Confident Public Speakers Always Focus On Their Hands Instead Of Their Audience

Remember once in your public speech experience, your hands started sweating the moment you were in the backstage, it sweated even more when you stood on the stage. Your brain is blank because you worried that you might look weird, your audience might not like your content and not drawn by your speech. Yes, focusing too much on your audience will end up making you feel so anxious and fearful!

Confident people get nervous too, but they know how to trick their brains

In one experiment people were separated into 3 groups, with different degrees of restriction. It is found that the more the people are free to move, having their gesture naturally, the more FLUENT they get^[1]. It’s not hard to imagine. As you get the right words easier, you’ll less likely to panic. And by using hand gestures it’s shifting our focus from the audience to our own.

So…where to start? Below are some common hand gestures that you can incorporate into your speech easily.

1. Listing (1/2/3)

Let’s start with the most easiest one! Use your hand to show the corresponding number when you say the signposts 1,2,3. It can also help your readers to follow your flow more easily too!

2. Stop

image credit: Jack via Flickr

When you want somebody to stop talking, you can stop them by making this post, it helps add authority to your speech. You can also do it to catch your audience’s attention too. It’s powerful!

3. Using “ME”

To add more personal touch in your speech, you can point or place your hands towards your chest when you talk about something related to you.

4. Indicating the size

When you talk about something and describe their size/ degree, you can use your hand to show the corresponding level or sizes, like tiny, small, medium, large. For example, when you describe something that is big, bring your hands wide apart to show the huge space it takes.

Featured photo credit: Jack via flickr.com

Reference

[1]

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Speaking about presenting: The three benefits of gesturing – it’s not what you think

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