Avoiding Forced Gestures in Public Speaking

Video Transcript

"DON VARNEY: Hi, I'm Don Varney, founder of Varney Speaks, and I'm here on behalf of Expert Village. The other thing that happens is a forced gesture. It's where you're looking at your crowd and you're trying to come up with something that makes sense and you just can't. You're--it's almost like you need to go, "Uh!" And you have this almost robotic "I need to make a gesture." And you do these horrible, stiff, very unnatural movements, just so that you feel like you're doing a gesture. One of the best speakers I saw, and impacted me in such a way, basically, stood with his hand in his left pocket most of the evening and only spoke with one hand using it as an impactful gesture hand. And when he'd maxed and used that hand, you always listen to that point. Other than that, it dropped down to his side and, although he may be moving about the stage, he may be talking. Unless there was a reason, something that needed to be impacted, that hand never moved from his side and this hand never left his pocket."