1.

2 Body Language

1.2 Body Language

Overview

Much has been written about body language and how you can manipulate it to make you into a
great speaker. However, nearly all of this is unhelpful, impractical nonsense. You have already learnt
how to use your body to communicate: eyes, voice, energy, hand gestures, facial expressions,
emotions. These skills are already there and to use them in a presentation, simply set a clear,
audience-focused aim that gives you enough conviction to bring them to the surface. This chapter
explains how to do this.

Scope: presentations

Although this chapter really only applies to presentations, the way to get this conviction (and thus
positive body language) into your presentations is to set a clear audience-focused aim. Many are
guilty of presenting information without editorialising or explaining the significance of the
information. What does it mean? What conclusion should the audience draw from it? If you set out
your aim from the start – the conclusion of your presentation (or report) – and work backwards, it
will give your communication a direction and focus that enhances body language.

Enthusiasm Comes from Having a Clear Aim

The energy of good body language is enthusiasm. This enthusiasm (or simply ‘conviction’) comes
from having a clear objective for your presentation. Know where you want to take the audience and
care about getting them there. The case for enthusiasm can be stated another way: if you are not
interested, how can you expect your audience to be? Enthusiasm is infectious.

Enthusiasm and personal conviction are powerful elements in any presentation.

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Most people agree that enthusiasm is vital but many people think: “It’s not really my natural style to
present with that kind of energy”. Or: “How do you get enthusiastic about the kind of stuff that I
do?” However, you do not have to present like a preacher if that’s not your style, but instead have a
basic conviction that sits within your own natural style. You will get this from having a sense of
purpose, and this comes from knowing your audience and knowing exactly where you are trying to
take them. It all starts with having a clear aim.

Enthusiasm – The Engine of Body Language

When giving a presentation, you are the expert. You are talking about your stuff and you wouldn’t
be asked to make a presentation unless you knew something the audience didn’t know. On the
other side of the communication, the audience needs something. If you figure out what this need is
and thus set a clear aim for your presentation, you can tap into the basic conviction that will
enhance your body language. You are advising the audience, telling them something useful – like a
person giving directions in the street – and you want them to listen and understand what you are
saying.

You can see how this basic conviction works in an argument. In an argument, your communication
skills go up several gears. Eye contact becomes fixed and intense, vocal inflection and volume are
raised, hand gestures and facial expressions become more pronounced, and all stuttering, mumbling
and other signs of uncertainty disappear. More than anything, the focus shifts to from you to your
audience: ‘You’re not listening...you’ve got it all wrong...you don’t understand!’ Assuming that this
can be kept under control, a good dose of personal conviction goes a long way towards boosting
your communication skills. You shouldn’t try to hide this; it’s your expert conclusions that the
audience has come to hear. They want to hear your opinions.

A strong belief in what you are saying (as occurs in an argument) can move your communications up
several gears. Eye contact, inflection of voice, volume of voice, hand gestures, facial expressions,
emotions all become pronounced without the speaker’s conscious intervention.

This personal ownership of ideas can rouse great energy. Obviously you don’t want to let yourself
get carried away with emotion, but too often presenters rein in their personality to such an extent
that they distance themselves from what they are saying and the presentation is lifeless. People

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won’t believe your material unless they believe you. If you don’t look like you are connected to your
material and that you care about it, they won’t care about it either.

Tips for Heightening Conviction

The following are three things to reflect on that may help you to get that natural conviction – and
thus enhanced body language – into your talk without having to put on an act.

1. Don’t be Un-enthusiastic – This may sound obvious but you will realise that this rule is often
broken if I rephrase it as: “don’t apologise”. People often apologise when they are presenting. They
apologise for slides that can’t be read from the back of the room; they apologise for items that they
didn’t bring with them; they apologise for not being able to explain things very well; they apologise
for not knowing as much as some of the people in the audience; they apologise for not being able to
get the computer to work; they apologise before their presentation to the people who will have
heard all of this before; they apologise after their presentation for going over time.

Simply put, if there is something in your presentation that requires an apology, it shouldn’t be in
your presentation. If your graphs cannot be seen properly from the back of the room, re-draw them
so that they can be seen. If the room is too big for everyone to hear you, organise to have a
microphone so that they can hear you. If you are worried about having too much material, rehearse
the presentation, and if it is too long, leave some of the material out. Don’t apologise for something
that is broken; fix it.

2. Boredom is Relative – Often people say there are some topics that are just plain boring, and it is
impossible to inject life into them with any amount of enthusiasm. However, like everything else
relating to presentations, you can only discuss this in the context of a particular audience. So when
someone claims that certain material is ‘boring’, you have to pose the question: ‘boring to whom?

Often women will be bored listening to men talking about golf, but this woman is listening intently
because she has a need that this golf instructor is satisfying. Knowing that you are meeting a need of
your audience’s is a good way to generate enthusiasm.

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Your audience will have a keen interest in your topic. If they didn’t, why would they come? In some
cases, the audience may not realise how important your material is, for example in the case of a
sales presentation or, say, a presentation about safety in the workplace. In instances like this, you
have to explain the importance of what you are going to say to the audience, first. But once you
have done this, you should realise that there is a good reason for the audience to listen to you and
this should give you conviction.

