Right Hand... Good, Left Hand... Bad?
Does it matter to you and your audience which hand you gesture with? Well, in laboratory tests, "right and left-handers associate positive ideas like honesty and intelligence with their dominant side of space and negative ideas with their non-dominant side," says Daniel Casasanto of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. When examining spontaneous gestures in presidential debates during the 2004 and 2008 elections involving two right-handers (Kerry, Bush) and two left-handers (Obama, McCain) researchers Casasanto and Jasmin found that right-handed candidates made a greater proportion of right-hand gestures when expressing positive ideas and left-hand gestures when expressing negative thoughts. But the opposite was found for the left-handers, who favored their left hand more for the positive and their right hand for the negative. Obama's 'right-hand man' may be on his left. For years I have told my public speaking students who were nervous to try putting one hand in their pocket, For 30 years I have seen students who do this magic gesture with their dominant hand. As a coach for Politicians, the old school was to tell them to gesture mostly with their right hand and only to use their left hand when delivering bad news. The new data Cassanto shows is that people associate “good things with the side of their body they can use most fluently -- dominant is fluent, and fluent is good."
Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at http://PattiWood.net. Also check out the body language quiz on her YouTube Channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.
What Do I Do With My Hands When I Give A Speech?
What do I do with my hands when I give a speech?
The energy impact of gestures.
The most frequent question that I get when I am teaching my public speaking course or working with a coaching client who wants to improve their body language in their speeches is, “What do I do with my hands?” Because the hands come out from the heart they symbolically show our true feelings. Nervousness and anxiety come in our feet and hands. We don’t want our fear to show, so we want to hide our hands. Most of the frustration comes at the beginning of the speech when you are the most nervous. You may want to plan specific gestures to use at that time. I threw my hands up in the air at the beginning of one of my speeches just to get the excitement up and out of my body. The location of your hands, also, affects your nonverbal behavior. Put your hands at your sides and your energy goes down and your voice lowers and can become more monotone and you tend to move and show fewer facial expressions. Bring your hands to the level of your waist and you become calm and centered, bring your hands up high to the level of your upper chest or above and your voice goes up and you become more energized and animated. Change the location of your hands depending on your emotional message.
Sales Techniques....Way for a Manager to Make a Request and Get Follow Through
A Five Step Process to Get Commitment and Follow Through From Someone or Make a Sale-
When you ask someone to do something, ask him to say what he will do. Make eye contact. Make sure your facing side by side with men and face to face with women.
Make sure you give a specific time frame for completion. Develop a sense of obligation in him. Engage his conscience and have him tell you how the task will go. End with verbal confirmation. For example, “So I will see you next Saturday, right?”
1) Get him to say it. Do you really mean that? Are you serious? Do I have your commitment to follow through on this?
2) Get a specific time frame. "Great." What time will you start?" When will you start?" "Any idea of how long it might take?" “When can you begin?” “What will be your first step?”
3) Develop a sense of obligation – Let him know that because of his help positive things will happen or that if he withdrawals his offer it will cause a disturbance.
4) A sense of conscious. You want to relay that you are now dependent upon him for his help. Let him know how important his help really is. Mention any consequences that you might suffer if he doesn't come through. I will be in hot water.
5) Seeing is believing - Example, A Real Estate agent showing a home says, "Where will the sofa go?”What will you do first, hook up the monitors or go through the booklet?Make sure he sees himself doing what he says.
Selling Techniques from Patti's Sales Presentation Workshop
The Law of Scarcity – When a person perceives that something they might want is limited in quantity he believes that the value of what he might want is greater than if it were available in abundance.
Action - Limit options.
Narrow someone's options before you present them to him. Conventional wisdom suggests that with more options a person is sure to find something that he or she likes and that will motivate him or her to take action. The opposite is actually more likely. Nobody enjoys being wrong. When you give fewer choices research shows a person will make a decision faster and be less likely to dwell on it afterward. Second guessing the choice they made. Don’t’ create the, "Did I make the right choice?" scenario. Offer no more than three options with two being the ideal. Give a person choices, but not too many. When a person is not given choices he can feel his freedom is restricted and it may cause him to back off.
The Power of the Pause. How to Use The Nonverbal Pausing to Get Action and Follow Through.
Research on persuasion and body language shows there is power in a pause. When you make a request, then pause for confirmation.
Say something like, “I can count on you, right?”
After you say it, pause for a response. Research shows this kind of request followed by a pause and then a commitment from someone, increases follow through from 62 to 81 percent.
The powerful steps for making a request that gets follow through.
- Ask for what you want
- Ask for a quick verbal confirmation
- Pause
- Maintain eye contact if you are face to face when making the request.
- Wait for their verbal confirmation. If they give you a head nod make noise such as a grunt, but don't say yes, ask for a yes.
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