Short spoken advice on managing eye contact during one-on-one conversations. The speaker recommends mirroring the other person’s gaze (around 50–70% of the time), using focused looks of roughly 10–20 seconds, and mixing looking, pausing, and small actions (e.g., setting down a cup) to avoid staring or appearing distracted (phone/ceiling).
If you're in a one on one conversation with someone, you want to look at them, but you don't want them to feel like you're staring at them. How do you figure out what's the right amount of time to look at someone? You can follow what they do. Chances are they're looking at you maybe 50, maybe 70% of the time, then looking up to think or down. You can mirror that. You can also just focus on talking to them for 10, 20 seconds at a time. Then whether you're putting a coffee cup down, or thinking or looking up, looking. What? You want a mixture. You don't want a stare down contest, but you don't want to sit there with your eyes closed or looking at the ceiling or looking at your phone. And again.
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