Keynote Speaking: Give your hands a rest.
Speaking in front of audiences is scary. It makes us feel vulnerable. These kinds of thoughts pop up:
“What if I mess up?”
“What if I say the wrong thing?”
“What if I forget what I’m going to say?”
It’s no wonder that even the Mayo Clinic’s website has an article about handling public speaking fears.
These thoughts can sometimes show up in our body language while speaking. While watching the May 2024 iPad launch and Google I/O presentations, I noticed a surprising nervous tendency that almost speakers shared: they crossed their hands in front of their bodies. In fact, only one speaker at I/O let their hands rest at their sides for more than a few moments.
When speakers take just a moment to rest their hands at their sides, they create an audience experience that lends itself more towards connection, openness and trust.
Let’s look at why this is the case from 3 perspectives: why we use our hands during speeches, how audiences perceive speakers, and how body language helped make Steve Jobs’ iPhone reveal at MacWorld 2007 so incredible.
Gestures are powerful ways to create greater connections with an audience. When used intentionally, our hands can communicate sentiments like generosity, togetherness, and scale. But our hands can also unintentionally communicate uncomfortable feelings that the speaker feels. Crossed arms, clasped hands, and one hand moving across the other can indicate discomfort, anxiety, and even dishonesty. It’s understandable why we make these gestures: they are comforting and, as mentioned before, public speaking is scary.
But regardless of how comforting these gestures are, they impact the perceptions of audiences. Audiences are usually empathetic to speakers and often take on the feelings that they perceive. Speakers aspire to engender positive feelings like wonder, thoughtfulness, or delight. On the other hand, clasped hands, folded arms, and other defensive gestures can trigger negative (and often subconscious) reactions from an audience.
Often times, when I share these thoughts, I am asked, “Should I just be gesturing all of the time?” or “Well then where do I rest my hands?”
For the first question, the answer is no. Overused gestures either become distracting to the audience or rob your gestures of all meaning.
Regarding the second question, let’s look at Steve Jobs. In this INC article, author Ken Kocienda is quoted describing how Steve would prepare for a keynote. “His tone of voice, his stance, his gestures, everything was exactly as if he were presenting to a packed house.” We can be mindful of how he utilized gestures in the 2007 iPhone reveal at MacWorld.
At the start of the presentation, Steve does indeed hold his slide remote with both hands between gestures. He’s withholding information, saying that Apple is launching 3 separate products: a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator. But the moment he pulls back the curtain, the moment he says the word “iPhone,” his hands are neither clasped nor gesturing. They are resting at his sides. He no longer has anything to hide from the audience and is confident, in the most vulnerable moment of presentation, that the announcement will speak for itself.
I’d like to encourage you to give this a try. Fair warning: resting your hands like this in front of an audience is uncomfortable. It feels vulnerable, and it feels much more comfortable to hold your hands in front of you. If you work on a team that dry-runs presentations together or belong to a Toastmasters club, those are great settings to ask peers for focused feedback on this kind of open body language. And this is just one of many important aspects of using body language to improve the way to connect with audiences.
Looking for another speaker who effectively uses open and engaging body language to connect with her audience? Check out this TED Talk on The Art of Persuasive Storytelling by Kelly D. Parker.