Bill Clinton may have the best eye
contact of anyone in the world there are
tons of stories of people from both
sides of the political spectrum being
totally charmed by him and commenting
that when he looked at them they felt
like the only person in the room that
charm may have won him the presidency in
one specific moment of a townhall debate
in 1992 and that is what we are looking
at today by the way this video is part
of our throwback Thursday series so if
you're a longtime fan of the channel you
may have seen a similar video and we do
this to update the old videos and just
to make sure that they play with even
sound and out of both headphones so
let's take a look first paying attention
to the distance of George Bush versus
Bill Clinton that's why I'm trying to do
something about it by stimulating the
export vesting more better education
system Thank You verified the first
thing is to get a sense of how far away
each person is when they're speaking
George Bush gave his answer about 25
feet away from the question asker who's
actually off screen to the right watch
now as Clinton closes that distance as
much as possible
yeah it's affected you again um you know
people who lost their lives their home
huh well I've been governor of a small
state for 12 years see how Clinton gets
as close as possible without actually
entering the crowd this lets the person
know that you are focused on them he's
actually directing all of his body
language towards the woman who asked
this question and at this distance she
gets a sense of the nuances of his eye
contact which makes everything that
we're about to talk about and that
Clinton does so much more powerful every
year Congress and the President signed
laws that makes us make us do more
things and gives us less money to do it
with notice here and how for the rest of
this video Clinton spends 90 to 95
percent of his answer looking directly
at the woman who asked the question
contrast this with George Bush who is
looking all over the place obviously it
has a lot to do with interest rates I
think that that's an important part of
being a parent if the question if you're
so maybe I won't get it wrong are you
suggesting that I was in the lomax
AMA church I don't think it I don't
think it's fair to say you haven't had
cancer therefore you don't know what
it's like to be fair a few of these
examples or times when George Bush was
addressing the entire audience which was
more of a tactical mistake than a Kara's
man
like one but other times his glances
away serve no purpose at all he wasn't
addressing the audience just letting his
gaze wander and those glances away
indicate that he sometimes has trouble
maintaining eye contact with a single
person while he's speaking and guess
what most people do most people have no
problem holding eye contact when they
listen but when it comes time to speak
they get uncomfortable holding eye
contact so they move their eyes around
they look up they look away sometimes
they look at the floor simply training
yourself to calmly focus on the other
person while you're speaking immediately
makes you more engaging now next up
let's look at the shape of Bill
Clinton's eyes notice how narrow his eye
contact tends to be I see people in my
state middle-class people their taxes
have gone up in Washington and their
services have gone down while the
wealthy have gotten tax cuts see how
narrow his eye contact is it almost
looks like he's squinting the more
narrow your eye contact the more serious
and intense your tone is going to be
interpreted and this is especially
powerful for men because a heavy brow is
typically associated with increased
testosterone now you can't go and change
the shape of your skull to give yourself
a heavier brow but you can narrow your
eye contact which will trigger those
feelings that you're being genuine
serious and powerful Clinton is doing
exactly that the genius is that he
remains expressive with his eyes by
moving his eyebrows tilting his head
nodding as he speaks so watch that and
then see how you can feel the intensity
exactly when his eye contact gets really
narrow I have seen what's happened in
this last four years when in my state
when people lose their jobs there's a
good chance I'll know them by their
names when the factory closes I know the
people who ran it when the businesses go
bankrupt I know them and I've been out
here for thirteen months meeting in
meetings just like this ever since
October with people like you all over
America that narrow eye contact is
making him come across as genuine and
genuinely affected by the recession
which is what this woman is looking for
she's looking for a candidate who feels
what she feels and clearly Clinton is
able to communicate that to her
so watch now as she starts nodding along
in agreement she sees Clinton as on the
same team as her people that have lost
their jobs lost their livelihood lost
their health insurance
next note how he shifts his weight
before he leaves
humans have tons and tons of rituals to
signify to one another that the
interaction is over and if we skip these
rituals we feel weird
other times we don't know how to start
these rituals so we stay speaking to
someone far far longer than we'd like to
pay attention to the body language in
this next clip the shift in weight
indicates that he is about to leave that
way when he breaks eye contact it's not
abrupt and you can use this when leaving
a conversation and probably already do
without realizing it this people saying
I want to go fix it but what are we
going to do but I think we have to do is
invest in American jobs and here you see
him shifting and about to walk away
American education control American
health care costs and bring the American
people together again now it's over the
biggest thing to take from everything
that I discussed is to pay attention to
how your eye contact makes other people
feel because it's one of the strongest
ways that you have to communicate and
one of the best ways to diagnose and
accomplish this is to record yourself so
set a camera up at eye level and just
tell any story get into it then watch
the video back and see how you make
yourself feel this exercise actually
helped me a ton because I realized that
I sometimes go bug-eyed when I get very
excited and you've probably notice I
still have a tendency to do this in some
of my other videos but hopefully I've
refrained from going full-on crazy eyes
because that just creeps people out make
sure to do that exercise if you're
trying to get your eye contact under
control effectively communicating and if
you're curious as to more exercises like
that we've actually set up a clip from
one of our modules called first
impressions and this clip covers the
four emotions that guarantee a great
first impression every time you just
have to hit those things in the right
order because if you don't you can
actually make a very crappy impression
if you're curious what those are go
ahead click the box that will pop up now
it's going to take you to a page where
you can drop your email and then you'll
be taken to the video on for impressions
so thank you guys so much more for
watching I'm actually planning on doing
a Game of Thrones video for the next one
because there was a very positive
feedback so let me know if you're still
interested it sounds like that's going
to be the one if you've got any comments
things that you'd like me to cover
people that you'd like me to cover go
ahead write them in the comments if
you've not yet subscribed to the channel
go ahead and do so to be the first to
see these new videos we've got new ones
on Mondays and this throwback series
every Thursday hope that you guys have
enjoyed this and I will see you in the
next
video