CHAPTER 8

Harmonize Your Body Language

True eloquence consists in saying all that should be said, and only that.

— LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

When you are angry, slamming a fist on the table is effective body language, as is frowning or glaring, because it reinforces the emotion. Glancing at your watch while you are telling your date how happy you are to be spending time together is an example of your body language not getting your message across. And, a good way to find yourself in the doghouse.

Half of all body language is in the face. Remember the Motown singers from the 1960s? The lead singer is up front crooning the lyrics, and the backup singers, with their doo-wops and woo-woos, are harmonizing with the band.

As a speaker, your words are the lead singer. Your tone of voice is the backup singers, and your body language is the band. When all three are in synch, the song is magic.

Change Creates Energy

In the previous chapter on voice modulation, we experimented with changing our speed, volume, and word groupings, and we saw the impact that these variations have on our speech. Monotone—which means “one tone”—is boring. We have to vary our volume and speed.

Change creates energy. Just as the energy of a powerful summer storm results from a change in temperature, the energy of your presentations and meetings comes from your creating change: a change in position, in tone, in speed, in style, in tactics. The storm of energy that is you requires change to charge the audience. The more rapid the change, the more powerful the storm.

What would happen to a baseball pitcher, even one with a great fastball, if he threw with the same speed to the same spot, every time?

He would get smoked.

Any change you can make—taking off your jacket, modulating your voice, or just changing your position in the room—drops filters. It doesn’t get your message across (you still have to do that) but it drops filters for a few seconds, allowing you to get your message through. This is because our brains are wired to become alert when we notice sudden changes, no matter how small.

You have already learned how to modulate your voice. Let’s focus on other components of body language: using your space and using hand gestures.

Using the Room

When you move, you create energy. If you are sitting and then you stand up while you are speaking, the change generates energy. If you are standing and then you sit down while you are speaking, that too creates energy. If you start speaking as soon as you are introduced, while you are walking to the podium, that produces energy and immediately alerts the people in your audience to pay attention, because you are not going to be like most speakers they have heard before.

Stand up and ask yourself the following question.

Did you pay for the whole room today, or just that one spot? If you paid for the whole room, let’s get your money’s worth.

There are five steps I see most speakers use in front of an audience:

Standing in one spot. Most people start with the “mono-spot,” the boring body language cousin of the monotone. There is nothing inherently wrong with this; it is where most people begin as speakers.

Pacing. The next step up is pacing, the “caged tiger” approach to public speaking. Pacing creates movement, but it is nervous movement, and it tends to distract the audience. When someone is pacing and talking, who is he thinking about? Where is his focus?

Exactly.

Such speakers are focused on themselves and their words. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that is where the speaker’s head is at, not on the audience.

It’s better to step toward someone in the audience and then back again, then step toward someone else on the other side of the room and then back again. This will convey the message to the people in your audience that you are thinking about them, and that your presentation is about them. If you are in a meeting and sitting down, just leaning toward another person at the table will have an impact on that person’s engagement in what you are saying. It boosts your signal.

Circling the audience. This can be an effective technique if the space allows it. As you walk around your audience, staying on the perimeter so that you are never turning your back on a section of the audience, the movement creates some advantages for you. Your body language is now commanding and forcing you to create new angles of eye contact with more people.

Moving with purpose. This is your ultimate goal: to use the whole room while moving with purpose. This can involve circling the room, stepping toward and away from audience members, or walking from either side of the room. The point is that you are making those movements for a reason.

For example, if you place a flipchart or a prop on each side of the room, you will have a reason to move back and forth across the room as you incorporate the different charts or props. If you are telling a story that involves a door (it can be a metaphorical door, as in opening up new opportunities or shutting out old technology), go to the door and gesture to it, pulling the door into the story.

Here’s another example: Let’s say you are telling a story about the time your boss sat down in front of you, looked you in the eye, and said three words that you’ll never forget. As you retell that part of the story, pull up a chair, sit down, and become the boss. In each of these cases, there is a purpose to your movements. If it feels contrived, that’s because it is contrived. But it works as you become more comfortable with it.

When you change your topic, change your position. You are a good writer. At the end of a sentence, you put a period. Why do you do that? Because your ninth-grade English teacher made you?

We use periods, commas, and exclamation points to indicate to a reader that a thought is complete, that it’s time to pause, that we are moving on to a new thought in a second. A new paragraph or a new chapter signals a new scene.

You don’t have these indicators when you speak. So you have to use pauses and shifts of your hands (and feet) to show the audience that you are now on a new subject. If you have three points that you intend to make as you are walking around the room, think of each point as an act in a play. Stand in a slightly different spot to make each point. Go linear from left to right as the audience sees you. When we are giving presentations, our body language is our punctuation. Synchronize your feet with your words, and use pauses and changes in your voice, hands, movements, and facial expressions to convey that you have moved on to a new idea.

Fill Up the Frame

In photography, the concept of “filling the frame” often distinguishes a competent photographer from an amateur. When a terrible photographer (like me) takes a picture of his child in a beautiful meadow, how does it come out? The child is minuscule in the photo. A great photographer knows to focus on the child so that her face fills the foreground. Faces on a magazine cover fill the entire cover.

In art, this concept is called “using the whole canvas.” Most beginning art students confine their work to a small space in the middle of the page or canvas. As they advance in their technique, they learn to use and fill the entire space.

Likewise, as a speaker, you need to fill the “frame” of the room. You want to use the entire space.

Moving around and using the room is another concept that tends to generate resistance among some executives at first. (Do you sense a theme here?) One participant told me that he was not comfortable walking to the back of the room, behind the audience, because if he were in an audience, he would not like it if the speaker left the front of the room. I asked how many of the other executives in that course felt the same way, and a few hands went up, but not most. I told the executives that I was going to ask them the same question at the end of the day.

