Show Notes
Bart queen here, and welcome to the remarkability Institute. Now, if you've been following me over the last couple of weeks or so, we've been focused on this idea of how do you physically come across or what I call your delivery mechanics.
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00:01:42] Your delivery mechanics are just as important as your content, and many times folks will spend hours and hours and hours on crafting content. You've probably done that. Maybe you even spent all day on a Sunday. You didn't spend time with your family. You locked yourself in your home office, maybe even drove to the office, and said, I've got to get this presentation together.
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00:02:05] And you go to the nth degree on what that PowerPoint slide is going to look like, and if you're crunched on time, like the majority of folks, you're doing that kind of twisting and tweaking right up to the very last minute. What just absolutely amazes me. Out of all the years that I've been coaching and helping people is this, they spend hours and hours on making a perfect PowerPoint slide, but they won't spend any time around what does this physical thing, you're you, yourself look like when you're sharing information.
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00:02:46] Remember that I've shared with you many times that what you say and how you say it, guys, has to match. Those two things have to be the same, and when they're not the same, people don't buy into what you're saying. People buy what they see before they buy what they hear. It's got to be congruent. You've seen this many, many times.
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00:03:07] We can see this from our politicians, our world leaders, many times, maybe a government office where they're sharing information, and you go, I just don't believe what they're telling me. Often, that's because what they say and how they say it just doesn't match. You've also heard me say that if I could give this to every 17 and 18 years old, that I would know guys.
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00:03:31] Anytime I have an opportunity to travel internationally, I go overseas. I do my best to find a youth group or a nonprofit that I can give this information to. That's how important I feel like it is. Getting it out to our high school students, I think, is critical. I can sit next to somebody on an airplane, and they'll say, well, Bart, what do you do?
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00:03:54] And I'll come back sometimes, and I'll say, I'm in the confidence business. And they'll say, well, what does that mean? And I'll share with them how this skillset, just this vehicle in helping our young people, gives them the confidence to stand up on their feet, articulate their message, what they're passionate about to get out there and make a difference in whatever they want to do in their world.
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00:04:20] In my years of working with MBA students, one of the schools that I worked with came back, and they had done some type of a small survey, and they found that the students who went through this program went through this confidence-building program, learn to articulate themselves. If they practiced and showed those things during their internship, they received a 10 to 15% higher.
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00:04:45] First-time pay offer than someone who was not giving you. Giving anyone the ability to articulate what they're passionate about, what's important to them to communicate their message is the key competitive advantage that you're looking for. It will set you apart from everybody else. You and I have both heard our ability to communicate verbally, and our ability to communicate from a written perspective are the two things that will set you apart above everybody else.
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00:05:20] But it's the two things we spend the least amount of time with. So as we walked through our program today, guys, as we share our time, I want you to become aware of the number one skill. The number one skill that will separate you from everybody else. What I want you to do is not only learn about it, but I want you as soon as this podcast is over, begin to implement it with your family, with your friends, with your colleagues, with your presentations, with your demonstrations, with your WebExes, with whatever you're doing virtually.
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00:05:55] Now, here's what I'm going to promise that you're going to find. Number one, you are going to be perceived as far more confident. Number two, you're going to find that you're far more articulate in your information because you're focused because of this one skillset. And number three, and in my mind, the most important, and you've heard me say it many times, that you can exponentially grow your ability to influence people.
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00:06:22] Now, if you've been listening to some of my podcasts, I've given you an overview of your posture, the number one skill that communicates confidence before you open your mouth. I gave you some ideas and tips and tricks around movement. Now remember this, the number one reason you move is to raise that level of engagement.
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00:06:40] The question that we're going to look at today is what drives movement, and that's that idea of your eye contact in my mind. In my mind, of all the delivery skills you're going to look at the delivery mechanics, your eye contact is the number one skill you should practice. Guys, forget about posture.
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00:07:01] Forget about movement, forget about gestures. Forget about all those things. Focus just on this one. The simple idea of your eye contact. Now, here's, here's your rule of thumb. It's that simple. It's this easy if you want to come across as knowledgeable if you want to be perceived as a subject matter expert if you want to be able to drive people to take action, if you want to be influential in what you do if you want to connect with people, if any of those things mean anything to you, this one skillset.
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00:07:40] Will be the foundation. It will be the cornerstone. It will be the catalyst that will create that for you. So here's your very simple rule of thumb. Do not speak, do not speak period, unless you're looking at a soft set of eyes. Do not speak unless you're looking at a set of eyes. This will change everything.
