Lorraine K. LeeFounder & CEO at RISE Learning Solutions

Tip of the Day: Eye Contact

27 Jan 2022 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:06

In this short tip video, Lorraine K. Lee advises professionals to appear more confident and competent during video calls by maintaining direct eye contact with the camera rather than looking at the screen, side content, or another monitor. She explains that looking away makes the speaker seem disengaged, while looking straight ahead conveys focus and connection. Lee likens eye contact on virtual meetings to the oxytocin‑releasing effect of a handshake in person, positioning it as the primary bonding mechanism online. The video concludes with a call to subscribe to her newsletter for more tips.

Chapters

Today's tip of the day is about coming across more confident and competent to your colleagues on video calls so that you get noticed and get more opportunities. The tip is to make sure that you're making eye contact. Now, I still see this a lot on video calls, people either looking at the person on the screen, at the content off to the side, or sometimes at an entirely different monitor. Now, if I were to record this tip, this video, looking off over here, even over here, It looks strange. It looks like I'm not paying attention to you and I look disengaged. But when I look forward ahead right at you, I look a lot more focused. I'm listening to what you're saying and we can feel connected. When we're in person, we can do things like shake each other's hands and that physical touch releases oxytocin, which is the bonding hormone. On virtual calls, eye contact is going to be the way that we do that. Now, for more tips like these, uh, you can subscribe to my newsletter at lorraineklee.com/learn, and I look forward to seeing you there.