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Have you ever been to a boring
presentation? Most
of us have, and most of them are boring because there is no life
or passion in what the speaker is saying.
People remember more of what they see and hear as opposed
to what they read. But to be really memorable, we need to add
some life to what we present.
So how can we add life to our
presentations and wake up the audience?
Ever nervous?
In a sense, getting nervous before
speaking is a good thing, if you know how to properly
channel that nervous energy and use it productively to energize
your presentation. Think
of yourself as a steaming, boiling pot. You have two choices.
You can either try to keep the energy inside, or you can unleash
it and use it to help vitalize your presentation, essentially,
letting the steam out of the pot.
All too often, presenters choose to
burn off that nervous energy by fidgeting, holding or grabbing
on to things, and walking or rocking back and forth.
Learn how to dispense this energy in a
productive way. This
will make you feel more comfortable and will help you look
better. You’ll also start to enjoy giving your presentation,
you’ll relax, and the audience will feel it.
Working from the bottom up, let’s
start with your feet and a balanced stance.
Balancing Your Stance
The first thing is to adopt a stance
that both appears balanced and also allows you to keep from
needing or wanting to rock or pace back and forth. Presenters
often rock back and forth, lean towards one side, or pace around
the room in an unconscious attempt to burn off all that extra
energy that the flight-or-fight syndrome had filled the body
with. Because the glutes and the quads are the largest muscle
groups in the body, the brain knows that by moving these
muscles, the body can burn off the most amount of excess energy
per unit time.
Unfortunately, none of these movements
helps your cause. All they do is distract from your message and
telegraph to the audience that you’re really nervous. That’s
not the message that you want to convey.
You don’t have to be like Yul
Brynner in “The King and I” with your feet way apart, or
drag in like John Wayne. Consider
instead a comfortable, balanced stance.
That means hands comfortably down to
the sides (neutral position) with feet slightly apart and weight
evenly distributed on the balls of the feet. Use your knees like
shock absorbers supporting your upper body comfortably. This
will help you to avoid favoring one side over the other, and
“rocking” back and forth.
Pacin’ the Cage
Can you take a step forward or back
occasionally? Yes, but don’t start dancing or rocking (We call
this the hula-hoop). Try
to stay in one place without appearing like a tree rooted firmly
in the ground. Pacing
back and forth constantly, for no apparent reason, typically
drives the audience crazy. Yeah,
a few overzealous motivational speakers or mid-night TV kitchen
appliance hawkers may get away with it, but it generally
doesn’t fly in the business world.
On the other hand, if you’d like to
pause and take a few steps forward to elaborate on that special
point or take a step back to reflect and consider something,
that’s O.K. But
constant non-purposeful movement is weak.
Using Hands Appropriately
Then, decide what you are going to do
with your hands and learn to gesture from the shoulders, not
the elbows. Use your hands to describe and emphasize. Drop your
hands down to your side (neutral position) when you’re
starting your speech or when you’re done gesturing.
When you gesture from the neutral
position, your gestures become more emphatic. If everything
comes from the middle magnet position it looks like you are
stuck in a phone booth. Dropping
your hands down to your sides is for many difficult to do
without constant practice. With
most people, the hands immediately come back together like
magnets or start grabbing things like clothing, various body
parts like your face, or they jump back into your pockets.
If you are talking about an increase
in sales, show us by raising your arm up. If you mention
something about reducing costs, again, show us and make sure
that the gesture is different than the one you used for an
increase in sales. It’s amazing how many presenters will use
the exact same gesture for an increase as they will for a
decrease. That’s confusing.
Keep in mind that gesturing helps you
think. Have you ever noticed some-one talking on the telephone?
What do they do with the other hand that’s not holding
the phone? They gesture and they gesture continually. Why?
Because it helps them think and it helps them find the right
words. Gesturing helps you relax and find the correct dialogue.
And, you have something to do with those darned arms!
Finally, you certainly don’t want to
appear robotic, but most of us need to think about how we will
gesture for whatever concept we’re presenting, and how we will
bring our emphasis to life with appropriate hand movement.
It takes time and practice, and it needs to be well
thought out.
Peggy Noonan is fond of saying,
speaking of the audience, “They won’t care how much you know
until they know how much you care.”
Appropriate gesturing, getting your whole body involved
in the delivery process, is the easiest and most emphatic way of
showing your passion for your topic.
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