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00:08:06] Little children do the best at this. Parents, I want you to think back when your children were, say two to about five or six. Yeah. How many times when you were at your laptop, or you're doing something, you're watching a game. One of your children came up to your side, grabbed your shirt, sleeve, your pant leg, and said, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy.
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00:08:31] I have a question for you as you think about that, as you remember that. When did they stop? They did not stop until you looked at them. Little children are brilliant cause dad, mom; if you're not looking at me, you're not listening. How many times when you were younger did a parent walk up to you and say, young man, young lady, you look at me, what I'm speaking to you.
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00:09:01] They wanted that eye contact when you were a child, or maybe how many times have you said that to your child? Young man, young lady. You look at me when I'm talking to you now, in that situation, most likely you were kind of in trouble. So make an application of a teacher that you admired, whether that was high school or college.
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00:09:24] Think about who did the majority of your teachers talk to. If I thought about that, most of my teachers talk to the chalkboard or the whiteboard as they taught, and I can tell you from my experience that's what I may be picked up my phone. I had a chit chat with a buddy. I looked at something important to me.
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00:09:45] I thought about what I was going to do after I got out of class. It gave me an opportunity to check, just check out. But guys, if you'll think about the teacher that engaged you, that you loved learning from that you said to yourself right now, if I had an opportunity to take a class from him or her, I would, I'd put a $20 bill on the table and bet the fact was that they looked at you when they were speaking with you when they were teaching you, and you were engaged in this process.
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00:10:20] The number one thing you want to do is only speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. So let's go to the other side of the coin. How many times have you been in a business situation or a business setting, and the person spent the whole time talking to their PowerPoint slide? We've all experienced that, and you're like, Ugh, this is just painful to experience.
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00:10:42] You're looking at your watch going. Okay. How much longer, I have to get out of here cause there's no engagement to it. How many times, both for you guys and you ladies, has your spouse or significant other walked into the kitchen, the living room, wherever you happen to be. You're watching the game, you're on your laptop, you're doing email, you're cooking, whatever it may happen to be, and the spouse walks in, and you continue to do what you do, and you go, Hey, on, how was your day?
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00:11:16] We've all done that, or how many times have you been doing something like that, and your child walked in maybe as a teenager and they're trying to have a conversation with you, and you're not even paying attention or vice versa. How many times have you walked into your children's room, and they're doing whatever they're doing, and you're trying to have a conversation, and they're not looking at you?
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00:11:36] Gets to be pretty frustrating. Today with our technology, most of us have our head down, and our eyes are on our phone. I always get such a kick as they filmed somebody walking across some type of an open area and they're on their phone, they're not paying attention, and they trip and fall in a fountain, or they run into somebody else, or they run into a post.
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00:11:57] We've all done that the next time. Gentlemen, here's a challenge just for us guys. The next time your spouse walks into the room that you're at and you're on your laptop, or you're watching the game, do me a big favor just as an experiment. Turn off the game, close the laptop, look up and say, Hey, how was your day?
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00:12:20] And just pay attention to their expression. Watch what happens. I can promise you one of them will say, okay, what have you been up to? Where have you been? Or how much money have you spent? Gentlemen, you'll remember that when you first started falling in love, you were Google's eyes across the table.
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00:12:43] You couldn't get enough of looking at her face. And now there are five years of marriage. There are two children. There's work. Life is busy, life is hectic, and we don't even take the time to connect. If you'll think about it, our communication is about two things. It's really about a connection and a conversation, and sometimes the people that we love and care for the most are the ones that suffer the most because we take it for granted.
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00:13:18] The number one skill that you can practice is this idea of your eye contact. So let's dive a little deeper into that and get into some principles that may help you implement this into your everyday life. Western business-standard States that I can look at you for three to five seconds, which is an acceptable amount of time and the way we do business in the Western part of the world that is acceptable for both men and women.
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00:14:32] Now, I'm not saying if you're in a group environment, you look at someone, and you go. A thousand, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4,005, I'm done with you. I'm not saying that that roughly is the amount of time that's comfortable for you to look at someone. What it boils down to is one thought per person.
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00:14:57] Just one simple thought per person in a group environment. It becomes a series of one on one conversations. Let me say that again. It is a series of one on one conversations. You can only talk to one person at a time, but what we end up doing is what most people do, which is what I call I spray. You throw your head from one side of the room to the other.
