The Importance of Eye Contact

The Importance of Eye Contact

In Communication, just how important is eye contact?  Only 10% of how we understand what is being said comes from the actual words spoken.  That means roughly 90% of how we understand each other is derived from non-verbal cues including body language, tone of voice, inflection and context.  Medical scientist have confirmed that the human brain is anatomically hardwired to "read" the face.  More and more we are realizing the important role eye contact has in how we understand the message.

Here are some very real and useful tips for mastering eye contact.

1.  Use eye contact to make initial contact:  Keep in mind that communication between people happens simultaneously and begins once a person perceives that they are BEING perceived.  In other words, once I notice that you are noticing me, we are officially in communication (even if we never speak)!  This can happen seconds, minutes or even hours before a word is ever spoken, so eye contact is often instrumental in establishing the "starting point" of communication and can create a doorway to a smoother introduction between people.

2.  Observe eye messages:  One of the single most important aspect of communication is knowing your audience and what better way to gauge your audience than to utilize eye contact?  Is your audience paying attention to your message?  Is your message effective?  Are your opening jokes funny?  Does your audience seem confused or unresponsive?  Observing eye messages will allow you to determine the answers to these questions and adjust your message midstream to make it more audience friendly.  

3.  Know When to make direct eye contact:  While direct eye contact can be great, in American society direct eye contact is a nonverbal signal that encourages talking.  Thus, when asking a question of the group, look only at those whom you wish to answer.

4. Sustained eye contact is just creepy:  Nothing makes a person more nervous or uncomfortable than sustained, prolonged eye contact.  Observe people talking and you will notice that people often "check in" with each other by making direct eye contact for a few seconds and then look elsewhere.  Also, people tend to re-establish eye contact when an important point is made, a question is asked or a vocal inflection elicits a response.  Perfect this technique through observation of others.

5.  Creating Rapport:  Often, establishing eye contact can generate a kind of rapport; a subconscious feeling of being "in sync" with another person.  This feeling can often make you seem "likable" or create a feeling of ease and comfort.

6.  Treat others as you would have them treat you:  In other words, just as you utilize eye contact to make sure your message is being received, use it to show you are attentive and/or that you understand what is being said.  It is also a good way to show confusion or elicit an answer to a question without interrupting the speaker mid-sentence (assuming they are practicing good eye contact habits as well).

7.  "Watch your eyeballs":  Of course this is physically impossible, so ask a friend or co-worker to critique your use of eye contact during the preparation phase of your presentation or interview.  

8.  Dramatic Effect:  In public speaking, nothing is more effective than asking a rhetorical question and then looking at someone as if you expect them to have an answer or making a powerful statement while making eye contact with an individual.  Use this sparingly but methodically and you will have a captivated audience.

*Warning!  American audiences value eye contact and generally regard it as showing confidence and trustworthiness (attributes valued in American culture).  Rules and Etiquette regarding eye contact are very much culturally based and these suggestions are for American Audiences only.  Remember to adjust your message to your audience and take this into account in all cases.

Joke of The Day

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I Wonder if He's Insured for This...

The wonderment of Apple

By John Carroll | December 2, 2010, 10:55am PST

Summary

Apple’s current success is truly astounding when you consider the state of the company in 2000. Today, they are the company that essentially owns that segment willing to pay most for client device customizations.

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The protagonist in the book “Looking Backward,” a 19th century novel by utopian author Edward Bellamy, awakes sometime late in the 20th century and proceeds, over the course of the book, to recount what he sees there. In Bellamy’s case, the protagonist saw a socialist Utopia well entrenched in the year 2000. Clearly, prognosticators have a hard time making accurate predictions about the future (and have a tendency to project their own desires into what they see there, just ask this guy).

The world of IT moves a lot faster. Imagine a programmer hit by a bus on the way to work in 2000. He goes into a 10-year coma, awaking on November 30, 2010 with a raging desire for Chicago stuffed pizza (and who wouldn’t). Given that his memory of computers stops at 2000, he might be forgiven for assuming that Microsoft ruled not only desktop computers, but cell phones, tablets, tables, refrigerators, cars, and any other device that can make use of CPUs and memory chips (though he might have thought there would be several Microsoft’s at the time, as he couldn’t have known that Penfield Jackson’s break-up ruling would be overturned by Collar-Kotelly).

The reality, of course, would be shocking to him. Who would have expected that today, Apple, a company that was nearly on its deathbed in 2000, is now the most valuable company in IT from a market capitalization standpoint, or that they would stand atop the heap in the new device category that is proving the fastest growing segment in computing?

Nobody would mistake me for a fan of Apple products, though it’s hard to discount their success. I recently received a Brookstone catalog in the mail, and was astounded by how much stuff there is that touts its compatibility with iPod, iPhone and iPad. A recent article on Ars Technica touted iPads and MacBooks as this Christmas’ “goods of desire.” It’s all-but impossible to escape the Apple logo around LA these days, whether it glows from the back of a laptop perched on a table in a local coffee bar or is emblazoned on a gigantic ad along the Sunset Strip (though Apple seems to have given up the gigantic 12-story ad along Santa Monica, something you could easily see from the Hollywood sign).

