‘Make eye contact’ is the simplest piece of advice that coaches in this field can give.  It’s so simple — why would you imagine you could get away with not looking at your audience? — that it’s hard to believe people both need and give this advice, for money.

But is there anything more to it?  I was watching a U-Tube clip of Tom Cruise in a dull moment the other day and I realized that there are some important subtleties to making eye contact.  Tom was talking to Oprah about jumping on couches, Katie, Suri, and scientology, and other such weird issues, and he was making eye contact with Oprah, across his own couch. 

But his eyes were narrowed to (nearly) slits, and the effect was that he radiated distrust.  And so, we don’t trust him. 

The first sophisticated rule of eye contact, then, is that if you’re going to make eye contact, you have to do it with your eyes wide open.  Not shut, or almost shut.  If the lights are bright, or you’re near-sighted, tough.  Learn to compensate.  It’s so basic to our reading of you, that you’d be better off wearing dark glasses if you’re going to squint. 

The second sophisticated rule of eye contact is that you actually have to make eye contact.  With individuals.  For up to 30 seconds.  You can’t look over the heads of the crowd (a lot of speakers do this when they’re too nervous to look at the audience), and you can’t dart your eyes around nervously like a lizard’s tongue.  Imagine you’re having a conversation with people — better yet have a conversation with individuals in the audience — and look at them fixedly-but-not-too-fixedly, just like you would in a real conversation. 

The third sophisticated rule of eye contact is that you should be monitoring the extent to which your audience is making eye contact with you.  It’s a simple way to guage interest in the talk.  If 80 percent of them are focused on you, you’re OK.  If 80 percent (or even 40 percent) are focused elsewhere, you’re in trouble.

Eye contact, like other aspects of human communication, can potentially convey many meanings.  Make eye contact, to be sure, but be careful that you’re doing it right.