Key to Good Conversation- Maintain Eye Contact

"Law is a service profession. Good service depends on good communication." - Steven C. Bennett

Any profession or endeavor that involves you providing any expertise to others will demand good communication skills. We are going to cover a very important aspect of communication - eye contact.

It is important to listen to the person you are talking to, and respond based on his reactions, otherwise a conversation will become a boring monologue in no time. How can you get real time feedback of how the person you are talking to is feeling about what you are saying, figure out whether she is understanding or comprehending what you are saying or paying attention at all?

The answer is to have a good eye contact. Always make an effort to have a good eye contact with the person you are talking to, it does not only show your confidence and comfort level but also indicates that you are interested in the conversation. However, don’t burn away the retina of the person by looking at him continuously! Don’t make a person unnerved by staring at them. The purpose behind eye contact is to ensure that a connection is maintained during the conversation and if you can do it well, the other person will be much less likely to tune off.

This holds true even to public speaking. If you keep making eye contact with some people in the audience, they will be more likely to pay full attention to your speech.

Breaking eye contact is necessary so that the other person does not think you are staring at them. However, unless you break eye contact properly, it can provide wrong signals. For instance, if you break eye contact and look down or look up, it may look like you are not interested in conversation. It is better to break eye contact by looking at another person not at a very distant angle. A general technique that can be used is to look into someone’s eye for about 10 seconds and then at mouth for next 5 seconds and then keep on rotating this way. You need to couple this up with other listening skills such as nodding, saying “yes”, “yea”, “hmm” in between to show that you are engaged in the conversation and listening to what the other person is saying. Asking pertinent and good questions provide great input and leads to better conversations.

While speaking, concentrate on one eye, if you keep shuffling from left to right, instead of looking confident, you may appear insecure, inattentive, restless and confused. Its preferable to look in the left eye. The left eye is associated with the right part of brain that deals with critical and logical thinking. Hence, this helps to build trust and synergy on the task at hand.

When you are conversing with a group of people, keeping eye contact becomes a problem. In these circumstances, it is a bad idea to look at only one person, this way you will lose touch and the interest of the other people. The trick in such cases is to focus on different members of the group with every new sentence. This way you will be talking to the entire group, and maintain eye contact with everyone.

Smile as you speak, and let the smile reach your eyes. Be relaxed while conversing. Hostile eyes make the conversation awkward and uncomfortable and the other person is then more likely to bring an end to the conversation.