When you're listening to someone, your body language is crucial,
the most important part of your body, your eyes.
Now you don't want to be staring someone down like you've seen a ghost or
you're trying to haunt them or something.
But most of the time you do want to be looking at the person who's speaking.
Of course, you can look away for a moment.
But what you don't want to do as we've talked about, staring at phones,
daydreaming, talking to the person next to you.
It really sends a signal to the person in the workplace speaking to
you that you don't care, you're not paying attention.
Now you want to look relaxed, comfortable, pleasant, so
again, it's not this intense, furrowed brow.
And I do realize there are some differences in different cultures.
In Japan for example, the ultimate sign of respect, if you're a speaker and
you have people in the audience is eyes can be closed,
because they're concentrating so intently on what you're saying.
So there are some cultural differences around the world.
My advice, I think, is going to help most people most the time in most places,
certainly in Western cultures.
But you're going to have to filter this through what works in your own culture.
But that's the first really big body language tip is you just gotta
look at the person.
Now if it's a one on one conversation, we've all experienced this,
whether in business meetings more often in social situations,
where the person's looking, nodding, and looking behind you to see,
is there something more interesting, someone more interesting there?
That's a huge turnoff for people, if they feel like you don't think they're
important, they're not worthy of you looking at them, it's going to make them
annoyed, and distract them from what they're trying to convey.
So I'm going to give you more tips in the next lecture on other aspects
of body language, but I wanted to put a special spotlight on the eyes.
Your eyes are powerful, it is just so
much easier to understand someone, and
really hear them, and remember what they're saying,
if you're actually looking at them.
Because if you're looking at them, by definition,
you're not reading Facebook messages, you're not reading tweets.
You're not looking at the birds outside and the airplanes, and
your mind is more focused on what they're saying.
So you can make a lot of other mistakes, and you can maybe sit with your arms
crossed that someone else would say is a body language faux pas.
If you're really looking at the person speaking to you,
the vast majority of the time they're speaking, you'll be in good shape.