One Minute Pause No 33

When teaching presentation skills at Natural Training we tend not to prioritise body language. People can get obsessed by trying to look convincing or slick, and neglect the content of their presentation. They perform all the textbook hand gestures, and what comes out of their mouths doesn’t match up. The audience is confused, often in their subconscious “I didn’t trust that guy, but I’m not quite sure why”.

However, sometimes we do give advice on body language for presenting. This is mainly when there are aspects of a presenter’s body language that serve to distract the audience from the main message.

Here are the 3 biggest body language presentation pitfalls, and what you can do to avoid them:

1. Eye contact
Sharing eye contact around the room is one of the best presentation delivery skills you can have. Meeting people’s eyes is crucial for maintaining audience interest. As an audience member we feel that you are actually talking to us - rather than talking to the PowerPoint screen or to the table.

So, what prevents you from maintaining eye contact with everyone? Well one of the reasons could be the Sympathy Nodder - the only person in the room who is nodding and paying you attention. When you’re presenting you usually gravitate towards attention and recognition. Even if you suspect someone is sympathy nodding, you probably don’t care. You will choose the Sympathy Nodder over the guy making a pen pyramid any day.

So you direct your attention almost solely to that one person. This means that you have alienated the audience in favour of the Sympathy Nodder, who is probably concentrating more on nodding than listening.

In the name of research from the audience side, try the Sympathy Nod Experiment during your next boardroom presentation. Look the presenter dead in the eye and nod a couple of times. Repeat about 5 times per minute, or whenever they look at you. You will undoubtedly find the presenter draw their attention towards you, almost as if you are the only person in the room.

A cruel experiment perhaps, but one which will prove to you that as a presenter you must resist the one person who seems to be giving you the attention and maximise your eye contact with everyone.

2. Hand position
One of the greatest problems you might have is knowing what to do with your hands. Quite strange really given that you never have to worry what to do with your hands when you are chatting to friends. Suddenly they become a big issue when presenting.

You have two options. You can spend thousands getting personal coaching and practicing 20+ hand gestures, such as the ‘chop’, the ‘opera singer’ or the ’sweep’, until they seem natural. Or you can hold a pen, with one or two hands. This sounds very simple, but it does the job, keeping your hands steady, professional and relaxed. With the money you save on personal coaching, you can buy yourself a better pen.

3. Stance
There have been many books written on stance and posture. Most of them are of little use. The best thing to remember is to stand with your feet pointed towards the audience. This solves a very big presentation skills problem, which is turning your back on the audience - such as when you are reading off PowerPoint. If you keep your feet pointed towards the audience then when you turn to the wall you be naturally inclined to return to your audience-facing position.

I think they are the big 3. If you think I’ve missed the point, or have any delivery tips that you would like to share, please add a comment or two to this OMP on the blog.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 24th, 2006 at 11:51 am and is filed under One Minute Pause. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.