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00:15:29] Now you're going to go, Bart, I'm looking at people. Yes, you probably are, but you're not connecting with people. That becomes the key differentiator. Your eye contact gives you the ability to connect, and it allows you to focus as I'm coaching folks and looking at people many, many times. To me, they look like Rainbird sprinklers.
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00:15:54] You've seen that that kind of, as you watch a sprinkler across a lawn, they're not connected, but they're going, ah, boom, boom, boom, boom. Some people look like a lighthouse, and their head goes from one side to the other, and from that side to the other. I see this a lot in our executives, and I see this many in world leaders when they use a teleprompter.
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00:16:20] The next time you're watching an executive or a world leader and they're using a teleprompter, notice what they'll do. They'll look at the teleprompter; they'll get whatever they're supposed to say. They'll talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. They'll throw their head goes to the other side. They get what they need off the teleprompter, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and they'll go back to the other side of the teleprompter, and they're just throwing their head back and forth and back and forth.
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00:16:46] Now if they're up on a stage and they're moving, if you pay close attention, you see them get stuck in between the two teleprompters, you will never see them pass that teleprompter. But if you look at the people who know how to connect with people, they know how to use their posture, their movement, and their eye contact, they're engaging.
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00:17:07] They're not stuck in these boundaries. They're looking at a set of eyes, and they're moving toward that person, and they're engaging them. No, I gave you the idea that it's three to five seconds. So let me come back to that point just for a second. Let's say you and I have an opportunity to go-to classic, more classic Asian cultures, so I'm going to ask a question.
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00:17:32] Is that eye contact three to five acceptable in that part of the world or unacceptable? If you said unacceptable, you're correct. From a classic perspective, there, eye contact is more one to three in a classic Asian culture. It's softer. It's not right or wrong. That's just that cultural element. I distinctly remember early in my career, the first opportunity I had to go to Japan and teach.
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00:18:05] I spent one full week with a man from Japan teaching me the ins and outs of the Japanese culture and what was acceptable and what wasn't acceptable. I remember thinking, I will never remember all these things. I remember thinking, I just don't want to put my foot in my mouth. I remember thinking that once I got there, I had to soften that eye contact because I didn't want to make anyone feel uncomfortable.
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00:18:34] All these ideas are all completely driven by one of the very first concepts I gave you of being listener focused. Now, let me just mention that again. If you happen to be in a group of 15 people around a boardroom table, every single person at that table will let you know what's comfortable for them in your eye contact.
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00:18:53] So let's say I'm looking at John and we get to three seconds and he looks away. Well, John has just given me a big clue that he's not comfortable with anymore with that, but I can look over at bill or Mary or Susie. Or Margaret and I can look three to five, and they're comfortable. Everybody will give you the signal of what works for them.
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00:19:17] Your job is not to make any feel. Anyone feel uncomfortable. Your job is to connect with them, not to make them uncomfortable. Now, let's take that eye contact one step further, and I will keep this focused at just the men. We mentioned that in the Western part of the world, three to five seconds is acceptable.
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00:19:38] We talked about the classic Asian part of the world that it's more one to three. So let's go more to middle Eastern type cultures and just keep it focused around the men. Ladies, this is a different topic, a different subject. It's a different thing and eye contact with you. So from that perspective, the three to five is, is it in that culture longer?
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00:20:03] Or is it shorter? Classically, it's acceptable to look longer. It's all also acceptable from a proximity perspective. They stand closer, or you and I might feel uncomfortable in that proximity. We all have a circle, guys. These are not right or wrong things. All I want you to do is think about, is it effective, or is it ineffective?
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00:20:31] You have to be able to control your mechanics. You have to be able to control your eye contact. But the principle I want you to remember is you don't speak unless you're looking at a set of eyes. Now, if you'll take that to heart, a couple of things are going to happen. If you're doing demos and you're doing that virtually, this becomes difficult.
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00:20:52] You're going to have to focus here, but you're always going to want to talk to that laptop. If you're doing that demo face to face, you can't talk to your laptop anymore. If you're doing PowerPoint, you can no longer talk to your PowerPoint slide. You only speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. This will change everything.
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00:21:12] The majority of people out of my experience, 80% of the time when they're doing PowerPoint, 80% of the time they're talking to the slide, 20% of the time talking the customer or the client. Even if you just take that paradigm shift. 80% of the time with the customer, the client, 20% of the time you're talking to the slide, you'll find that it is not only revolutionary, but it's evolutionary and how you begin to be perceived by your listeners.
