Chapter
8
Illustrative Gestures
In This Chapter
• Communicating with your hands
• Putting gestures to work
• Using gestures more effectively
In the previous chapter you learned that gestures can have different meanings in different countries and that some cultures gesture more or less than others. In our recent world travels, we touched on how most gestures are either illustrators or emblems, but we dealt primarily with emblems. In this chapter we focus more heavily on illustrative gestures, exploring different styles, goals, and outcomes in everyday speech and professional communication. Although they all fall under the heading of “illustrators,” you might rightly think of them as different paints on your easel—finger paints, although some illustrative gestures may bring your whole body into play.
Illustrating Your Point
Before we settle in to talk about gestures in a professional context, let’s stretch our legs with another field trip and observe a few illustrative gestures in the wild.
Ah, Central Park—bicycles, balloons, and look, a mime! Talk about illustrative gestures. The guy’s a walking silent movie. If he couldn’t “talk” with his hands, he’d be just another quirky hipster with a white glove fetish. That clown over there—same story, he just has bigger shoes.
Have you ever played charades, or its more commercial cousin, Guesstures, where players act out a key word or phrase using body language? That’s what illustrative gestures do, except that they enhance, rather than replace, the spoken word.
Let’s explore some of the most common illustrative gestures and what they do.
Regulators
These conversational on/off switches govern verbal exchange. For example, you might raise a finger to indicate “I have something to say,” or hold up a hand to discourage someone else from speaking. Regulating gestures are most often seen in two-way conversation—my turn and then your turn. You will sometimes see them used by masters of ceremony, pushing down with outstretched hands to quiet a crowd before introducing a speaker.
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WORKIN’ IT |
Metaphors
A speaker trying to convey an abstract concept might give it shape and dimension with a gestural metaphor—such as interlocking fingers for teamwork; a sturdy, braced posture for grit; or a raised open palm for support.
Motivational speakers rely on this type of gesture to give substance and weight to philosophical and psychological abstractions.
First encountered in elementary school story time, iconic gestures tend to be the physical manifestations of easily recognized or “iconic” images: bunny ears, scissors, fists, and pantomime. Other examples include counting out talking points on your fingers or using an upward progression of horizontal chops to either represent vertical progress or increase importance. These are all iconic gestures.
Affectation
The intentional display of inner emotions, affect gestures might include someone jumping up and down and shaking their hands like maracas in excitement, covering their eyes or ears to block an unwanted sight or sound, crossing their arms, balling their fists, or holding their nose.
Unlike our early discussion on facial expressions, which tend to be unconscious, an affect gesture is an intentional signal, a pose or affectation, specifically selected to put others on notice.
Putting Gestures to Work
Now that you know what to do with your hands, it’s time to apply it. Illustrative gestures are to speaking what performance is to music. Anyone can play a power chord on the guitar, but no one can windmill their arm and play without evoking the image of Pete Townshend of the rock band The Who. Illustrative gestures allow you to amplify your message and increase your power to persuade, motivate, and inspire. Here’s how they do it.
Persuasion
Imagine a popular evangelist stalking the stage, dipping, swaying, preening, and playing to the crowd—loud, proud, and supremely confident. When you’ve got people counting on you to call down fire from heaven and banish the devil, you’ve got to bring your A-game.
Now substitute your favorite motivational speaker or charismatic CEO. See any similarities? Let’s break it down:
• Do the speakers in your mind stand behind a podium, or do they move around the stage—setting their message in motion?
• Are they static or animated?
• Do they use the air space around them like a bulletin board, assigning certain ideas and concepts to different parts of the stage—with “good” thoughts both physically and metaphorically higher than “bad” thoughts, and problems separated, both physically and by tone of voice, from solutions?
• If they stand behind a podium, do they at least use hand gestures to arrange and display their thoughts in the air?
A persuasive speaker uses illustrative hand gestures to render thoughts into physical reality. The fact that the speaker can see them clearly enough to move them around in space and time makes them real. And getting people to see something is the first step toward persuading them to believe it.
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SAY WHAT? |
President Barack Obama’s favorite sport is basketball, a team sport that requires cooperation. The next time you hear him speak about cooperation, watch what he does with his hands. He holds them, chest-high, about a foot apart, palms facing in, like a point guard ready to pass the ball.
If you want cooperation from your staff, then when speaking, hold both hands with fingers open, spread apart, slightly rounded, as if you’re gripping a basketball. Place the basketball grip outward toward your audience as in the following picture. Make sure you gesture with grace and poise, not hard and choppy.
A gesture of cooperation.
Gestures that motivate are always presented in a moving, rhythmic fashion. This is the physical manifestation of saying, “Follow me!” Motivating others takes energy, and energy moves forward; therefore use gestures that move forward and outward. This is one reason so many motivational speakers eschew podiums. They move around the stage, like caged tigers, creating the impression that they are very excited about the message they have to share and creating the expectation that you should be just as excited after you’ve heard it.
Motivating gestures are forward and outward.
What do you think an inspirational gesture would look like? Remember what you’ve learned about consistency between words and actions being required for authenticity.
