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Use Gestures to Engage Your Audience
Added: (Fri Oct 23 2009)
Use Gestures to Engage Your Audience
What makes one speaker appear confident, natural, and enthusiastic while another speaker with an equally important message appears nervous, scripted, and boring? Often it’s the speaker’s use of gestures—those natural body movements that animate and punctuate any message.
Over well know and qualified Coaches like Speech Coach San Francisco, Speech Coach Marin, Speech Coach Napa Valley, Speech Coach Silicon Valley, Speech Coach California and Top Speech Coach Bay Area has came up with some fundamental but very use full rules.
Rule #1: Avoid Closing off the Mid-Line of the Body
Rule #2: Make Your Gestures Strong and Precise
Rule #3: Vary Your Use of Symmetrical Gestures
Rule #4: Keep Gestures High
Rule #5: Make Sure Your Gestures Are in Sync with Your Message
Rule #6: Stay Connected
Gestures include more than just your hands and arms. For powerful and compelling speakers, the term “gestures” includes all the body movement that takes place above the waist, including the head, neck, shoulders, and torso movements.
Fortunately, we all have a natural, easy way of using our hands, arms, and upper body and all this is Public speaking and presentation skills when we talk to someone. The way you gesture is part of your everyday communication style. But many business professionals are far more animated at breaks and in side conversations than when they get up to give a presentation.
How many times have you witnessed the following scenario: During a speaker’s formal remarks, she appears stiff and her gestures seem contrived? You think to yourself that she must be nervous and unprepared. And even though her message is important, you just can’t seem to pay very close attention. But then, during the question and answer portion of the presentation, the speaker suddenly comes alive. Her upper body is relaxed and animated. Her hand and arm movements actively reinforce her key points. She seems genuinely connected to her audience. You feel that you learned more during the short Q&A than during the entire formal presentation.
Such a scene is common in the business world, as people mistakenly believe they can’t “be themselves” during both the formal and informal segments of a presentation.
Gestures can effectively showcase your enthusiasm, confidence, and authority. They can help bring a presentation to life and hold the audience’s interest and attention. Effective gestures clarify and support your message, add dramatic interest to your ideas, and stimulate audience involvement. They are an essential part of your craft. But since they are most useful in supporting your message, be careful that you don’t go overboard. You don’t want your audience focusing more on your whirling hands or wiggling shoulders than on your message. For more info visit www.definiscommunications.com