Movement, gestures and eye contact

Move and do gestures

In the day to day conversations with your family or friends sometimes gestures are used to emphasize or help describe a situation or an event. Use your gestures to welcome your audience and engage them into your presentation and emphasize the point of your presentation. Open gestures are a good way of extending them to your audience, move away from your body.

Gestures are good but it has to be controlled and precise. For example too much movement will make you seem nervous and unfocused  on the other hand no gestures isn't good either. No audience likes to see a presenter that keeps their hands in their pockets or fixed firmly at their sides.

Movement means leave the lectern area and walk around the stage or walk towards your audience. The most important movement while presenting is to move towards your audience so that they are engaged into your voice and the message that you are delivering to them. Also it helps to get their divided attention towards you.

So remember to move around use gestures to explain your presentation to make it interesting and fun. 

Here is a video that teaches you how to have effective hand gestures.

Eye Contact

Making eye contact with your audience is the most powerful techniques for involving your audience and to get their attention. When eye contact is used effectively it can serve to make your message much more personal towards your audience. Make sure that you share your eye contact evenly with all members of small or large audiences.

If you don’t make any eye contact with your audience you can seem nervous or unconvincing. Also don’t hold your eye contact too long because audiences can feel awkward or intimated. Therefore, keep your eye contact in control and move your eyes around the room by looking at others. Try to avoid making only eye contact to the people you know or the ones that you don’t know, keep in mind that you need to involve the entire audience if you are making an effective presentation.

I understand that for some of you are shy to make eye contact with your audience or look at anyone one in the room. Remember that some eye contact is better than none, you should try to build your confidence over the course of your presentations. One tip that I can give you to build your confidence in making eye contact is to look at people’s foreheads so then at least you are looking at their direction. Then you can slowly build your confidence and you’ll slowly direct eye contact with your audience. I know it may sound ridiculous but it is much better than looking at the ceiling, floor or your notes.

Guffey, M., Loewy, D. (2013) Business Communication: Business Presentations. Toronto, Canada. Nelson Education.