Want to fire up your audience? If you do, you need to get physical! Here is the best body language secret for presenters.
Do you have great ideas or an important message to share? Want to get it across to as many people as possible? Then it's time to get physical in your speeches and presentations!
Whether you're speaking live or virtually, in a conference center or a video, your nonverbal communication is a key to your success. Why wouldn't it be? Your content may be interesting and delightful. But it's your physical presence that will make you a dynamic speaker—as a member of the clergy said, by turning [your] words back into blood.1
Want more on body language and public speaking? — Read Chapter 9, "The Visual You: Body Language," in my Public Speaking Handbook, How to Give a Speech. Take a look!
Do You Know About Mirror Neurons?
The analogy is a great one: get the blood flowing, and you'll pump up your listeners to think or do what you're advocating. Here's another fact of human physiology that will help: the action of mirror neurons.
Mirror neurons are brain cells that are activated both when we perform an action and when we observe that action performed by someone else. That, by itself, is a key reason why you should employ body language when you're giving a presentation. When we make gestures and move, the movement itself not only helps us think, but energizes us, in addition to amplifying the point we're trying to make in the minds of listeners.
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Consider the amazing action of mirror neurons: they allow audiences to get energized as if they themselves were moving like us and making the same gestures. There is no way a speaker standing still behind a lectern can summon up that level of interest, engagement, and activation in an audience. And if you're thinking that can help you activate those audience members through your call to action, you're right!
How to Excite a Crowd — Going Beyond Gestures
Body language, of course, is a key skill of nonverbal communication. And one truth about public speaking is that the nonverbal aspects of your talk are as important as the words you speak. (And make sure you know about my "The 7 Deadly Sins of Body Language.")
For many of us, "nonverbal" means gestures. But other aspects of this form of communication are just as important: eye contact and facial expressions, voice (produced physically), moving within your performance space, your proximity to the audience, and even pacing and timing, including how to use pauses effectively.
But I'd like to go beyond gestures, to tell you the secret of what we might call "holistic public speaking," that is, fully integrated speaking that goes beyond a mechanical approach. It's this: using body language is an essential part of your presentations. But you can go deeper than this, while at the same time making your performances soar. You'll do this by considering the overall physical expression of your talks. It's one of the ways of knowing how to achieve high-impact speaking for leadership.
This actually should make your use of body language easier. It's good to think about using nonverbal communication in your presentations. But even better is incorporating physical expression as a central element of any speech. And that's the way to think about it. Ask yourself: "How can I express what I'm trying to say physically and well as through my script?"
After all, there is a physical expression to speech. You display it every day when you're having conversations—and of course, the more strongly you feel about something, the more physical you get as you speak. That's what your audiences or meeting participants need to see! Don't struggle with thinking about how to use body language. Just allow your body to get involved in what you're saying. You'll pump yourself up and get your audiences fired up at the same time.
1 Jana Childers, Performing the Word: Preaching as Theatre (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 20.
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Gary Genard is an actor, author, and expert in public speaking and overcoming speaking fear. His company, The Genard Method offers live 1:1 Zoom executive coaching and corporate group training worldwide. He was named for nine consecutive years as One of the World’s Top 30 Communication Professionals, and also named as One of America's Top 5 Speech Coaches. He is the author of the Amazon Best-Sellers How to Give a Speech and Speak for Leadership: An Executive Speech Coach's Secrets for Developing Leadership Presence. His book, Fearless Speaking, was named in 2019 as "One of the 100 Best Confidence Books of All Time." " He is also the author of the Dr. William Scarlet Mysteries. Contact Gary here.
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