As we proceeded with the training, each person practiced moving around the room while giving a presentation. As they started walking while they talked, some of them even moved behind the audience. By the end of the day, everyone felt that moving behind the audience worked for him.

If you are not used to moving around, the first couple of times may feel unnatural. That is normal, but persevere. You do not want to be a mono-spot. Each time you stretch, you are literally expanding your range.

Hand Gestures

Appropriate body language, especially with your hands, helps you orchestrate a better tone. Lowering your hands when you are speaking softly or using your hands in a fist to give some extra oomph to a word or phrase can dramatically enhance the delivery of your message.

At trainings, people will often tell me that they use a lot of body language with their hands. We have all seen speakers who move their hands in repetitive motions, such as flapping or circles, while they are speaking. This is not body language. This is body noise. It creates energy, so it is getting you halfway there, but the energy is not directed toward strengthening your message. When your hands tell the same story as your words, your message comes into the brain in stereo.

Here is a simple exercise. Say the sentence: “I want you to think.”

Now say it with your words and your hands at the same time. How do you say “I” with your hands? How do you say “you”? “Think”? Keep practicing until you can do it smoothly. You see how much more powerful the statement becomes when you synchronize your hands with your content.

Just as there can be many correct ways to say something with words, there are many correct ways to say something with body language. Many of us have a few excellent gestures that we use for everything. However you say an emphatic “No way!” with your hands is right for you, as long as it gets your message across. We can expand our range by adding more gestures to our repertoire.

As we have learned from these exercises, hand gestures are just one form of body language, but because people are more familiar and comfortable with using their hands when they speak, the subject generates many questions during training sessions:

The best way to incorporate body language into your speaking is to allow your face, hands, and body to act out the story of your words. You don’t have to act out every word with your hands. Just a few gestures that reinforce your words make your presentation powerful.

Usually, we want to be standing. Our voice projects better when we are standing, we appear more commanding, and we have a broader range of body language available to us. But there are times when sitting or slipping our hands into our pockets may be appropriate. Body language works when it tells the same story as our words.

To practice this, try speaking with body language alone, without using words.

The following quote is an Arabian proverb. Read it to yourself, then stand up and “say” the quote using only body language. Find your inner mime, your inner Marcel Marceau or Mr. Bean. Pretend that you are competing in a championship of the game charades. Act out the quote without words.

Four things come not back—the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

Now, divide the quote into “acts.” As you “say” the quote with gestures and body language, move around the room, changing your location for each act.

Finally, layer the words back in. Moving around the room and using body language, also say the words out loud. Synchronize your movements and gestures with your words.

What do you find about your delivery?

Here is another quote with which you can practice this technique. This too is a proverb, from the Cree Indians.

Only after the last tree has been cut down/
Only after the last fish has been caught/
Only after the last river has been poisoned/
Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.

Stand up, and use your face, hands, and feet to act out the same message as your words.

What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say.

— RALPH WALDO EMERSON

What Body Language Are You Speaking?

Just as you wouldn’t speak in Spanish to an English-speaking audience and wouldn’t speak Greek if you were presenting in Japan, you want to make sure that you are speaking the body language your audience understands. Make sure you are using common, easily discernible, or easily interpretable gestures—ones that clearly, and unmistakably, convey the meaning that you want your audience to receive. You do not want to leave any room for misunderstanding or misinterpretation in your body language.

For example, pointing with one finger can be problematic. Some people don’t mind it, while others don’t like it at all. (The whole “gun” thing.)

We have learned that in any culture in the world, you can point with an open palm, face up, toward the person. This is a gesture of welcome and offer.

Our coach Manoue Poirier, who has an extensive background working across countries and cultures, advises pointing with your entire hand, fingers slightly bent and fused together, palm facing down. In this subtle gesture, you appear to tap the air in front of the person with your fused fingertips.

Even gestures that are common in our own culture can be questionable, depending on your audience.

The lesson from all of these examples? Know your audience.

Making It Yours

The first time or two that you try to walk around while you are speaking, you will feel awkward and uncomfortable. You can reach the mountain of smooth only by going through the valley of awkward. There is no shortcut for going through this learning period, no way to skip over it. The good news is that you can, and will, quickly master this technique. After just a few times, you will become more comfortable and feel more energized, and your movement will make the audience feel the same way.

The only way to truly own a technique is to practice it until it feels natural to you. Body language and movement can be practiced at any time, in any situation. The best people to practice on are the innocent people in your private life. When you order at a restaurant, greet your friends, or speak with your family, incorporate appropriate hand gestures and body language. To really own this, do it about 30 or 40 times over the next few days. You’ll quickly integrate this technique into your repertoire.

As with all of the techniques we are learning, it doesn’t take that long—a few tries—before you have it, but you have to be willing to practice. That’s how we master cognitive skills. Try a technique and soak in the experience. Run to it, not from it. Go through it, not around it. If you power through the swamp, you will reach the other side clear. I promise.

SUMMARY

Body language accounts for 55 percent of our communication, and half of that body language is our facial expressions.

Move with purpose. Harmonize your movements with your message so that your body language reinforces your content.

Change creates energy. When you change something—your position in the room, your body language, or your voice modulation—you lower filters.

Practice

Select a quote or an excerpt from your speech or presentation. Practice “saying” the quote with body language—hand gestures and facial expressions. Now divide the quote into “acts” and move around the room, coordinating your movements so that you are in a different location for each act. Once you have perfected your body language and your movements around the room, layer the words back in. Synchronize your body language with your words. Film yourself, play it back, and delete it.

We have quotes you can use for practicing at owntheroom.com.