Recently I was visiting a party evening of the Danubia 2011 Summer School where I knew it's coordinator Kaan, since I participated there last year. My plan was just to come there, have a beer with him, chat for a while and then leave home to be fresh in the morning. When I arrived to that place I saw the students, but Kaan was busy solving some organisational things.
I really wanted to talk to him so meanwhile I decided to approach the group of strange students. I came to the table and introduced myself to all the people in my range. I tried to get them into talkative mood, but they seemed like having no interest in a strange guy that just came to their table (if this happened two years ago, my old myself would give up and leave that place, but now this was not the case). I was simply having fun sitting there and observing how the people will react on me.
Finally Kaan arrived and came to greet me and shake my hand. That raised my social value in that group (one thing that I learnt is that value of a person is never objective, but always just perceived). After a while I found myself sitting at the bar surrounded by those students who now wanted me to tell some cool stories from my Danubia experience. And yes, there are many of them :) Even though I was answering only one person's question at a time, I was keeping eye contact with everyone in the group so that nobody feels excluded.
After a while the whole group left, except of one Romanian girl. She looked like that dangerous type - a tall girl, wearing high heels, looking at me with her cat eyes. She came to me and said:
"That was amazing!"
"What do you mean?", I asked
"You were always noticing me even though you weren't directly talking to me. I felt really good being around you."
"That was amazing!"
"What do you mean?", I asked
"You were always noticing me even though you weren't directly talking to me. I felt really good being around you."
Then I invited her to sit down. I started telling her how I was learning the art of pick-up and how I would always approach a group of people and have a good chat with them, when suddenly they would start talking to each other, completely ignoring my presence in the group. I didn't want other people to feel the same way that I felt.
Since that conversation I decided to do an experiment and started paying more attention to how my friends communicated. When we were hanging out together I noticed that they would have a 1-to-1 conversation, while not looking at the other people in the group. And even though my friends are very well-educated and well-travelled, they sometimes let other people feel a bit uncomfortable in the group. It is a very little thing but can significantly influence whether all the people in the group are having fun or not.
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| Description of group dynamics concerning the eye contact |
And here comes a little homework: Next time you are out with your friends and someone asks you something that others may not have a clue about, try to talk to the whole group, glancing at the other people from time to time. You can let me know how you felt about that :)
