Ep 6 What to Do with Your Hands When Speaking

So you're giving a speech or a presentation. What in the world are you supposed to do with your hands?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

Folks, I told you, we go in depth here. This entire program is going to be devoted exclusively to hands. What do you do with your hands when you're giving a speech or presentation? For the next 15, 20 minutes, I'll be going through all the intricacies of dealing with your hands when you speak. This is a huge, huge concern for a lot of people. I've been training executives, politicians, authors, experts, you name it, for more than 30 years, from six continents, every kind of language and culture imaginable. And in every group I work with, inevitably someone will say, well, D.J. what do I do with my hands? And they will sort of stand up and. As if their hands have been stapled to their shoulders and they don't know what to do with them. There is this sense that, and it's an old myth, I believe, that somehow it's not professional to move your hands when you speak. And in pop culture, you see Will Ferrell in, I guess it's Talladega Nights, where he's all of a sudden, his hands are floating all over the place. It's wildly comedic. Here's the thing, though. You see it in sitcoms, you see it in TV movies, other movies of someone going on a talk show and their hands doing all sorts of funny things in general, in real life, I find it's not as big a problem as people think moving their hands. Now, what is a problem is holding your hands, holding a lectern, holding a pen, putting your hands in a fig leaf position in front of you, clasping your hands behind you as if you've been handcuffed. That actually causes a much, much bigger problem. So this is one of these situations where the solution to the problem is actually much, much worse than the alleged problem. So please keep that in mind. We'll continue more in a moment.

Body language.

Body language. Your hands. That's what your hands doing or not doing. That's what they're communicating. They're communicating. Body language. Here is what I have found in a nutshell. When I work with executives all over the world, everybody moves their hands. When people are comfortable and confident in speaking about something they care about, they move their hands. When they are nervous, they freeze their hands. They tense up their hands. They want to hold papers, pens, lecterns. The problem with that is subconsciously or at the gut level the audience perceives you as nervous. Well, let me ask you, why in the world would you want anyone to perceive you as nervous or as uncomfortable? I can't for the life of me figure out why you would want that. So even if you are nervous, and it's perfectly fine to be nervous, whether you're going on tv, you're giving a major speech or presentation, you should want to do the things that people associate with comfortable, confident speakers. Now, one of the things that you can do to help you with your hands is I have a very, very extensive online course. I'm giving it to you at absolutely no charge. Take a moment to jot down the information on this and then we'll get back to the show on hands.

For a free, no obligation, online public speaking or media training course, go to mediatrainingworldwide.com and start learning today.

And that course does, by the way, have some detailed lectures and course instruction on what to do with your hands. Now, I'm going to tell you, really, I'm giving away some trade secrets here on exactly how I help people figure out what to do with their hands when I'm in a training. And for example, a prime minister or president of a country has hired me to help them figure out how to communicate more effectively with their style, their substance, their body language, and even what to do with their hands.

Inside doe the craft of media and presentation training.

Here's what I do, and you can do this as well. When I'm working with someone, I have a video camera and it's just an inexpensive consumer grade camcorder, $200 camera. You can just use your cell phone. I'll do practice speeches and interviews where I turn the light on. They know they're on and it's a practice media interview. I have the mic in their face, but then what I do is I'll turn the light off, drop the mic on the floor, ask them a question, how did that feel? And typically they think they're not being recorded. Their hands come way up. Their hands are all of a sudden very, very expressive. Their hands are up, they're gesturing. Everything looks completely comfortable, confident and relaxed. But their hands are moving and their face is moving. Everything is moving in sync. In my experience, not 100%, but about 99% of people move their hands when they're comfortable and confident. I secretly tape this. We then go back, watch the video of them giving the set speech or the media interview where their hands are frozen or stiff or uncomfortable. Ask them what they like, don't like, they may comment that it looks a little stiff or uncomfortable. And I will say, hey, Samantha, do you ever think about gesturing? Or bill, do you ever think about moving your hand some? And they'll typically say, well, no, T.J. i never do that. I couldn't possibly do that. I never move my hands when I speak. Of course, they're moving their hands the whole time they're saying this. And I might actually be secretly recording that as well. And then I say to them, okay, how would you like to see a role model? Someone better than you, someone who looks even more comfortable, more confident, more relaxed than you? Would you like that? They say, sure, T.J. they think I'm going to show them Tony Blair or Oprah or some Winston Churchill, someone like that. Instead, I just fast forward to the section of the video where they were being recorded and didn't realize it. And they see their hands are moving a great deal. And I said, there's your example, there's your role model right there. You just need to move like this person. Look how this person looks. Comfortable, confident, relaxed. It's an eye opening moment for people, but it is hugely, hugely helpful to them and it really makes them realize they do need to move their hands. That's not what you hear from a lot of people. Unfortunately, there is. There's a different school of thought.

