Your facial expressions give audiences important information. But you have to control them! Try these exercises if you're up to '11.'

Do you ever worry about your facial expressions while speaking? If you do, chances are you wonder if you're too stone-faced, so that you're not giving listeners any helpful clues regarding meaning and emotion.

But the opposite is also true. If you're concerned that people are paying more attention to your facial gymnastics than your content, a fix is in order. And even if you discover that that isn't true, gaining control over this aspect of your body language is worth the effort. 

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Building Trust and Empathy: Facial Expressions

Facial expressions is often a neglected topic when it comes to understanding the body in performance. If you're like most people, you focus mainly on your gestures. But what your face is showing gives your audience important clues about everything from your passion for the topic to whether you're a trustworthy messenger. And believe me, audiences are keenly aware of what they're seeing and how it relates to their own needs.

And the face is easily as expressive as the rest of the body! Believe it or not, you're capable of thousands of facial expressions, including fifty different types of smiles.¹ Therefore, as a speaker, you need a sense of what your own face is showing in performance.

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Some Questions to Ask Yourself

Is your face flexible enough to show what you're feeling? Or do you lack much facial expression? Public speaking isn't a poker game where the object is to hide what you're thinking! And when you do show emotion, are your expressions appropriate?

Perhaps your most important question is this one: are audiences seeing what you are really thinking and feeling? You mustn't give listeners a false impression from what your face is showing. Many of my clients, in fact, are shocked when they see themselves on video. They are often observing for the first time not only what they look like overall, but what they're sending out as facial signals. If it's the opposite of what they intended, it can be quite unsettling.

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Here are two exercises to control and maximize the use of facial expression.

Exercise One: For Passion, Commitment, and Intention

In this exercise, you'll videotape or screen-record yourself. First, choose a topic that matters to you—the more heartfelt, the better. Deliver your remarks as if this were an actual performance. Now, just before you watch yourself, turn off the volume or mute the microphone on your screen. Also, for this exercise, try to focus on your face rather than your gestures or movement.

Imagine you're an audience member watching this speaker, i.e., you. Ask yourself the following questions: (1) What are you seeing in terms of this person's commitment to their message? (2) How strongly do you think he or she wants to get it across? (3) Does the speaker seem to genuinely care about this topic? (4) Are you seeing anything that reveals how this speaker feels about her or his listeners? (Here are 6 skills-building exercises for effective body language.)

Exercise Two: For Muscle Memory

This time, you'll be working with a mirror: full-length or dresser sized. Before you use the mirror, however, practice delivering the speech (without looking at notes). Speak with all the passion and verve you care to. Then, do the same thing in front the mirror, watching yourself.

How did you come across? Did your facial expressions seem too extreme for the subject matter, i.e., likely to call attention to themselves and thereby distracting for listeners? For the third round, take the speech in segments. Deliver the first segment in front of the mirror exactly as you did the last time. As you do, notice what your facial muscles are doing. If you're "making faces," note where in your face the muscles are moving. Determine which muscles are involved. Especially note what it feels like when you're making those faces.

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Do this as many times as you need to with each segment of your talk. Continue the business of I'm-speaking-and-making-this-face-and-THIS-is-what-it-feels-like. You'll be intentionally getting that face into your muscle memory. Once you do, you can go back to any part of the speech (or the whole thing), speaking with just as much passion but without the 'extreme faces.' It is, of course, your new sense of control that is allowing you to do this.

Result: a committed and dynamic speaker who knows how to control his or her facial expressions. That's you! Now when you speak, audiences can focus 100% on the important things you're saying, which is just what they wanted to do all along.

¹ Paul Ekman, Telling Lies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 127.

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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 is the author of the Amazon Best-Seller How to Give a Speech. His second book, Fearless Speaking, was named in 2019 as “One of the 100 Best Confidence Books of All Time.” For nine consecutive years, he was ranked by Global Gurus as one of The World’s Top 30 Communication Professionals, and he has been named as one of America's Top 5 Speech Coaches. His handbook for presenting in videoconferences, Speaking Virtually offers techniques for developing virtual presence. He is also the author of Speak for Leadership: An Executive Speech Coach's Secrets for Developing Leadership Presence. His latest book is The Confidence Book: 75 Ways to Reduce Your Anxiety, Let Go of Your Fears, Change Your Negative Thinking, and Perform At Your Professional Best. He is also the creator of The Dr. William Scarlet supernatural thrillers. Contact Gary here.

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