Move with purpose

Support and enhance your speech with effective movement and gesture

Let's imagine you're on a stage. In front of you, the audience is hushed; waiting expectantly and the speech you've prepared is important. It will either persuade them to vote for you or for someone else.

Content alone will not be enough to sway their hearts and minds in your favor. To have them give you their full attention, you’ll need to deliver your message effectively. And an essential element of delivery is movement.

In a nutshell, purposeful movement supports and enhances your speech. Weak, non-specific movement detracts and diminishes it.

Think of the speakers you know. Choose someone who is inexperienced and imagine them clearly. Now SEE what they do as part of presenting a speech.

Does the person you're thinking of wander about?

A wanderer walks without purpose or reason around the stage. Sometimes it's three steps this way, another two back, one off to the right, then another toward the front and so on. Their movement is visual 'noise' - a distraction because it's not tied into any part of the text. The same applies to gesture if it's indiscriminate fiddling or a flurry of small ambiguous movements.

In contrast what does a more accomplished or powerful speaker do?

If you know one, call them to mind and replay a presentation in your imagination. How did they move? Where, when and why?

Performance and speech

Giving an effective speech is performance and part of a skilled performer's toolbox is understanding and using movement consciously.

As you rehearse your speech look for opportunities to support or underline a point with action. You'll get an inkling of where these are because you'll find yourself naturally wanting to accompany what you’re saying with movement or gesture. Once you've located them, experiment. Try the movement you want to make out. Does it fit with the intention or purpose of your speech? Have you made it too big? Or too small? Does it detract? Or add?

To be effective movement must arise organically from your text. Anything else will look false. Keep 'playing' until what you're doing feels natural, integrated and right for your speech.

Keep it simple

Remember to keep it simple. One clear gesture, or change of speaking position, for example, from the middle to the front of the stage, 'speaks' more than a cluster of them. Too many and they become disruptive. As in everything, balance is needed.

Here's an example to illustrate from a presentation I gave about choosing speech topics.

As part of it, I said that there were three elements to choosing a topic. One was the audience and its context. The second was the topic itself and the third was the purpose of the speech.

I began speaking middle center stage. When I got to the three elements, I walked first to front stage left. That became the 'audience and context spot'. From here I expanded and gave my sub-points.

The next position I walked to was front center stage. From this place I talked about topics.

The last and third position was front stage right. Here I discussed speech purpose.

When I was finished, I returned to my home base - middle center stage. Later, in the presentation summary all I had to do was gesture to those specific areas on stage to have the audience recall and remember what was said.

Get moving

If you've been tethered to a lectern in the past moving away is going to make you feel exposed. As with acquiring any new skill regular practice is the answer!

Do try. Your speech will be much better for it.

For much more on movement (body language), including numerous exercises and links to research articles, go to: How to increase the impact of your speech with effective body language

That’s it for this week.
Go well,
Susan

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