What's up everybody? This is Charlie from Charisma on Command and I'm gonna have today
for you a video breakdown of charismatic eye contact. And the person I'm choosing to demonstrate
this is potentially the guy with the best eye contact in the entire world and that's
Bill Clinton. He is world-renowned for making people feel like even when he speaks them
down the line as he shakes their hand, he makes them feel like they're the only person
in the room, like they're the person that he cares most about. And people always question
what it is that creates this effect.
My hypothesis, my thesis, if you will, is that it's his eye contact. So what I want
to do in this video of the 1992 presidential debates is go through and analyze specifically
the mechanics of his eye contact, so that it doesn't remain in this mystical thing that
Bill Clinton has but that you can actually learn to practice as well.
So, right here, George Senior has just answered a question about how the national debt has
personally affected him. Bill Clinton stands up now and is about to answer the question.
The first thing you'll see that he does is he quickly closes the distance between him
and the individual speaker. So that allows him to get right up in there to make this
eye contact even more powerful.
So the first thing you'll notice and throughout this is that probably 90 to 95% of the time
that Bill Clinton is speaking, he is looking directly at this woman. He holds eye contact
with her. A lot of people struggle to do this. When they're listening, they have no problem
looking someone in the eyes but when it comes time to speak, they get very, very, very uncomfortable
with it. They can't think straight.
So the first thing that you can do to just become, literally, top 10 percentile in the
world is to look people in the eyes while you speak to them. At first it might make
you feel uncomfortable. It might make it difficult to think, but as you start to get used to
it, it enables you to do a lot of the other interesting things that you'll gonna see Bill
Clinton do. And just to call some of those out, you'll notice, he has tight narrow eyes
throughout the duration of this, so look at the shape of his eyes compared to some other people
So you'll notice here, like I said, he's got very, very narrow eye contact. One of the
reasons that this is especially powerful in men is because a heavy brow is associated
with those sort of slitty eyes, that narrow eye contact, as I'm calling it. And heavy
brow is associated with increased testosterone. It actually affects the shape of your skull.
So, while you can't change the shape of your skull, you can certainly change the degree
to which you open your eyes. Some people, you might know a few, stare bug eyed at you
when they talk and that is incredibly unnerving. Bill Clinton keeps his eye contact tight.
What he does though is he's very expressive with his eyebrows and the muscles around his
eyes. So while his eyes never go super bug-eyed on the person that he's speaking to, he has
a lot of ways to express himself without opening them. So he'll tilt his head, sort of flex
the muscles under his eyes, make his eyebrows bob up and down, so just keep an eye on that
as he continues to speak.
So you can
see sort of the intensity that that tight eye contact communicates from him. He never
goes bug-eyed like I said but he does use, by the way that he tilts his head and how
he moves his eyebrows to create an entire range of emotions that he's able to communicate.
So one thing that you can do and I highly recommend is record yourself in front of the
camera. You can do it on your computer. Tell a story and notice. Hold the camera at eye
level, look into it the whole time and then watch it back. And notice how you feel when
you're on the receiving end of your own eye contact. And I personally found that I had
this crazy bug-eyes going on. When I get excited, my eyes would open super, super big and I'd
try to communicate the intensity that I felt by doing that. And really, it just made people
very uncomfortable. So, I can't diagnose you from afar, but using a video, you can diagnose
yourself. Is your eye contact tight? Do you have a range of facial expressions surrounding
your eye, including the eyebrows, the muscles around your eye, the way you tilt your head,
that enables you to communicate a whole host of different things, with just, you know,
the muscles on your face.
So you can see this woman is nodding her head there as he speaks. She's completely hypnotized
by him. What I want to do right now is fast forward towards the end of this and see one
of the things that Bill Clinton does very well is when he breaks eye contact, it's not
an abrupt thing. In fact, as he walks away from this woman, he signifies with his body
first that he's about to leave by shifting his weight, continues to speak for a few more
seconds and only then does he look away. So that way the eye contact is not immediately
broken. There's a sense that he's about to wrap up what he says and it's almost like
saying goodbye so she knows that it's over. So just take a look.
So he starts shifting his body right here. You can see he's about to walk away.
And then he breaks eye contact. So hopefully those tips have been helpful. The first one,
the most important. Look people in the eye when you're speaking. It's tough at first,
but make sure you're doing it. Two, narrow eyes are gonna be much better, especially
with men. You can open them to communicate sort of different feelings but never go bug-eyed.
Three, be expressive with your eyebrows, your head tilts, all the muscles around your eyes
and then four, say goodbye, metaphorically, before you walk away. So before you break
eye contact, you sort of turn your body out and then walk away. That is going to make
people feel like you are fully paying attention to them and the truth is, you can't do any
of this without being present in the moment. So, hopefully you found that helpful. I have
a couple more videos on specific things like tonality, gesticulations. So if you enjoyed
this, check those videos out as well.