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.
Sticky eyes also means intelligent eyes
There is yet another argument for intense eye contact. In addition to awakening feelings of respect and affection, maintaining strong eye contact gives you the impression of being an intelligent and abstract thinker. Because abstract thinkers integrate incoming data more easily than concrete thinkers, they can continue looking into someone’s eyes even during the silences. Their thought processes are not distracted by peering into their partner’s peepers.6
Back to our valiant psychologists. Yale University researchers, thinking they had the unswerving truth about eye contact, conducted another study which, they assumed, would confirm ‘the more eye contact, the more positive feelings.’ This time, they directed subjects to deliver a personally revealing monologue. They asked the listeners to react with a sliding scale of eye contact while their partners talked.
The results? All went as expected when women told their personal stories to women. Increased eye contact encouraged feelings of intimacy. But, whoops, it wasn’t so with the men. Some men felt hostile when stared at too long by another man. Other men felt threatened. Some few even suspected their partner was more interested than he should be and wanted to slug him.
Your partner’s emotional reaction to your profound gaze has a biological base. When you look intently at someone, it increases their heartbeat and shoots an adrenaline-like substance gushing through their veins.7 This is the same physical reaction people have when they start to fall in love. And when you consciously increase your eye contact, even during normal business or social interaction, people will feel they have captivated you.
Men talking to women and women talking to men or women: use the following technique, which I call Sticky Eyes, for the joy of the recipient – and for your own advantage. (Men, I’ll have a man-to-man modification of this technique for you in a moment.)
Technique 2:
Sticky eyes
Pretend your eyes are glued to your Conversation Partner’s with sticky warm toffee. Don’t break eye contact even after he or she has finished speaking. When you must look away, do it ever so slowly, reluctantly, stretching the gooey toffee until the tiny string finally breaks.
What about men’s eyes?
Now gentlemen: when talking to men, you, too, can use Sticky Eyes. Just make them a little less sticky when discussing personal matters with other men, lest your listener feel threatened or misinterpret your intentions. But do increase your eye contact slightly more than normal with men on day-to-day communications – and a lot more when talking to women. It broadcasts a visceral message of comprehension and respect.
I have a friend, Sammy, a salesman who unwittingly comes across as an arrogant chap. He doesn’t mean to, but sometimes his brusque manner makes it look like he’s running roughshod over people’s feelings.
Once while we were having dinner together in a restaurant, I told him about the Sticky Eyes technique. I guess he took it to heart. When the waiter came over, Sammy, uncharacteristically, instead of bluntly blurting out his order with his nose in the menu, looked at the waiter. He smiled, gave his order for the appetizer, and kept his eyes on the waiter’s for an extra second before looking down again at the menu to choose the main dish. I can’t tell you how different Sammy seemed to me just then! He came across as a sensitive and caring man, and all it took was two extra seconds of eye contact. I saw the effect it had on the waiter, too. We received exceptionally gracious service the rest of the evening.
A week later Sammy called me and said, ‘Leil, Sticky Eyes has changed my life. I’ve been following it to a T. with women, I make my eyes real sticky, and with men slightly sticky. And now everybody’s treating me with such deference. I think it’s part of the reason I’ve made more sales this week than all last month!’
If you deal with customers or clients in your professional life, Sticky Eyes is a definite boon to your bottom line. To most people in our culture, profound eye contact signals trust, knowledge, an ‘I’m here for you’ attitude.
Let’s carry Sticky Eyes one step further. Like a potent medicine that has the power to kill or cure, the next eye-contact technique has the potential to captivate or annihilate.
Bring on the big guns
Now we haul in the heavy eyeball artillery: very sticky eyes or superglue eyes. Let’s call them Epoxy Eyes. Big Bosses use Epoxy Eyes to evaluate employees. Police investigators use Epoxy Eyes to intimidate suspected criminals. And clever Romeos use Epoxy Eyes to make women fall in love with them. (If romance is your goal, Epoxy Eyes is a proven aphrodisiac.)
The Epoxy Eyes technique takes at least three people to pull off – you, your target, and one other person. Here’s how it works: Usually, when you’re chatting with two or more people, you gaze at the person who is speaking. However, the Epoxy Eyes technique suggests you concentrate on the listener – your target – rather than the speaker. This slightly disorients Target and he or she silently asks, ‘Why is this person looking at me instead of the speaker?’ Target senses you are extremely interested in his or her reactions. This can be beneficial in certain business situations when it is appropriate that you judge the listener.
Human resources professionals often use Epoxy Eyes, not as a technique, but because they are sincerely interested in a prospective employee’s reaction to certain ideas being presented. Lawyers, bosses, police investigators, psychologists, and others who must examine subjects’ reactions also use Epoxy Eyes for analytical purposes.
When you use Epoxy Eyes, it sends out signals of interest blended with complete confidence in yourself. But because Epoxy Eyes puts you in a position of evaluating or judging someone else, you must be careful. Don’t overdo it or you could come across as arrogant and brazen.
Technique 3:
Epoxy eyes
This brazen technique packs a powerful punch. Watch your target person even when someone else is talking. No matter who is speaking, keep looking at the man or woman you want to impact.
Sometimes using full Epoxy Eyes is too potent, so here is a gentler,
