Are you a Talking Head?

Are you a presenter who stands still and delivers speeches from the safety of the lectern? Your audience sees the equivalent of a lifeless talking head and hears your voice. This is not very engaging for your audience and I find it hard to pay attention to a talking head.

At my Toastmasters meetings and Project Management Institute meetings this week, I observed how prevalent the lack of expression is in body gestures. Many presenters tend to limit their own expressiveness on stage and become "formal". For example, one speaker spoke about falling off his bicycle and fracturing his elbow which required 72 hours of hospitalization. He narrated these facts with zero expression. I am glad it was him and not me, because I assume it was a painful and overall unpleasant experience.

So how can you be more expressive in your presentations? Use your "muscle memory". Knowing that you are less expressive on stage than when relating your story to your friends at a barbecue, you should exaggerate gestures in your speech rehearsals. Make your gestures large and meaningful. Then you are going to have more expressive gestures on stage, although they will be smaller than the gestures you rehearsed because your "muscle memory" comes to your aid.

Train your "muscle memory" to take your presentation from being a talking head to being an expressive, confident and riveting speaker through expressive gestures.