Hi, and welcome to this lecture on body language. I'm going to take a break from sitting down for this particular lecture because I want to demonstrate some things that you might want to consider when you're delivering a speech or a pitch, and this is body language. And one of the things that I want you to consider is how do you make use of body language to enhance your speech? Now, a lot of times my students often say to me, well, what do I do with my hands? I don't know what to do with my hands at all. All right? So I get students that just let them sit there at the sides and they're afraid to use them, then they miss any opportunity for enhancing their speech. Then I get others that just keep on making use of their hands. And, wow, I just feel like I have to do this. So, I tell students to pay attention to how they have conversations with their friends, their family members, people that they normally talk to. And pay attention to when they're speaking about something they're passionate about. So, for example, let's say you went to a rock concert or some sort of concert or movie that you really enjoyed, and you're excited about it and you want to tell your friends how much you enjoyed the show. Well, you won't talk like this, hey, I just saw this excellent movie, it was really good. Probably not. You probably would use your hands in a natural way without even thinking about how you're using them. You would use your hands sometimes to enhance a point. Sometimes you wouldn't use them at all. Sometimes they would be just down at the sides. So, it's really important that, when you're speaking, you try to be as natural as you can. You can make use of your hands, enhance things with them, but don't overdo it. All right? As I just did. Other things you might want to consider is keep your hands or the palms of your hands down. This shows a sense of confidence, sometimes, and it's not intimidating. It doesn't feel like you're threatening the audience. If you want to invite them to a question or invite them to participate, open up your palms. Invite your guests. Otherwise, keep your hands, look confident, keep your palms down. And you can raise them sometimes if you want to emphasize or bring out a hand to emphasize something that you're trying to say. All right? Other things that you really need to consider is eye contact. Right now, I'm looking at you through the camera. But if you're talking to a live audience, it's important that you engage everyone that's in the audience. You make eye contact as you're speaking. Don't just focus on one person, but engage everyone. It's very important. But it's also important that you don't do it in an artificial way. I've seen students just go, okay, I'm making eye contact, I'm moving around and I'm not really looking at anyone. Actually, I'm looking at the tops of their heads but not making any real eye contact. You want to make sure you're engaging your audience. Eye contact in certain situations becomes extremely important, okay? Another thing you need to consider is, and this is something that my students often forget, is that they have feet, right? You want to make use of your stage. As you're turning, as you're making eye contact, your toes should be pointing in the direction of the people you're talking to. Take a turn, point, toes pointing in your eye direction. Turn, talk to the person. Toes, pointing in that direction, okay? So, these are things that you really need to consider. You also might want to consider the fact that, hey, you're going to say something important, move a bit closer to the audience. They're going to pay attention now to what you're saying. Take a step back when you want to talk about more general ideas. So, your body language enhances your message. It's very important. Don't rely on your body language to be the main point of your speech, right? Delivery is important. it really makes it, a mediocre speech, an excellent one. But if you rely too much on delivery, too much on your body language, then your content is meaningless. It's your content that's still important, but your body language enhances the content.
