Where is your eye-contact?

Few weeks ago, I had been to a Business school to meet someone and I had to wait for some time. May be it was quite a long time. However I had an opportunity to make an interesting observation. There was a Faculty who was busy looking at something in his smart phone.  He was approached by a student who was giving him some updates and the faculty was responding back to him without taking his eyes off his phone. This conversation was going on for about 5 minutes and the student was trying his best to strike a decent two way conversation.  He was moving from the Faculty’s left side to right and then right side to left but he was not successful.

I was hoping that he would look at his student at least a couple of times. But it did not happen and he never failed to take his eyes off his phone. May be the faculty was looking at something very important and even in that case, taking a few minutes off to talk to the students should not have been a problem. Or the student could have been asked to wait or meet after some time.

Nowadays, a scenario like this is not uncommon. Thanks to the smart phones. However, when I observed this as a third person, it did occur to me that we also miss this basic thing at Workplace or even in our family and I wanted to share my thoughts on this.

Points to ponder.

# What if the faculty were to be speaking to his colleague instead of his student? There is a good chance that he could take his eyes off his phone. What if his principle is talking to him? The only thing he will do is to look at his principle, not his phone.

The same thing is applicable to our Workplace too, ie., if you were to be checking something in your phone, whether you would have an eye contact or not?  The chances are less if it’s your team member or a colleague and if it’s your boss, you will not look at your phone. 

The point is, with or without our knowledge, we treat people based on their hierarchy.  But if we want to build good rapport and working relationship, we need to treat all equally, not based on the hierarchy.

# Let us say, you are talking to a Doctor and he is busy looking at his phone or laptop.  However, he nods and acknowledges to whatever you say and then end of your conversation, he gives you a prescription. What would you feel in this situation?

1. First thing is, you would feel disrespected since he did not care to look at you.  After all, you are paying him for your consulting time and you would expect him to look at you, not his phone.

2) You would not have confidence in the prescription since you would not be sure if he has really understood what you said.

3) Your chances of going to him again or referring him is nil.

I think, this would be applicable to any relationship where the conversation is taking place without eye-contact.

This one is for the “smart-communicators”, just on the lighter side.

Looking at your laptop/smartphone while talking to other is wrong.

Speaking to other while looking at your phone/laptop is also wrong.

Let us have an eye-contact while talking to others, be your team member or boss or anyone.  That is the basic thing in any inter-personal relationship to show our genuineness, respect and care, be it professional or personal.

So let us keep an eye on our eye-contact..

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