It seems a position that will be difficult for anyone to displace. Google certainly seems to have gained  traction for Android, and as Informa noted in a presentation I saw a few weeks ago in Puerto Rico, Android will balloon in market share in the coming years. Market share, however, doesn’t necessarily translate into revenue for application developers, a point John Gruber made in a recent post on his blog. Apple seems to have collected for itself that segment of phone users who like to customize their phones. That’s a useful trick, and goes a long way towards explaining why Apple continues to have overwhelming dominance in terms of the number of applications available for an iPhone. As Gruber noted, developers go where the money is, and the people who are willing to part with it seem to gravitate around Apple products.

That, to my mind, is not surprising, as the thing that Apple understood long before any other company was that devices that you carry on your person are different. People who like to make statements about themselves tend to gravitate towards products that specialize in cultivating what Thorstein Veblen would call “invidious distinction.” This is why I don’t think Apple should lose much sleep over Android’s market share gains. Apple shouldn’t want to grow its share too high, as that undermines the statement ownership of an Apple product makes. So long as they keep investing their products with that “something special,” people will still want to upgrade their phones to the latest every year, which appears to be a unique characteristic of iPhone users. Shortly after iPhone 4 came out, I was surprised how many people walking the streets in LA converted their version 3 devices to the new platform.

Who would have thought so much could have come from dominance in digital music players?

From hindsight, it makes a lot of sense. Back in the day, I used to argue with proponents of Java (and I counted myself as one at the time) whether Sun would have much success in the client space with its new Java runtime. I thought they wouldn’t, as Sun, as a server company, didn’t understand the needs of client environments very well.

You learn what kinds of things customers need and want by trying your hand at the market. Apple’s experience with the iPod taught them how to make devices that are easy to use and personally identifiable. Well, to be honest, personally identifiable was more part of Apple’s DNA than any other company (candy-colored iMacs could only have come from Apple), but easy to use takes work. The iPod was their laboratory, and iPhone and iPad sprung from its beakers spraying money in all directions.

Cultivating the iPod was an interesting way to displace what everyone thought was Microsoft’s unshakable grip on the world of computers…though I hesitate to say Jobs was completely aware of the potential, even as I credit him for the directions the company took. Apple didn’t invest most of its energies in making a frontal assault on the PC dominance of Microsoft, a space to which the old Apple confined itself almost exclusively. Instead, they created an entirely new market segment, one that didn’t have a well-entrenched competitor, built it into a powerhouse, and used that as a beachhead from which to launch into phones and tablet devices.

I may grumble about it, but it worked. Android might squeeze Apple, but they will never displace it in phones. And in tablets? Heck, they seem on their way to running away with the category the way they did with iPods. De facto standards are hard to displace…just ask Microsoft.

As much as I hate to admit it, Objective-C and Cocoa are going to be important tools in my client development toolbox. Server technologies will always be in demand, and those are far beyond the control of a company that is essentially a force on the client. Web skills are also not to be displaced, as every device must support web apps as a baseline feature. But if you are doing anything more advanced, well, Apple has a right to demand you pay attention to their APIs. Developers know that, and the more that sinks in, the more entrenched Apple and its APIs become in the marketplace.

Joke of the Day

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Each man gives a story

Three men were standing in line to get into heaven one day. Apparently it had been a pretty busy day, though, so Peter had to tell the first one, "Heaven's getting pretty close to full today, and I've been asked to admit only people who have had particularly horrible deaths. So what's your story?"

So the first man replies: "Well, for a while I've suspected my wife has been cheating on me, so today I came home early to try to catch her red-handed. As I came into my 25th floor apartment, I could tell something was wrong, but all my searching around didn't reveal where this other guy could have been hiding. Finally, I went out to the balcony, and sure enough, there was this man hanging off the railing, 25 floors above ground! By now I was really mad, so I started beating on him and kicking him, but wouldn't you know it, he wouldn't fall off. So finally I went back into my apartment and got a hammer and starting hammering on his fingers. Of course, he couldn't stand that for long, so he let go and fell -- but even after 25 stories, he fell into the bushes, stunned but okay. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I ran into the kitchen, grabbed the fridge and threw it over the edge where it landed on him, killing him instantly. But all the stress and anger got to me, and I had a heart attack and died there on the balcony."

"That sounds like a pretty bad day to me," said Peter, and let the man in.

The second man comes up and Peter explains to him about heaven being full, and again asks for his story.

"It's been a very strange day. You see, I live on the 26th floor of my apartment building, and every morning I do my exercises out on my balcony. Well, this morning I must have slipped or something, because I fell over the edge. But I got lucky, and caught the railing of the balcony on the floor below me. I knew I couldn't hang on for very long, when suddenly this man burst out onto the balcony. I thought for sure I was saved, when he started beating on me and kicking me. I held on the best I could until he ran into the apartment and grabbed a hammer and started pounding on my hands. Finally I just let go, but again I got lucky and fell into the bushes below, stunned but all right. Just when I was thinking I was going to be okay, this refrigerator comes falling out of the sky and crushes me instantly, and now I'm here."

Once again, Peter had to concede that that sounded like a pretty horrible death.

The third man came to the front of the line, and again Peter explained that heaven was full and asked for his story.

"Picture this," says the third man, "I'm hiding inside a refrigerator..."