“Let your hands support your message, not steal the conversation.” — Cynthia R. Grosso
What Are Your Hands Saying About You?
When you are speaking with someone, where are your hands?
It sounds like such a small thing. Yet when we talk about personal presence, our hands are doing far more communicating than we may realize.
Researchers Spencer Kelly, Bruce Hansen, and David Clark studied how people process speech when it is accompanied by hand gestures. Their research, published in PLOS ONE, found that hand gestures influence how we understand spoken language.
In other words, your hands aren’t simply moving while you speak—they can actually become part of your message. Other research has found that when people could both hear a speaker and see the speaker’s meaningful gestures, they received more accurate information than when they heard the words alone. That gives us something important to think about professionally.
Your Personal Presence Practice: Let Your Hands Be Seen For one week, pay attention to one thing: Are you hiding your hands when you communicate? Perhaps you slip both hands into your pockets when standing. Maybe you tuck them beneath the conference table during a meeting. Or perhaps you clasp them tightly behind your back because you simply don’t know what else to do with them.
Instead, try allowing your hands to remain comfortably visible. When standing, let them fall naturally at your sides. When speaking, allow your hands to gesture naturally within a comfortable area in front of your body. When seated at a table, let your hands rest easily where they can be seen.
The goal is not to choreograph your gestures. In fact, trying too hard can make you appear less natural. The goal is simply to allow your hands to participate in your communication rather than removing them from it.
Don’t choreograph your hands. Simply don’t hide them.
This week, notice your hands. Not because there is one perfect place to put them, but because awareness is where personal presence begins. Presence is not a personality. It is a practice.
For more information from Charleston School of Protocol and Professionalism Polished Professional Transformation Program please click here
Cynthia R. Grosso Charleston School of Protocol & Professionalism Sources: Kelly, S. D., Hansen, B. C., & Clark, D. T. (2012), PLOS ONE, “Slight of Hand: The Processing of Visually Degraded Gestures With Speech.” Beattie, G. & Shovelton, H. (1999), Journal of Language and Social Psychology, “Mapping the Range of Information Contained in the Iconic Hand Gestures that Accompany Spontaneous Speech.”
