespectful. Realizing this, big players in the international scene prefer to pack a book on cultural body-language differences in their carry-on rather than a Berlitz phrase book. In our culture, however, big winners know exaggerated eye contact can be extremely advantageous, especially between the sexes. In business, even when romance is not in the picture, strong eye contact packs a powerful wallop between men and women.
A Boston center conducted a study to learn the precise effect.5 The researchers asked opposite-sex individuals to have a two-minute casual conversation. They tricked half their subjects into maintaining intense eye contact by directing them to count the number of times their partner blinked. They gave the other half of the subjects no special eye-contact directions for the chat.
When they questioned the subjects afterward, the unsuspecting blinkers reported significantly higher feelings of respect and fondness for their colleagues who, unbeknownst to them, had simply been counting their blinks.
I’ve experienced the closeness intense eye contact engenders with a stranger firsthand. Once, when giving a seminar to several hundred people, one woman’s face in the crowd caught my attention. The participant’s appearance was not particularly unique. Yet she became the focus of my attention throughout my talk. Why? Because not for one moment did she take her eyes off my face. Even when I finished making a point and was silent, her eyes stayed hungrily on my face. I sensed she couldn’t wait to savor the next insight to spout from my lips. I loved it! Her concentration and obvious fascination inspired me to remember stories and make important points I’d long forgotten.
Right after my talk, I resolved to seek out this new friend who was so enthralled by my speech. As people were leaving the hall, I quickly sidled up behind my big fan. “Excuse me,” I said. My fan kept walking. “Excuse me,” I repeated a tad louder. My admirer didn’t vary her pace as she continued out the door. I followed her into the corridor and tapped her shoulder gently. This time she whirled around with a surprised look on her face. I mumbled some excuse about my appreciating her concentration on my talk and wanting to ask her a few questions.
“Did you, uh, get much out of the seminar?” I ventured.
“Well, not really,” she answered candidly. “I had difficulty understanding what you were saying because you were walking around on the platform facing different directions.”
In a heartbeat, I understood. The woman was hearing impaired. I did not captivate her as I had suspected. She was not intrigued by my talk as I had hoped. The only reason she kept her eyes glued on my face was because she was struggling to read my lips!
Nevertheless, her eye contact had given me such pleasure and inspiration during my talk that, tired as I was, I asked her to join me for coffee. I spent the next hour recapping my entire seminar just for her. Powerful stuff this eye contact.
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