As a presenter your body language is a key factor in whether or not the audience likes and trusts you. Confident and appropriate posture, movement, and facial expressions help to support the image you are trying to convey—that you are an expert who not only believes in what you are saying, but that what you are saying is the most important thing for them to listen to.
But there is another critical aspect to body language to consider when it comes to giving successful talks: body language that distracts. A presenter’s first job is to gain, and keep, the audience’s attention. But that attention should be focused on the topic of the presentation, including its relevance to the audience, not on the presenter themselves. It goes without saying that if the audience is distracted by your body language, then they are not listening to your words. This is a sure recipe for failure as making sure the audience is listening to you is the whole point.
Distracting body language comes in many forms, and in addition to taking the attention off of your words, it says to your audience that you are not relaxed, you are not confident, and that you probably aren’t fully prepared for your speech, whether that is true or not. Often it is the result of subconscious fear (or even, sometimes, overexcitement) and the subsequent rush of adrenaline and cortisol that occurs as a result of this fear. Fortunately, however, you can eliminate it when you know what to look for, practice good habits, and replace negative behaviors with more confident movements.
The Most Common Examples of Bad Habits
With this in mind, here are four examples of bad habits presenters have habits of displaying that distract (and maybe even irritate) their audience:
1. Fidgeting With Anything You Can Reach
One of the most common examples of bad habits nervousness manifests itself through is fidgeting. For example, touching or playing with your hair or face, continually checking or adjusting your clothes, playing with keys or change in your pocket, or holding (or, God forbid, twirling!) a pen. Fidgeting draws people’s attention away from your talk, and not only exposes your nervousness, but can actually make the audience a bit nervous as well.
Like many kinds of bad habits, fidgeting often happens automatically after repeated practice. Over time, behaviors like this can become second nature, especially when someone is under pressure while speaking in front of a group.
Fidgeting also has the added issue of almost every way in which you can fidget having a negative effect on your presentation as a whole. Going through a few of the ones I already listed.
- Shuffling around your clothes and twiddling your hair can make you look more disheveled.
- Itching your face can leave scratch marks on you for everyone to see.
- Playing around with jewelry, coins, keys, or zippers makes a distracting noise that is incredibly obvious to the audience.
- And, take it from me (someone who has fidgeted with a pen at their desk all day for years.) No matter how good you think you are at pen tricks, that pen will go flying at some point.
Fidgeting can be a hard one because many people (like previously stated, me) fidget a ton in daily life. So keeping that from translating into our speeches can be particularly daunting. For a tip on this specific habit, learning to talk with your hands more can both give your hands something to do, and can even make your presentation more engaging!
2. Distracting (and unnecessary) movement
Are you pacing around aimlessly or, even worse, hastily (a.k.a. Caged Tiger Syndrome)? Are you pointing aggressively with one finger at the audience or even just wagging a finger randomly? Swaying side to side, rocking back and forth, or bouncing on your toes? Are you making overly-dramatic gestures, especially those that are outside the “gesture box” (see below)?
All of these movements are distracting, and also make you look more nervous than you might actually be (they may, again, be a result of improperly channeled excitement, for example). And, like fidgeting, can even make your audience uncomfortable.
These types of habits may not seem like a big deal to the speaker, but they can have a negative impact on how the audience perceives your confidence and professionalism.
3. Closed-off (defensive) posture
It is common for nervous presenters to subconsciously try to “protect” themselves when speaking in front of a group, particularly if the speech is given from a stage. It’s called fear of public speaking for a reason. Crossing your arms, or standing with your hands clasped in front of you (a.k.a. the “fig leaf”), gripping the lectern like a shield, constantly turning away from the audience, or, even more egregious, ignoring the audience completely by turning your back on them in order to read from a screen, are all ways that this subconscious fear manifests itself.
These negative behaviors diminish your ability to connect with, and maintain the attention of, your audience and can become a big problem for the presenter if not corrected. This habit also has the added issue of snowballing stress. Putting yourself into positions that are defensive actually has the psychological effect of making you even more anxious. It makes your body and mind think there is an actual imminent threat and the longer you go without something happening the more your mental health and physical health can deteriorate. If you are already nervous about speaking, doing things that anatomically make you even more nervous is really the first step to work on fixing.
4. Hiding Your Hands From the Audience
Presenters who constantly have their hands in their pockets or behind their backs not only look uncomfortable, they generally look disinterested. The main goal for presenters, in terms of how they deliver their talk, is to look and sound natural. In other words, your presentation should sound conversational; you’re not talking at your audience so much as you’re talking with them (even though you are doing almost all of the talking!).
What do you notice when you watch people having a normal conversation (at least those that are relaxed)? They are all gesturing! Gesturing is also important for helping to make your talk clearer, and can even be distracting by its absence. Like I said before it can also really help with suppressing fidgeting.
We often think of speeches as purely auditory mediums. We like to focus entirely on the words being said and the best way to say them, but that’s not the best way to look at it. The delivery and writing of the presentation certainly are a focus, but what makes a great speaker is everything else they do. No one in the audience wants to stare at a closed off mannequin or an awkward, fidgeting pacer for half an hour. Making just a few small changes to these habits won’t only make you better in the long term, but it can really decrease stress levels and make giving speeches much less stressful.
How to Break These Examples of Bad Habits
So how do we eliminate these bad “body language habits”? The first step is to pay close attention to your posture, how you move, and what you are doing with your hands while presenting. If possible, ask someone you know to observe you and take note of any distracting body language you have. A family member, colleague, or trusted observer can often see things that you might miss.
Or better yet, video yourself so you can go back and thoroughly check for these (or any other examples of) bad habits. Watching a recording often reveals a list of negative habits that might not be obvious in the moment.
Step two is to replace those behaviors with good habits and more confident movements during practice. Like building any new habit, improvement usually happens through small steps taken on a regular basis.
No Matter What Examples of Bad Habits You Display, There’s a Fix
If you watch effective presenters, you will see that they all:
- Keep their shoulders relaxed and their arms loose by their sides—not in their pockets, not playing with their hair or touching their face—ready to gesture.
- Gesture within the “Gesture Box”. Good presenters use a variety of gestures (as we all generally do when speaking naturally), but they rarely gesture outside the area between the shoulders and hips, the area known as the gesture box. Gesturing outside this area makes you appear nervous and unprofessional (watch an old Steve Ballmer Microsoft presentation for a good example of this), and keeps, unfortunately, the attention on you, not your presentation.
- Face the audience nearly 100% of the time. They are not constantly turning to, or reading, from the screen.
- Move with purpose. Steve Jobs is a wonderful example of this. He always strolled around, making good use of the space provided, as great presenters do, but he moved in a relaxed and slow way. He was not walking off nervousness, not rushing through his talk, rather he was connecting with his audience throughout the room, while also keeping their attention.
- Stand straight. They don’t sway or rock or bounce. They don’t “power stance.” The best presenters present themselves first and foremost as authorities, and their posture reflects this.
With these good habits you will be a more polished and professional presenter, and one that inspires rather than distracts the audience.