The audience have a need which you are addressing. This may be boring to other people but it won’t
be boring to them. Realise this and respect their need. Assume that your talk is of the utmost
importance and deliver it with conviction. If you do this, the audience will perceive an earnestness
and an energy that will bring them along.

3. Get Your Story Straight – This third principle relating to enthusiasm is coupled with the second.
Once you have outlined your reason for presenting, you should then map out a clean line of logic by
which you can reach this goal. This will give your presentation an arrow-like quality that takes the
audience right through from clear introduction to logical conclusion. The more coherent this line of
argument is in your own head, the more strongly it will come through to the audience.

We have all seen presenters who came across as bored, listless and monotonic, and this is usually
because they have not planned clearly where they need to go. The presentation is just a series of
unrelated facts instead of an unfolding story. All presentations should go somewhere (see section
2.1 on setting an aim) that the audience needs to go.

Putting it into Practice

The most important point, as we have seen, is to have a clear purpose so that your body language
follows naturally from your sense of conviction. However, the following are some simple practical
tips related to body language.

Stand – Always stand up when you are giving a presentation. If it is a longer session involving
questions and discussion, it can create intimacy by sitting down and putting yourself on the same
level as the audience, but you should always start a talk upright.

Be Seen – Another important reason to stand when you are presenting is to allow the audience to
see you. In the same way that you should look at the people when you are talking to them, people
will look at you when they are listening. This is natural and if you are hidden from view, it can be
very frustrating for the audience. As well as this, you should avoid having obstacles between you and
the audience, so don’t stand behind a podium or a desk. Get to the venue early and rearrange the
furniture so that you can be seen by everyone.

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Don’t stand behind a desk or podium and allow yourself to be seen by the audience at all times.

Open Gestures – Don’t fold your arms or cover your mouth. Don’t hide behind the furniture in the
room or cower in a dark corner. Stand square on to the audience with your hands loose and free,
look them in the eye and try and be as friendly and open as possible. This is not to say that you
should force a smile if you are not naturally disposed to doing so, but if you are a naturally smiley
person, that’s a bonus. Don’t suppress this.

Hand Movements – On a course that I was giving once, a woman made a presentation with her
hands clasped very noticeably in front of her waist. She looked like an opera singer about to sing an
aria. I asked her about this afterwards and she said that she had a tendency to move her arms a lot
so she thought it better to keep them clasped in case this was distracting for the audience.

We have developed the use of hand gestures to accompany the words we say. More often than not,
these enhance communication and shouldn’t be stifled.

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To say that hand gestures are distracting is like saying that facial expressions are distracting. The
truth is they add emphasis to your words and help the audience to understand what you are saying.
Why would we have evolved this behaviour if it didn’t add a communication benefit? So allow your
hands to move freely and trust that this will help.

You may, unknown to yourself, do something that is distracting like constantly tapping your trouser
pocket or fiddling with your glasses. These are not natural hand movements but repetitive nervous
gestures, and it is important to get a trusted colleague to observe one of your presentations and
point any such habits out. When you become aware of these behaviours, with practice you will
quickly eliminate them.

Don’t fidget – There is a simple presentation truism: ‘Don’t compete with distractions, they will
always be more interesting than you.’ If you have something in your hand - a pen, guide notes, a
clicker, a pointer, a prop – you will almost certainly fidget with this unbeknown to yourself which is
very distracting for the audience. So, again, get a colleague to point this out and put anything down
that you don’t need to have in your hand.

Guide-notes, although essential, can be particularly distracting. Loose sheets of paper flap like a flag
and make noise. It is better if you place them on the desk beside you and refer to them when
necessary rather than holding them in your hand. Doing it this way will also force you to take short
breaks to check your notes which is never a bad thing. If you do need to hold notes, have them on a
stiff board or solid cue cards rather than loose sheets of paper.

Movement – Moving about animates your talk which is invariably a good thing. Also, you may have
to return to your computer periodically to change slides or check your notes, and this inserts little
micro-breaks into your delivery which is a good thing.

Movement can also help you to signpost the key points in your talk. You could have a for-and-against
argument, and very clearly point your left saying, ‘On the one hand…’ and then move and point the
right, saying, ‘Then again, on the other side of the argument…’ In this way, you can use yourself as a
visual aid (as in the figure below) or as an enhancement to your visual aids to guide the audience. A
presentation is a transient communication that the audience cannot control – as they might re-read
something in a report – so anything that adds visual inflection to your spoken points is a bonus.

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First Minute Important – The truth about body language is that after the first minute of your talk you
can do whatever you want. If you begin the talk with your arms folded, or slouching on a desk, or
with a hand in a pocket, it looks sloppy and makes a poor first impression. You need to start clear,
open and strong because during this first minute the audience will be looking you up and down,
forming an impression and locking on to your rhythms of speech. However once you get going and
the audience starts to actually listen to what you are saying, they will stop judging you and start to
follow your story. If you then turn your back or fold your arms, they will barely notice because they
have made a connection and want to hear what you have to say. Be careful what you do in the first
minute but after that immerse yourself in what you are saying and try not to be too self-conscious.

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