A Mexican corporate affairs manager spends the weekend before a big London pitch working through a business masterclass online. Lesson four says that holding eye contact is the single biggest signal of trust one can send.

He walks into the meeting and does exactly that. Steady gaze, no breaking away, right through the whole pitch.

Twenty minutes in, his British counterpart has shifted in his seat three times and started looking at his notes more than the slide deck. The deal doesn't close that day.

The situation

From the corporate affairs manager's side, he nailed it. Every course and workshop he's ever attended, plus his experience working in English with the United States, say the same thing: hold the gaze, it reads as confident, honest, and in control. He walked out of the meeting feeling like he'd delivered his best pitch yet.

From the British counterpart's side, something felt off almost immediately, though he couldn't have named what. To him, a stranger holding his eye that steadily, that long, read as pressure, not honesty. He found himself wanting more distance, not less.

Neither of them thought the meeting had gone badly for the same reason. One thought he'd built trust. The other just wanted the conversation to end.

The friction

That masterclass, like his international business background, came out of American sales culture, and so does most of the business coaching available online: the courses, the LinkedIn posts, the negotiation books. Nearly all of it treats sustained eye contact as a straightforwardness signal, as confidence, as something to perform on command.

The Slot System™ logic doesn't read it that way. This side of the Atlantic, held, unbroken eye contact from someone you've just met crosses into someone else's space, literally. It invades the personal-space bubble the British carry into every meeting. It lands as intrusive, pressurising, and a tad too intense for a first meeting.

The Loop System™ logic doesn't teach eye contact as a technique either. For Latin Americans, sustained eye contact is a byproduct of warmth, something that shows up once the room is comfortable, not something you install to get there. Neither system actually works the way the American-style masterclass claimed. The corporate affairs manager had learned a third logic and applied it as if it were universal.

Slots v. Loops™ in action

If most of your coaching on this has come from American content, and most of what's online has, treat 'hold eye contact' as culturally specific advice and not as a universal rule. In a UK room, aiming for natural, intermittent eye contact yields better results. Hold it briefly while greeting someone, or to make a point, and then let it go.

If you're in a Latin American room and the warmth in the room is real, trust the connection you've already built and what it reflects to do the work on its own. You don't need to manufacture the eye contact. It shows up naturally once the room actually feels comfortable and forcing it early can crowd out the exact thing it's meant to signal.

The fix is knowing which coaching and/or business experience you're running on, and checking it against the room you're actually in.

Remember, all people are different people... and all rooms are different rooms.

Over to you

Think of the last time you followed advice that's supposed to work everywhere. Did you ever check whether it actually worked in the room you needed it most?

Until next Tuesday,

Cecilia