Bad advice.

One of the top pieces of bad advice out there is that you somehow need to not move your hands, that it's distracting to move your hands. I know many of you believe this. I simply have no evidence. And I would contend you don't really have evidence that moving your hands when you speak does distract your audience. Now, there's certainly evidence that if you're talking to 100 people and you do gesture, you do move, one person may come up to you and say, well, I didn't like the way you used your hand. And it's possible that if you asked everybody how many of you thought this speaker moved their hands too much, maybe 10% would. I would contend that if you didn't plant the seed with people by asking them, that, they wouldn't realize. I occasionally will have someone write to me on a YouTube channel or one of my videos that, TJ, why do you move your hands so much? And I always ask, compared to what? Here's my question to you regarding hands. I want you to think right now of a speaker you like. You like their content, you like their substance, you like their message. I want you to think of a speaker you find as an interesting, engaging speaker. And now tell me a speaker like that, who you think moves their hands too much. Now, I've asked that question of clients for years and I've never really had anyone come up with a good answer. It's typically, well, I know this person gave a horrible speech and they were. That's not what I asked. I want to know who is somebody you like as a speaker with their message, you like their content, you like their substance. It's memorable, interesting, useful, and you felt that their hands moved too much. Now, if somebody is already an awful, awful speaker and there's nothing else you could possibly remember, is it possible you could remember somebody who does something really distracting and waving their hands? It's possible. Here's what I have noticed as a practitioner of the trade, when I'm quite often doing a public speaking or media training seminar with a small group of people, eight, ten people, one person will speak, will capture on video or do an interview. We'll record it, watch it. I'll ask that person, what do you like? What do you not like? Invariably, people will say, oh my God, T.J. i moved my hands way too much. It was awful. I'm sure glad you showed me that. I really learned my lesson. I learned I better hold my hands down. And my response is always, really? Are we certain that's the lesson? Let's just take a quick focus group count right now. How many of you thought that John's hands were a wildly distracting, awful, horrible, unprofessional show of hands and without me prompting anyone, without me feeding them or even telling them my philosophy of hands? Invariably what happens is people say, oh no, I thought John seemed comfortable and confident. I didn't really notice it until you mentioned it, but the way he moved his hands, he looked comfortable, confident and relaxed. They didn't bother me at all. 95% of the time, that's the response I get from everyone else in the room. So for whatever reason, when people see their own hands moving on video, it looks strange, weird, scary, odd. But when they watch other people moving their hands, it doesn't look strange, it doesn't look weird, it doesn't look. It just looks natural. So please keep that in mind. And that's frankly one of the problems with getting feedback from well meaning colleagues. From time to time, someone may be trying to help you and they may say, well, you moved your hands too much. Listen to them. But if the other 20 people all said you did fine, I wouldn't stop moving your hands. The second you stop moving your hands, you freeze your hands you freeze your arms, you freeze your shoulders. That tension gets into your vocal cords. Your body's tensed up, and next thing you know, your voice can sound a little frozen and stiff. And you see how boring. Do you hear how boring I sound now? Because my whole body's stressed. It's all tensed up. Move your hands, the rest of your body will move. Your vocal cords won't get as tensed up. Everything will flow much, much better.

