Presentation Delivery: What To Do With Your Hands - TJ Walker Video
One of the most common things that presenters worry about is what to do with their hands when they're speaking. Should you be wildly gesticulating to keep your audience interested? Or would it be better to keep your hands in your pockets, or locked firmly on the podium? Others suggest the one-hand-in-your-pocket approach for a best of both worlds attack on the troublesome issue.
Speaking expert TJ Walker urges us to get over the fear. We don't worry about what to do with our hands throughout the day, when we use them freely as an aid to communication, but the minute it's time to deliver a presentation, many people often become painfully aware of them.
TJ Walker tells us that:
''Nervous, scared people don't move their hands. They hold them together, they grab a lectern, they have their hands perfectly down or behind their back.
All of those things look stupid. And all you're really doing is telegraphing to your audience 'hey, I'm scared, I'm nervous, don't hate me'. Those are not the messages you want to communicate to your audience.
''
So what should you do? In the following video, taken from the excellent video and audio resource SpeakCast, TJ Walker fills you in.
''The best thing to do with your hands when you're giving a speech or you're on television is to do what you do all day long.
Move your hands.
We are biologically programmed to move our hands when we speak.
''
The popular myth that gesticulation is somehow unprofessional couldn't be further from the truth. Professionalism surely includes the ability to communicate, and communicate with confidence. If your arms are in your pockets, clutching the lectern in front of you or hanging limply by your sides, chances are you are too conscious of them, and projecting that discomfort to your audience.
As TJ Walker describes:
''The second you stop moving your hands, keeping them like this, or down here, you're tensing up your hands, you're tensing up your arms, your shoulders, and that tension gets into your vocal chords.''
The result is obvious - if you stand like a robot, you are going to start sounding like one: monotonous, measured and totally lacking in the humanity and passion that make for powerful presentations.
The main thing to consider about using your hands in presentations is this: use them as you would anywhere else.
posted by
Michael Pick
on Tuesday, December 5 2006
Tuesday, January 15 2008
URL of this article:
http://masterview.ikonosnewmedia.com/2006/12/05/presentation_delivery_what_to_do.htm
