Short YouTube talk by Vanessa Van Edwards explaining that hand gestures function as 'nonverbal highlighters' to emphasize and add meaning to speech. She advises against constant gesturing (which dilutes impact) and recommends using specific gestures to underline points (e.g., holding up fingers for lists, showing size for big/small ideas).
Hands are a really critical part of our charisma. What I really want people to understand about gestures is they are like a non verbal highlighter. Gestures add depth of meaning to your words. Like a highlighter, you wouldn't want to highlight an entire page, right? So I wouldn't want to just have gestures all the time. If I have constant gestures, it's like having a whole page of highlights. It's too much like our brain can't remember any of them. What I do want you to think about is how can I add a gesture to underline or emphasize my words? So if I'm talking about three things, I'm going to hold up three fingers. If I'm talking about a big idea, I'm going to show you how big it is. I'm going to hold a big bowling ball. Big. That's how big it is. If something is no big deal, it's really small. Like, don't worry to my customer or clients, no big deal. I'm going to hold up a little tiny thing that shows. Look how small that is. It sounds sort of silly, but that actually is a way that our brain highlights our important points. So I like to think of gestures as highlighters.