Your question.

Okay, it's time for your questions. You get to ask questions here and I answer them. You can send questions to me anytime. JWalker on Twitter. You can also write infoediatrainingworldwide.com and I'll answer your questions. Here's a very common question I get as it relates to hands. People say, well, T.J. i'm a little bit nervous and I'm uncomfortable. Can I just hold a pen while I speak? I'll have something to hold on to. And my response is, respectfully, I don't care about you. Now, I say that with a smile on my face. I obviously do care about my clients, but I tell them, you know, Sam, I don't really care about you. If it's a choice between you and your audience, I care about your audience, not you. Now, ultimately, I do care about you, but the best way to care about you is for you to know you're going to come across your absolute best to your audience. If you're holding a pen, that might make you feel more comfortable, but it looks unnatural to the audience. It makes you look unnatural and uncomfortable. So why set yourself up with some impediment? Why, why shackle yourself before the speech starts? So I'm a big believer. Keep your hands completely free. There's a lot of bad advice. As I mentioned on the web, in books about public speaking, I've seen some so called experts say, keep one hand in your pocket or keep your hands down. No, you want your hands moving. Another big source of contention, pointing. There's this whole school of thoughts, oh, whatever you do, don't point, don't. Everyone will be offended. Everyone will be upset. And that's why you see this thing that Bill Clinton sort of made very popular where his thumb is smashed on top of his index finger. And for my money, that's the only thing Bill Clinton does as a speaker that seems weird and phony and offhand, I've never seen an actual real human being sitting around at Starbucks talking and their thumb smashed. Whereas I do see people moving their hands, gesturing in a way that's no different from a speaker up on a stage when they're talking at Starbucks. So don't worry about the point. I just don't see most people when they're gesturing, pointing that much. Their hands are simply moving. Okay, maybe you don't want to point right at someone in the audience, but I don't know that you would do that. Anyway, don't worry about pointing. Don't worry about constraining your hands. I'm much more worried about you going too far the other way, not moving your hands enough. In theory, it's possible to be wildly gesticulating, moving so much that it's distracting. I can tell you this In 30 years of presentation, training, practice, working with more than 10,000 clients, I've never had a single client move his or her hands too much, in my view. Whereas every single week, sometimes every day in a week, I have people freeze their hands, tense their hands up, and that is what makes them look uncomfortable, unprofessional and scared.

Newsmaker talks.

Wanted to comment on someone in the news as it relates to her hand gestures. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, has this habit of for those watching, you'll see me sort of steepling my hands and putting the thumbs. All the index fingers are touching, the thumb is touching. For those of you listening, it's this very sort of artificial steepling of the hands. She looks this way in photos all the time, and to me it just looks absolutely ridiculous. Someone wrote in a book 80 years ago that that's a power pose, folks. Anytime you're posing in a way that's supposed to look powerful, you look phony and contrived and a little bit silly. I could just imagine her saying to staffers, I don't know what to do with my hands. What do I do? The thing to do with your hands is what you do all day long with your hands. When you speak, you move your hands. If you're not speaking or you're just talking, just have them fall to your side and you can't go wrong. But the artificial steepling just looks phony, it looks contrived, and it makes you look nervous. So my question to you is, what do you do with your hands when you speak? I'd like to know. You've heard my philosophy. You may think that you move your hands too much. I'm willing to bet that you don't. But I want to know what do you do with your hands when you speak? Post your comments in the discussion forum, wherever you're watching this or listening to this, or send it to me on Twitter jwalker or an email infoediatrainingworldwide.com thanks for watching. As always, I'm TJ Walker. May all of your speaking opportunities in life be a huge success.

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