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00:21:40] The only time you speak is when you're looking at a set of eyes. Now, I'll always get somebody in class who say, okay, Bart, there's gotta be an exception to the rule. Absolutely. Of course. So a couple of things to think about. You're in the car, you're driving, and you have someone in the passenger seat. Every time you speak, you're not going to look at them.
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00:22:00] You're, you're going to crash if you do that, but you're going to glance over, you know that you do that, that's fine. The idea is to drive and push yourself only to speak when looking at a set of eyes. Are you going to be able to do that a hundred percent, no. The next time you speak at your speak with your spouse, can you make it an effort to connect with them?
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00:22:25] Of course. Can you make an effort to connect with your children? Yes. So the next time you're downstairs, and they're upstairs, instead of screaming at them, come to dinner, do your homework, whatever it may happen to be. Walk upstairs, look them in the eye, and have a conversation with them. Now, at first, they're probably going to freak out on you a little bit, just cause they're not used to it.
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00:22:49] They'll get comfortable with it. In today's world, the one thing that will set you out separate us out from everybody else. It's just that eye contact when we shake hands, just looking at someone's square in the eye. Having that nice firm handshake traditionally has always been a sign of confidence.
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00:23:11] Whether I'm 16 years old, whether I'm 12 years old, whether I'm 55 years old, you want the ability to connect. This is the one skillset that will separate you from everybody else. Now, here's what I have learned as I am sharing this with you. When we were little, as I mentioned with the children, they don't hesitate to look at people when they speak, but as we grow older, we learn the extremes.
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00:23:41] You'll recognize this. The first extreme is the idea of intimidation. We learned to get into people's faces. Most of the time, we're upset. Maybe we're angry. We step into them, and we're eye to eye. You see this in the military, maybe a drill Sergeant. Look at it, someone getting after them. They've got that incense of intimidation.
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00:24:05] I'm not talking about intimidating people. The other side of the coin, as we get older and we learn intimacy, learns how to be intimate with someone. We learn to gaze into their eyes and chat with them. I am not talking about the extremes. What I'm talking about is that the middle section is just called engagement.
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00:24:27] Your job is not to intimidate. Your job is not to be intimate. Your job is just to connect, and the best way you can connect with anyone is to look at them when you speak to the best of your ability—this one scale. If you forget about everything else I teach you around delivery mechanics or what you might call body language, if you'll just embrace this one thing, just this one thing you'll find, it will change everything in your life.
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00:24:58] I distinctly remember listening to a woman talks about eye contact guys, and I remember realizing that I truly had never looked my mom square in the eye and told her how much I loved her. I had never done that. My father had passed, and my mom, after my father passed, she and I grieved. We grieved differently, and for five years, we didn't talk to each other.
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00:25:25] I heard this woman talk about eye contact. I walked out of that little class. I went back to my apartment, I packed my bag, and I drove the four and a half hours to where my mom was at. I looked at my mom's square in the eye and told her how much I loved her and how sorry I was. My relationship with her was never the same.
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00:25:51] Shortly after that, Alzheimer's began to take my mom. What I realized was if I hadn't taken that moment to connect with her, if I hadn't taken that moment to look her in the eye and tell her how much I loved her, she would never have known that. If you look at what I'm sharing with you is only this idea of presentation skills, you're completely missing out.
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00:26:19] Oh, what I'm talking about, these are life skills. These are our communication skills. These are the things we do with our children. These are the things we do with our parents. These are the things we do with our colleagues and our customers. You and I, as humans, are begging to be engaged, and we're begging to be connected.
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00:26:41] And the best way that you can change everything in your life is one simple thing. Just start looking at people only speak when you're looking at a set of eyes. I share all this with you because it's made such a difference in my life. This skillset not only changed me personally, but it changed me professionally.
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00:27:04] They'll skillset not only became my job, but it became my passion and my purpose. My reason for wanting to share this and these podcasts is because I want you to experience what I've experienced. I want you to know that change and the difference it can make in you and the difference it will make in others.
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00:27:28] Your ability to connect and your ability to the conversation have a conversation are two of the greatest things that you can give to another human being as you roll out into your week. As you think about what I've shared, I just want you to start looking at your spouse, your significant other, and your children.
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00:27:48] Just start there for me. Guys only speak when you're looking in their eyes and watch what happens over some time.
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00:27:59] It will change everything, and it will change you guys. This is Bart queen. This has been the remarkability Institute. I can't wait to see you next time.