I read something recently that said if a person looked up and to the left then they were lying. It is something that my elder daughter believed for a long time. It was also an accusation she liked to fire at me during her teenage years – the troublesome ones at least. What changed her mind on it was my training and becoming an NLP Master Practitioner and learning all about sensory acuity. I’ve also heard it said many times that a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing and this quote I quite readily agree with. A little bit of knowledge, in my opinion should always be backed up with further knowledge or learning.

Back to sensory acuity, what is it exactly? I checked the dictionary to get a precise definition on that and it is:

Sensory: of the senses or sensation.

Acuity: Sharpness or acuteness, as of a needle, wit etc.

Really it is an acute awareness of the senses. Having that sensory acuity can make all the difference to building and breaking relationships, be they personal or business ones. In this post I’m going to concentrate solely on the eyes, the direction they move in and what that can mean for us.

The examples I am using are based on a normal right-handed person. Like all things there are exceptions to every rule, and there are exceptions here too, fifty percent of left-handed people don’t fall into the category above, some ambidexterous or right-handed people don’t either. So this is simply a guideline.

What is going on in the head of a person whose eyes move upwards and to right, or left? What is happening when their move sideways right or left towards their ears? Can you tell what what processes they are going through when their eyes move down to the left or right. Each eye direction has a significant meaning. Learning how to interpret those meanings can make a huge difference in how we deal with the people we come into contact with on a daily basis.

By watching the way a person’s eyes move it is possible to tell what it is they are doing, what way their thought processes are working. This can be really handy in business as it is a form of feedback that we often overlook in favour of verbal or other physical responses, like smiling or nodding of heads. This is a much more subtle form of feedback. It is often the thing we do first – move our eyes and we do it unconsciously, we are all too often unaware of how other people do it too, missing out on what, once learnt, are blaringly obvious clues to how our message is getting across.

What would it be worth to you as a business person to know you have grabbed the attention and keen interest of the person you are pitching to, so well before you get the verbal signals that you could close the sale or deal easier? While you were thinking of closing that deal what way did your eyes move? Go back and see it again, only this time take note of the way your eyes move.

We all have sensory acuity to some degree, we all use it to some degree too. Some of us use it more than others, so much more that we are in a position to teach others how to use it too.