How to recognize the basic patterns of gestures

Does this sound familiar? The audience of your presentation had listened curiously at the beginning – and later seem more reserved and skeptical with each of your words? In this article, you can read how you can avoid resistance generated by your voice – and how you can tell from your own gestures whether you are annoying your listeners with your monologue or inviting them to an exchange of ideas with a modulated way of speaking.

Maybe you know the winged words: "What you want to ignite in others must burn in you!"? It would be a fallacy to conclude from this that one's own enthusiasm alone convinces other people. It is precisely then that the danger that you will annoy with your insistence and provoke resistance with your appeals is particularly high.

Gesture trap No. 1: Slowed down gestures

Perhaps you have also been persuaded that grand gestures are not elegant, that it seems exaggerated in this country to gesticulate wildly and "Italianly". And already the range of motion of arms and elbows is clearly limited (- unfortunately, these are the movements that make us appear confident). But the organism's urge to move cannot be suppressed. The energy must not flow into the gestures of the hands now – then it just lets the upper body and head swing back and forth when speaking. Every sentence is given the same emphasis. The sentence melody becomes uniform, the tone of the voice no longer sounds so pleasant and signals to us listening very clearly that the person who is speaking is not waiting for our consent.

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Gesture trap No. 2: Self-centered gestures

Speaking freely is a great memory feat. And you often hear this effort. It sounds as if someone you have to explain to yourself what you want to express. Of course, you also want to say out loud what you have prepared, and that too understandably. Again, you betray your gestures very clearly. This "retrieving thoughts from memory" lets you row with your hands parallel in front of your upper body. Your gestures do not mediate in dialogue between you and your listeners, they point to you again and again. That doesn't go down well. Your movements (and thus your voice) reveal that you are mentally more preoccupied with yourself than with your listeners at the moment.

Keep looking for the active dialog

Ask questions, give answers. Then her dialogue-leading hand will open again and again and give something, and then that hand will again demand the reaction of her listeners. Give and take. Your voice will thank you. Because the voice is not only the audible part of their body language, the voice creates verbal added value. The voice sells. Voice sells. Take advantage of it.

Blaue handschriftliche Unterschrift auf transparentem Hintergrund, die Bände spricht und mit Raffinesse verkauft.You

Arno Fischbacher

 

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The author:

Arno Fischbacher is a business voice coach and rhetoric expert, speaker and author. He prepares executives and employees of the top companies in Germany and Austria for negotiations, presentations and media appearances. Fischbacher is the author of several books, past president of the German Speakers Association (GSA) Austria, chairman of the European Network of Voice Experts, stimme.at.

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