A good way to inspire people, in addition to evoking cooperation and motivation, is to appeal to their hearts. Open hands, palms up, with fingers open, say: “I’m open to share my experiences so that you can learn from them.”
This is definitely one you’ll see often in worship, but also among human resource professionals, self-help speakers, and mental-health professionals.
An open gesture, with hands up, expresses inspiration.
Compassionate gestures are those that are held closest to the heart. Before the kick-off of the Super Bowl, the “Star-Spangled Banner” plays. The fans place their hand over their heart during the song; the same goes when we say The Pledge of Allegiance.
When communicating a heartfelt message, the words are often followed by a hand-to-heart gesture. When it is authentic, the audience will be moved to feel the compassion, so it can be a powerful, persuasive gesture.
A hand to the heart shows compassion.
To signal you have expertise in a subject, construct a mid-high steeple gesture. In court, you’ll see experts testifying on a specific point making a steeple gesture. You will often see this used in contract negotiations and business meetings. Don’t overuse or maintain the steeple gesture too long; otherwise it will come across as contrived and planned—like the greedy cartoon tycoon Mr. Burns on The Simpsons. Be sure to change it up a bit.
Donald Trump uses a knee steeple when seated, signifying extreme confidence. You’ll often see Trump seated during interviews, leaning forward with elbows on knees and his hands steepled in between.
Visualization
Sometimes all it takes to win people over to your point of view is to get them to see it from your perspective. Time lines, bar charts, graphs, even statistical probabilities can all be effectively illustrated with visualizations or pictorial gestures.
Punctuation
Punctuating words with fingers, hands, and arms in a rhythmic motion grabs attention and emphasizes a point or meaning. These gestures can be used on each syllable or on anchor words. Short, one-beat gestures are best when making a point, and repeated rhythmic patterns drive your message home, if your goal is to be hard-hitting on a subject. Here are a couple of examples.
Short, one-beat gesture:
“STOP (Punch hand), and LISTEN (Punch hand) to what is being said.”
“Stop and listen to what is being said.”
This quick motion with the finger emphasizes a point.
What Gestures Say About You
Most people wouldn’t think of giving a speech without rehearsing it. Far fewer, however, think to rehearse their hand gestures—an interesting statistic when you recall that 61 percent of people process information visually.
Even the most carefully crafted speech can be sabotaged by poor performance. Let’s go over some ways bosses have been known to go astray.
Unless you’re holding a gavel in your hands in a court of law, the closed-fisted pound says, “Take a chill pill!” or “I mean it!” or “This is unacceptable!” Losing your temper almost always sends the wrong message, like, “It’s my way or the highway.” A more effective way to send an important message is with strong eye contact and a firm voice, punctuating your words on point.
The hammerhead can be seen as an expression of anger or frustration.
Blame Game
No one likes to be pointed at, including your kids, spouse, friends, or employees. So why do so many people point directly at someone? Jennifer Kunst, PhD, wrote in the October 18, 2011, issue of Psychology Today that pointing at someone else is your own projective identification, meaning we try to get rid of our own unwanted feelings by shaming others for our own shortcomings. Unless you are pointing someone in the right direction when giving driving instructions, or calling upon someone in a room who has a question, it’s probably best to keep your pointer to yourself.
Directly pointing at someone is a way of blaming and shaming that person.
The Put Down
The hand press is seen with a palm facing toward the floor. Generally this gesture is used to quiet a room, or get someone to calm down. It is often perceived as patronizing.
The push press—palms away, pushing outward in a “whoa” motion—is a deflector or stopper. It is a gestural shove. No one likes to be pushed around.
The hand press can be a calming gesture, but it can also come across as patronizing.
Backward Wrist Slap
I call this one the pinball flipper flap. A poorly executed attempt at inclusion, this chest-high gesture may appear from the speaker’s perspective to be a magnanimous opening of the gates of knowledge. From the audience’s perspective, however, it looks like a backhanded slap, or a condescending “shoo” motion.
Dismissive and inadvertently rude, this one should be dug up at the roots and banished forever.
The wrist slap is a dismissive gesture.
The Limp Wrist
The opposite of the wrist slap, the limp wrist suggests ambivalence and insecurity. The very limpness and listlessness of it evokes the image of a dead fish—cold and clammy. Opt for more deliberate and persuasive gestures that will make you appear more confident.
A limp wrist does not inspire confidence.
Gestures can make or break you; they are an important piece of the body language puzzle. Keep these do’s and don’ts in mind.
Do:
• Use gestures to make a point with spoken words.
• Use repeat-pattern gestures to drive your message home.
• Use “palms up” gestures to appear more truthful and “palms in” gestures to appear more inclusive.
• Use motion to motivate.
Don’t:
• Point directly at anyone.
• Make “chopping” hand gestures.
• Hammer your point with your fists.
The Least You Need to Know
• There are several ways to illustrate a point using gestures.
• Gestures can be used in persuasive communication.
• Gestures can replace spoken words.
• Practice hand gestures before making a speech.