Are you a sales manager looking for better participation in your regular sales meetings? There's an interesting study that you might use to secretly increase your staff's participation in the meeting.
Let's say you want to encourage a certain salesperson to contribute more in your regular weekly meetings. Instead of making him feel self-conscious by calling on him during the meeting, you can use the power of your eyes to get him to speak up.
Sciencedaily.com published a study in which subjects were told that they were participating in a three-way video-conference with other participants - and that they were to attempt to solve language puzzles as a group. The "other participants" were actors whose images were electronically transmitted to the 
subjects - and during the so-called video-conference, they made various degrees of eye contact with the subjects (looking at the camera intensely, looking away, and so on). What the researchers discovered was that people in group discussions will speak up more if they receive a greater amount of eye contact from other group members.
Before some managers came across this technique, they were often frustrated when they was trying to get someone to open up to them and share their thoughts. Simply making eye contact with them made a huge difference.
Effective communication is critical to success in any management endeavor. Knowing how to use the eyes to encourage people to speak up are just two of the powerful communication skills you should develop.
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