Making good eye contact is tough. Give too much eye contact, and you come across as too intense (at best) or a creepy starter (at worst).
Give too little eye contact, and the other person might think you don’t care about what they have to say.
Plus, when you’re worried about making good eye contact, the rest of the interaction suffers. Instead of enjoying a great conversation, you’re stressing about eye contact.
Making eye contact can be tricky, especially if you are shy, or nervous, but good eye contact is important for building trust and engaging an audience. Even if you struggle to hold eye contact now, all it takes is a little practice to confidently hold someone’s gaze.
Different people feel comfortable with different levels of eye contact. But almost everybody will initiate the amount of eye contact that they feel comfortable with. That means that if you give them the same amount of eye contact that they give you, they’ll probably feel comfortable.
Also, some people feel uncomfortable when making eye contact, and a lot of different reasons can cause it. Sometimes, avoiding eye contact is something that you do consciously or unconsciously. Some suffer from trauma. Some have attachment and intimacy issues. Some are uncomfortable with who they are and therefore don’t wish to be seen. Some may have something to hide. And others may simply be shy, or inexperienced.
In closer relationships, making eye contact with someone for 4-5 seconds before glancing away is normal, but this is way too long to look at a stranger or someone with who you aren’t in a conversation. The closer you are to someone, the more acceptable it is to make long periods of eye contact with them.
Avoid making too much eye contact with strangers, as this can make them feel threatened or insecure. Make more eye contact with anyone you’re directly talking to, especially if it’s a 1:1 conversation. Watch for signs that they are comfortable, and adjust how much eye contact you make based on their body language.
Make more eye contact during high-stakes, formal, or professional interactions. For instance, eye contact in interviews or work presentations helps you make a good, lasting first impression. Good eye contact in a professional interaction also makes people more likely to see you as credible, trustworthy, and persuasive.
During a conversation, you can use eye contact as a tool to help you communicate more effectively. Making eye contact with someone during a conversation is one of the best ways to ensure that communication is clear and understood by both people, both people leave the interaction feeling heard, respected, and understood, the intended messages are sent and received, each person knows what the other thinks and feels about the topic, you don’t accidentally offend someone, you can pick up on social cues, lines of communication remain open in the future, people remember you and the things you say, you know how your message is being received and interpreted, you build and maintain good, close relationships with people, and people are honest and open with you.
Eye contact can either support or discredit the words you say. When you don’t make good eye contact with someone you are talking to, other people are less likely to listen and understand what you’re saying, and miscommunications are more likely to occur. Eye contact has several functions when you are the one speaking.
When you are speaking to someone, good eye contact helps to add credibility to what you are saying, make you seem more sincere or authentic, get and keep the other person’s attention, confirm whether or not someone understands you, understand how the other person is responding to what you’re saying, and give your words more credibility.
Eye contact is equally helpful when someone else is talking to you. Avoiding eye contact with someone with who you’re in a conversation can send them the message that you aren’t listening to them and can even be seen as rude.
When someone else is speaking, making eye contact with them helps to show interest in what they are saying, prove you are listening and paying attention, show respect towards them, show them you understand what they’re saying, generate trust and closeness with them, encourage them to continue the conversation, and be more open and honest with you
There are many ways that a lack of eye contact can negatively impact communication, making misunderstandings more likely to occur. Not making eye contact with someone in a conversation can also lead people to believe you aren’t listening or interested in what they say and can even offend someone.
When you avoid making eye contact with someone you are communicating with, it can make you seem less trustworthy or honest, make your words less memorable to them, send them the signal that you don’t want to talk, make them believe you dislike them and cause you to miss important social and nonverbal cues.
Tips for mastering eye contact:
Because it’s common for people to feel nervous when speaking in public or front of large crowds, some people avoid making eye contact with the audience. Unfortunately, this can make your speech or presentation a lot less impactful.
When you are delivering a speech or presenting in public, making eye contact helps you be seen as an effective and engaging speaker:
1. Try making eye contact more gradually.
Nothing comes easy, and you wouldn’t forget about the anxiety of making eye contact overnight. If you weren’t used to looking people in the eyes, it could be hard to be consistent in doing it every time you are having a conversation with someone.
The key is to ease yourself into it and try to make eye contact gradually. Don’t expect to improve your eye contact skills from 0 to 100 overnight. It would be much more helpful if you work your way up slowly, but surely, until making eye contact comes naturally and effortlessly to you.
2. Start working on the easier aspects of making eye contact first.
There are different aspects of eye contact, some easier to do than others. And when you are easing yourself into making eye contact naturally, it will be much great if you can start with the easier aspects first.
If it becomes a bit too much for you to consciously plan how you would improve your eye contact skills, focus on making eye contact as much as you can other than focusing in times that you can’t do it.
3. Give yourself time and your eye contact muscles.
Making eye contact naturally and effortlessly takes time and a lot of practice. Plus, it can be a bit of hard work to train your eyes to maintain eye contact instead of wandering at other things while you are in a conversation. So, give yourself time to master this skill and your eye muscles to ease into maintaining eye contact.
4. Practice with the TV.
If you are not confident with your eye contact skills yet, you don’t have to practice it with other people if you don’t want to. You can try using the TV for practice. To do this, try making eye contact with the characters you see on the TV screen and focus on them like you are talking to them in real life.
Also, this practice can help you study how people use the way they make eye contact to communicate with other people.
5. Practice making eye contact before you strike up a conversation with someone.
Otherwise, it would be much harder to look in their eyes if you’ve started to focus on talking with your eyes looking down.
6. Make use of the 50/70 eye contact rule.
Make eye contact 50% of the time when you are speaking with someone and 70% when you are listening to them.
7. Instead of looking away from their face completely when breaking eye contact after a few seconds, you can look at other spots of their face instead.
Just imagine an inverted triangle. Look at one of their eyes than the other and then their mouth. Rotate at which point of the triangle you are looking at every five or so seconds.
Generally, it is not easy, but completely necessary, to maintain eye contact when talking or listening to someone. Eye contact is an important aspect of communication. Lack of eye contact or too much of it can give off your feelings towards the person you are talking to.
Eye contact is often seen as one of the most important aspects of communication. Making too much eye contact or not enough eye contact can violate unspoken social norms and rules, offend someone, or make them uncomfortable. Learning basic eye contact etiquette can help you, but it’s also helpful to use your eyes to look for social cues and signs. Using your eyes can help you become better at communicating, relating, and connecting with other people.