“What do I do with my hands?” is one of the most frequent questions I get from people striving to improve their public speaking skills. The answer is more complicated than you’d think.
First of all, why is it important? It’s important because your hands speak quite loudly to the emotional radar of the audience. They can speak of your confidence and your delight in the topic, or of your anxiety and self-doubt.
A little anxiety is a good thing, because it tells your listeners that you care about doing a good job, and that you are a real person–like them.
But too much anxiety, demonstrated by wringing of hands, or fingernail cleaning, or spit-balling (rolling an imaginary spit ball between thumb and fore-finger), will undermine your credibility.
To do a good job, you need to let your hands talk, for two reasons. First, using your hands enables you to find the right word more efficiently, and second, your gestures enable the audience to better understand your meaning.
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Here is a description of Vincent Scully, a Sterling Professor at Yale, giving a lecture on Classical Greek columns, insisting that “they rise like jets of water.” He is considered by many to be the best lecturer that Yale has ever seen.
“You can make that shape with a paddle in the water,” he says, of the scrolls on the capital. “It’s geometric. It’s hydraulic.”
…his hands reach out, turning and undulating, as if he means to conjure the image to life on the stage.
When he shows [a slide of] the huge choir window behind the altar at Chartres, he remarks that you have to climb uphill to the cathedral, and still seem to be climbing once inside.
“You get the feeling there’s a great tide coming. If you’ve ever rowed, and the tide changes…” Here he reaches out with both hands for imaginary oars and lays his back into it, as if toward the heavenly light behind the altar.
You may be thinking that your subject matter, your venue, or your temperament, prevent you from such theatricality. Doubtless there are moderating circumstances. But that does not negate the value of physical expression in front of an audience.
Hitler was a great speaker (not a great man.) He studied body language with some of the great actors of the German theater. He rehearsed, and had himself photographed. He made his passion and conviction visible and psychologically vivid for his audience. He used his gestures to help bring his message to life.
So my counsel to those who ask, “What should I do with my hands?” is, “Let them help you talk.”
And if they have trouble with that, I will ask them to do what Robert Lloyd, a great English actor, once asked me to do: wave them around while rehearsing. Don’t worry if they (your gestures) make sense. Break the habits of a lifetime with a sense of play. And, while playing, don’t allow your hands to touch your body. Keep them at arms length, making big gestures.
And then comes the final question. “What do I do with my hands when I’m not using them?”
If you’re the Prince of Wales, you hold them behind your back. If you’re Jesse Jackson, you press your fingertips together with isometric instensity. If you’re toasting at the country club, you may hold a glass of wine in one hand and have the other parked in the garage of your blazer’s pocket.
But ideally, I would like to see your body full of intention. You are there to get your point across. Your purpose is well-served if you bring yourself to life, not only intellectually, but emotionally, vocally, and physically as well.
And since your hands are such strong allies (and therefore, dangerous enemies if they go against you) I would keep them gainfully employed much of the time.
And when they need a rest from their labors, let them hang at your sides at the ends of your arms. They’re like bats–your hands. They like to sleep upside down. When their flying days are over, hang ’em in the bat cave, down by your hips, at the side of your body, (and not in your pockets.)