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Eye Contact and the “Me-Me-Me Syndrome”
As I covered in a previous post, we put a great deal of emphasis on eye contact in the Western world. But not everyone in the audience will feel the need to maintain eye contact with you for extended periods of time, nor will they even think of that as a sign of respect, interest, or engagement. Not everyone fits the exact same mold. Diversity is a good thing! Enough with the “me-me-me syndrome”.
Not being willing or even inclined to maintain eye contact doesn’t necessarily mean that someone has no interest in us, or the topic at hand either. Especially these days, in this recent era of hyper-solicitation and short attention spans, where everyone who uses a mobile device probably sits somewhere on a spectrum of temporary attention deficit disorder. It only means that people are different, and are learning to focus or divide their attention in different ways.
Technology is having a profound effect on how we interact with others, and it’s no different for audience members who show up to listen to us in a conference room, or a virtual environment. But then, beyond the unquestionable impact of technology, we as inclusive speakers also need to recognize cultures and neurodiversity, and how those factors will affect a person’s behaviour when it comes to how they deal with the very act of maintaining extended eye contact with the people they interact with.
