Gestures: Putting Impact into Presentations
Author : Robert Green DTM

Date : 13-06-2005

An area of speech delivery that many people struggle with as newer speakers is gestures … just what do you do with your hands? Some techniques that people tend to use as new speakers are the “death grip” on the lectern, the “prayer for divine intervention” and the “lets make sure my fly is closed” hand position. Other alternatives include “playing with my watch/bracelet is so much fun” and these pockets are good places to hide my hands.”

All of these techniques have a similar downfall however … they distract your audience from your message. Several international recognized studies have shown that we absorb a lot of any message from the visual and when the visual message is nervousness yet the verbal message is about confidence, the audience will believe the visual.

So what do we do about it? Take some time to “People watch” when you see taking in the workplace, over dinner or even on television and observe their hands, see how they are used to illustrate the points that are being made and what looks both natural and effective. Most of us use gestures in normal social conversations but when placed in front of an audience we go rigid and wooden.

If you not using your hands leave them by your side hanging loosely, this will enable you to bring your hands up and out to form gestures more easily, and as your confidence grows during your presentation you will do so almost automatically.

As a newer speaker, look for opportunities to use gestures to illustrate your presentation. For example in your speech introduction you may mention the 3 key parts of your speech, which is an opportunity to number them off on your hand. If you are talking about something of a specific size use your hands to illustrate that for your audience, the classic for that being that the fish was this big.

While observation of others style in using their hands is useful and a valuable source of ideas, I would not suggest trying to copy a gesture for stage that you feel that “isn’t you”. Your gestures need to reflect your personality and some people are more inclined to wide sweeping gestures and others to more subtle. Neither of these are wrong, they just reflect our different personalities and that is a great thing, it would be very boring if we were all the same.

Consider your venue when planning gestures. If you are delivering a speech in front of 20 people at club, the smaller gestures can be very effective, however with larger groups where people are sitting further away from you, the subtle gestures may be lost by the distance, so slightly more expansive gestures maybe needed.

Using hand gestures is not the beginning and end of the visual aspect of your presentation, your eyes, facial expression, stance and props all add to the visual message, but your hands are an effective way to add power to your presentation.

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