Elements of Confident Body Language

Body language is an essential part of public speaking success. Your non-verbal cues will
impact on the way your message is received and how engaged your audience is. Even if
you’ve prepared the best speech in the world, if you aren’t animated, open or active then
your audience won’t remember what you’ve said.

Power pose

Why? The US social psychologists Amy Cuddy, Dana Carney and Andy Yap proposed that
holding a ‘power pose‘ resulted in people actually feeling more powerful.

Their theory suggests that an open pose can raise testosterone levels and lower your cortisol
levels – ie. increase your dominance and lower your stress. If you have confident body
language and pretend you feel powerful, you’re more likely to actually feel it!

How:

 Stand straight with your shoulders back and feet shoulder width apart.
 Imagine your shoulders opening up from one another so that they rest centrally.
 Place your hands either side of your body so that you can easily make hand gestures
when you need to.
 Face the audience as much as possible. If you’re in a large room, tilt your whole
body towards different parts of the audience so everyone feels included.

Eye contact

Making eye contact with your audience builds a connection between you and them and they
feel more valued by you. This makes the audience more likely to respect and listen to you
because they feel important. It also makes the audience trust you more because people tend
to avoid eye contact when they’re lying.

Confident body language can also be used as a feedback loop. Making eye contact is the
easiest to way to receive feedback from the audience about your speech.

You can see if your audience are listening and read their facial expressions to see if they are
interested, bored, angry, happy, and so on. You can then alter your speech accordingly
based on the feedback you see.

How:

 When talking to a large number of people, maintain eye contact with one audience
member for 4 or more seconds before moving to another member of the audience
for 4 seconds, and so on.
 Make eye contact in a ‘Z’ formation – look at one person at the back left corner of
the room, then the back right, then to the front left, and finally to someone at the
front right. Be careful not to just repeat the Z formation with the same audience
members each time you do it – you want to connect with as many members of the
audience as possible.
 In one-on-one settings, maintain eye contact for 9-10 seconds and then break away
to save yourself from coming across as intense or like you’re starting. (The same
applies when answering a question from an audience of any size.)

Hand gestures

When used correctly, hand and arm gestures can help enhance your message and make you
seem more confident and relaxed. Gestures amplify your stories and will help you come
across as more genuine and believable. They’re an essential element of our non-verbal
communication in showing others how we feel, and in turn how we make them feel.

Hand gestures are one of the clearest non-verbal ways we communicate confident body
language or nervous body language – and your audience will react more positively to the
former.

How:

 Think of your hand gestures as a storytelling tool; put verbs into action by acting
them out with your hands.
 Don’t overdo it – gesture sparingly, and focus on action words. Make your gestures
strong and defined.
 Begin in a neutral position with your hands either side of your body so that your
hand gestures flow smoothly.
 Use descriptive gestures to communicate movement, eg. shapes, size, length, etc.
 Use emotional gestures to communicate feelings, eg. hands clasped together to
show pleading, hands raise either side of your head to show despair.
  When using visual aids, point and turn slightly to look at the relevant data, and the
audience will automatically follow your hands and eyes.

Movement

Moving around the stage is a great way of showing your audience you are confident in what
you’re saying and including everyone in the conversation. Commanding the space around
you shows strong leadership and, after all, when you’re presenting you are the leader.

When you have confident body language, you’ll be more dynamic and interesting to listen to
and your audience will not only be more engaged but they will have more trust in your
message too.

How:

 Don’t pace around the stage every 30 seconds – this is distracting to your audience.
Wait at least 3 minutes before moving to another area of the stage.
 Time your movement on stage with a change in topic – this is a way of physically
marking the transition.
 Move towards the audience when asking questions or making an important point.
 When you’re walking to another side of the stage, try to avoid turning your back to
any areas of the audience as this disconnects them and can come across as rude.
 Avoid swaying or rocking on the spot – either walk to another area of the stage or
don’t move your entire body at all.

Expressions

People depend on facial expressions to interpret motives and emotions so an audience will
respond better to you if you are expressive. This is a bit like acting – you want to emphasize
your expressions so that everyone in the audience can interpret meaning from them.

You could film yourself speaking and identify artificial or unfriendly facial expressions you
make when telling a story and replace them with more genuine, believable expressions. Try
to practice speaking with your face to show happiness, sadness, anger, and surprise. Your
face should reflect the emotions within your stories.

How:

 When trying to show shock or confusion, raise your eyebrows.

 If you’re conveying anger or concern, frown.
 When you’re happy in your story, simply smile.
 For sad moments, frown a little and slightly tilt the sides of your lips downwards.
Breathing

Even though your audience can’t see your breath, it is a significant factor in portraying
confident body language. Maintaining a slow, steady breath can reduce your stress levels
and make you less likely to revert to nervous habits, bad posture and excessive movement.
Relaxed and deep breaths also ensure that you’re speaking at the right pace and your voice
can project across the room, which in itself will make you feel and sound more confident.

How:

 Before you present or speak in public, do some breathing exercises to warm up your
voice and fill your lungs. Slowly inhale for 3 seconds, and exhale for 4 seconds.
Repeat this as often as you need to, in order to feel calm.
 Always make sure you’re standing up straight so that your lungs can expand fully.

To maximise your breath, and thus your voice and consequently your influence, you should
aim to fill your lungs all the way down.

Voice

Your vocal expression is physical and so your body language has an effect on your voice and
can enhance or detract from the message of your speech.

Albert Mehrabian wrote extensively on the relative importance of verbal and non-verbal
messages and his findings have been quoted for years as the ‘7-38-55 Rule‘.

Importance of verbal and non-verbal communication:

7% – words
38% – tone

55% – body language

When you combine these 3 elements, your audience will be more engaged and connected
with you. So don’t forget that your body language should always enhance your voice and
emphasize your message.

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