A Simple Approach to Gesturing
by Jerry Weissman

Undoubtedly, the most frequently-asked question of presentation coaches is, “What do I do with my hands?”

The answer is to use your hands to illustrate what you are saying. But that seemingly simple instruction can lead to overkill if a coach or a presenter attempts to choreograph gestures. Choreography makes presenters feel like performers, and worse, overloads them, as if asking them to pat their heads and rub their tummies at the same time. Choreography also runs counter to the admonition we’ve all heard ever since childhood from our mothers and teachers, “Don’t speak with your hands!”

However, speaking with our hands has been a part of human communication ever since our cave dwelling ancestors—and even before that. A Wall Street Journal article by Matt Ridley reported that:

…our prehuman ancestors had only a modest vocabulary of shouts, screams and whines, but a richer and subtler vocabulary of gestures, shrugs and frowns. According to the primatologist Frans de Waal, apes, especially bonobos, use gestures more freely and flexibly than voice. According to another primatologist, Richard Byrne, gorillas have a large repertoire of gestures used to express specific meanings in the wild. And it appears that chimps learn a vocabulary of signs more easily than a vocabulary of sounds.

So with all due respect to mothers and teachers, you would do well to incorporate gestures to help you “express specific meanings.” But how do you do that without feeling as if you are performing unnatural acts?

The answer we give to the participants in the Power Presentations programs and in The Power Presenter is to let your hands do what comes naturally, but also to incorporate one particular gesture. If we recommend one, we had better have a good reason:

Whenever you step up to the front of the room to present, you create a gap between you and your target audience. As a communicator your role is to close that gap. Do so as the famous AT&T slogan recommends: Reach out.

When you reach out, you replicate the handshake, the universal symbol of human communication. The handshake is thought to have begun as a social custom during the Middle Ages. When the right hand—which was used to grip a sword or a dagger—was extended and empty, it indicated that the person was not armed. An open hand signaled, “I come in peace.” Half a millennium of practice has inculcated that same message in our modern culture.

So when do you reach out? If you treat every presentation as a series of person-to-person conversations as a prior post recommended, you will be addressing each individual—each “you”—in your audience. When you speak to a person, say “you” and, every time you say “you,” accompany the word with your hand and arm extended. Reach out.

• “Let me show you…”
• “Why am I telling you this?”
• “Do you see what I mean?”

And, for readers of all of our books, let’s not forget, WIIFY:

• “What's in it for you?”

Your Mom would consider that quite polite.