Help! I’m Making a Speech. What Should I Do With My Hands?
Posted on September 17, 2008
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Have you ever stood in front of a group of people, been the centre of their attention and felt very self-conscious and exposed? Can you recall just how cumbersome and unnatural your hands felt as you struggled to discover what best to do with them in order to feel at ease?
Being up on stage or standing in front of a room full of people as you prepare to deliver a speech simply magnifies the problem of what to do with your hands.
Do you put them in your pockets? Let them hang lifelessly by your sides or fling them wildly about in the belief that ‘grand gestures’ look natural from the audiences’ point of view?
And the more you focus on what to do with your hands, the more you will become distracted from what you should be saying and the more anxious you will begin to feel.
So, give the following tips a go and you’ll soon find that you can forget all about your hands and concentrate fully on the job of delivering an audience-pleasing and enjoyable speech.
Learn to relax. The real truth is that you only begin to focus on what to do with your hands when you are feeling particularly stressed. In your normal, day-to-day life you don’t worry about what your hands are doing as you speak to you family, colleagues and friends, do you? And the reason for that is purely because you feel at ease with the situation and do not experience nervousness at all.
Try and notice whether you regularly use hand gestures to help illustrate what you are saying to people at other times. See if you can describe to a friend how to knot a tie or try and convey the shape of a spiral staircase and see just how you use your hands to help enhance your words.
If you find that you naturally use hand gestures, then continue to do so when delivering your speech. Do what you always do and it won’t feel artificial or forced.
If you don’t naturally use gestures, then don’t try to start!
Be aware that if you feel at all nervous, your emotion may be unconsciously demonstrated by what your hands are doing. Are you clutching your notes tightly, clenching your fists or constantly fingering your lapel?
Realize that gestures such as desk banging, finger pointing and fist clenching will always appear to have hostile or negative overtones and may even be insulting to people belonging to certain cultures. Be certain to avoid these at all costs!
Carefully limit your gestures during your speech or you will simply appear to be windmilling your way through your presentation.
If you find that focussing on what to do with your hands during your speech makes you feel uncomfortable, spend some time practising relaxation techniques and trying out different hand gestures in front of a mirror in the privacy of your own home. Being able to see what the audience sees will soon allow you to relax and enjoy delivering your speech.
Always remember that although these gestures are physical in nature, they simply form another part of your communication with your audience. Just as your words go towards making up your speech, so do your actions.
Once you begin to understand how the use of gestures can naturally enhance and lend support to your words, you will begin to find that you are no longer thinking and worrying about what your hands are doing. Instead you will pleasantly surprised discover that you are using your gestures naturally and without giving them a second thought.
When you can do this, you can congratulate yourself on graduating to the next level of expertise in public speaking!
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