93% of Communication is - Non Verbal Communication
FACIAL EXPRESSIONS
Eyes
Your audience’s eyes follow your eyes and your eyes are the barometers of the room.
Always make eye contact with the entire room and if need be, walk down the aisle to ensure the people at the back are not left out.
If you are using a slide deck, when you change the slide, turn to the screen, point with your hand to the screen and read before turning back to face the audience. If you don't do this, the audience will be reading the slide and not looking or listening to you.
Certainty comes from your eyes, so when you are delivering key points in your presentation, don't blink and look at an individual in each section of your audience for each sentence that you say. This shows confidence in your subject matter and certainty in your delivery.
Your eyes are the windows to your soul, therefore, ensure you are confident and certain in your content and delivery through continued eye contact.
Facial muscles
Try telling a sad story with a smile on your face! It's not right and your voice changes.
Your emotions and more importantly your voice can be controlled by your facial gestures.
When you are making a point and wanting your intention to deliver certainty, your face should show no emotion. Your voice should have a downward intonation which is assisted with your facial muscles and breathing.
If you want to add emotion such as frustration, your facial expression of frustration adds to the message you are delivering and will change your voice
This is also great when using humour and will get your audience involved with laughing. It has been proven that canned laughter, the prerecorded laughter played too audiences at a live recording of television sitcoms, makes the audience laugh louder.
So how do you get laughter from your audience at the right time? Laugh out loud at yourself or the joke and the audience will laugh along with you.
VOICE PATTERNS
Tonality
Your voice is 38% of your non-verbals. This includes:
Pitch
Tone
Pace
Volume
Pausing
The tone of your voice is vital in being open and approachable versus credible and certain. We believe, listen more and even vote for people who have a deeper resonance, a lower register of voice. People with a deeper tone will be listened to for longer.
This is the case with both women and men and yes, you can learn to change the tone of your voice by doing the following:
When you are making a point and you want to be credible and certain, turn your palm so it is almost pointing to the ground - this changes the tone of your voice - yes our hands are hard-wired to our voice box
The other is to practice diaphragm breathing - read more in the section on breathing.
Voice Intonation
Have you ever listened to a person who speaks like every sentence finishes on an upward intonation, making everything they say sound like a question? It drives you crazy and makes it hard to listen.
If you want to be open and approachable, your voice intonation should finish with an upward inflection in your voice, but only sometimes. If you want to deliver a message with confidence and certainty, your voice should finish with a downward inflection or intonation.
A great example of this is the flight attendant and the captain on a plane, both make announcements over the PA on every flight. The flight attendant will be happy and upbeat generally and finish on a higher inflection. The captain gets on the PA after take-off and has a serious tone with a downward inflection.
You know the captain means business and speaks with authority due to the tone and intonation of his voice.
You want the captain being in charge and flying the plane and not the flight attendant.
GESTURES
Arms and Fingers
A little known fact is that the most-watched TED talks also happen to have the most hand gestures - in fact twice as many.
Your gestures with your hands and arms vital when delivering your message.
You should never point your fingers at anyone and your entire hand should be used to direct your message. Your arms and hand gestures should always be moving when you speak or present and remain still when you pause, this creates confidence and certainty.
One of the biggest mistakes made by speakers and presenters is bringing the hands back to the belly button area - we call this BBI or belly button insecurity.
The audience’s eyes follow your eyes and when you are telling a story and showing your story with your hands and fingers, the eyes of the audience will follow your eyes. Yes, your eyes follow your hands and fingers and the audience will follow along with you. This is the power of gestures.
Your arms and hand gestures should flow with your words and should always be at a 90-degree angle.
When presenting at a board room table, office desk or dining table, your hands should always be above the table and resting on the table at the wrist area.
You should always gesture when sitting down however the gestures are not as large as when you are standing.
If you are using a Slide Deck you should turn and look at the screen and read the slide whilst your arm remains pointing at the screen and when you have finished, turn back to the audience.
If you do not do this, change the slide and continue with your presentation, you will lose your audience as they are reading the slide whilst you are continuing with your presentation.
BODY LANGUAGE AND BREATHING
They say you only have between 2-7 seconds to make a first impression. Actually it is 1/10th of a second. The second people lay eyes on you they are making judgments.
Your certainty comes from your eyes and your body language. How you stand and how you move when presenting is vital to your command of the audience, authenticity, and believability.
The biggest mistake made by many presenters and speakers is that they are not balanced when standing still. Often you will shift your weight to one side or the other, and sometimes you may do this a number of times and look like you are swaying.
Some ladies have a tendency to cross their legs and sway rather than standing well balanced and strong.
"What you say speaks so loudly that I cannot hear a word you say" Ralph Waldo Emerson
There are times when you may want to walk and talk at the same time - that is acceptable as long as it is slow with the flow. The important thing to remember is that when you stop walking, you stop and settle with your feet and ensure you are balanced.
Breathing is something that is optional yet advisable! Diaphragm breathing is essential for your voice control, certainty, and tonality. Of all of the non-verbal modalities, breathing is the most important.
High shallow breathing shows your audience that you are nervous and this will impact on your delivery. When we shallow breath it is more difficult to control your voice and pace of your presentation. When you sound "breathy" you tend to rush and lose your credibility and certainty.
Practice diaphragm breathing by laying down on the floor, place a book on your stomach and try to make it rise and fall. This breathing and control takes some time to master yet is the most important.
