Eye Contact carries immense importance in any interaction - formal or informal.
Eye Contact plays very vital role in non verbal communication
Eye contact is mutual gaze where both people look at each other at the same time.
Maintaining eye contact signals genuineness
Confident eye contact can work wonders on how other people perceive you.
Eye Contact shows you are a person worthy of communicating with.
It tells them you respect them, acknowledge their presence, and are interested in the conversation.
By making eye contact, you will improve the quality of your interactions.
If you cannot make effective eye contact with strangers or may find it difficult to maintain eye contact with opposite gender or attractive personality or person with senior position you may consider below tips by maintaining a fake eye contact
Draw an imaginary inverted triangle on the other person's face around their eyes and nose.
Another trick is to imagine a letter “T” on the listener’s face. Start from his left eyebrow, move towards right eyebrow and come straight on nose
With above tips person with whom you are interacting will still feel that you are maintaining an eye contact. Once you are comfortable in conversation you may continue with normal eye contact.
You must keep your eyes focused while you talk as well as listen
Looking up when you're talking is sometimes thought to suggest that you're lying, while looking down is sometimes thought to signify confusion on your part.For this reason, it's usually best to look straight ahead, even if you're feeling uncomfortable and can't keep your eyes making contact.
More than 7 seconds eye contact
More than 7 seconds eye contact will be taken as aggression
Post 7 – 10 seconds break eye contact and resume again
Break your eye contact to nod, or make other gestures while listening
Practicing an Eye contact
Use practice sessions to remind yourself to make an eye contact.
A big part of making eye-contact is just remembering that you're supposed to.
If your natural inclination is to stare down at your shoes, try to practice when you're alone to realign your natural response to gaze by focusing your eyes on faces. This can be done on television, in the mirror
Focus on making eye contact with the characters on the screen
Try looking up YouTube blogs and other videos in which people make eye-contact with the screen.
If you have a close friend who you enjoy talking to, try using Skype