Mike DomitrzPresident, Author, and Speaker on Respect, The Center for Respect, Inc. · Author & Speaker on Respect for Schools, Corporations, & the Military since 1990 (has reached

"Your eyes tell me if you are listening and whether I matter."

5 Jul 2023 · 1 min

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In this brief presentation, the speaker calls out audience distraction—people on their phones—and asks a teammate to display a slide about eye contact. He shares a personal anecdote from his time as an assistant coach under his father, recalling a lesson taught to 7th‑grade players: “Your eyes tell me if you’re listening and whether I matter.” The speaker highlights the power of eye contact as a simple, observable cue that signals attention and personal relevance, using the story to illustrate how language and non‑verbal signals shape communication effectiveness.

Chapters

We are distracted. Somebody's on the phone. Somebody's using their cell phone while they're in studio. They're not paying attention. They're being distracted. And this one we're gonna do very quickly. So I'm just gonna— I'm telling my teammate here, Karen, to just jump to the eyes slide. There we go. I want you to jump to this one because my dad taught me this. I was an assistant coach while my dad was the head coach. He would say to these 7th grade boys— that's who we coached at the time— Your eyes tell me if You're listening and whether I matter. Oh, how powerful is that? Because what they'll do is they'll say, I can hear you when I'm looking the other way. I'm— well, your eyes tell me whether you are or not. Isn't that beautiful language? Your eyes tell me.