Eye Contact Is Important

An interesting study on eye contact, that was reported by Science Daily in 2002, found that:

"...people in group discussions will speak up more if they receive a greater amount of eye contact from other group members. There was no relationship between the impact of the eye contact and when it occurred."

Often participation is an issue in meetings, retrospectives, and on teams where you need more input from certain team members who are quiet and reserved. Agile has poker planning that naturally encourages everyone to participate in the estimating of stories. But for meetings and retros then it would be good to find other ways to encourage this participation.

So perhaps being purposeful in testing out this observation of eye contact would be worth trying. Maybe in the next meeting, where you want at least one person to contribute a bit more, you try making a bit more direct eye contact throughout the meeting to see if that person speaks up more than normal. I am unsure how to get other group members to contribute to the eye contact without things looking like a conspiracy but perhaps there is a way.