What To Do With Your Hands When You Don't Know What To Do With Your Hands

Your hands tell a story.

Even if you're not paying attention to them, your audience is.

When you stand on stage (or floor – because stages aren’t always available) and deliver your message, everything you do - including what happens with your hands - either connects or disconnects with your audience.

The aim is do more of the former.

Obvs.

Most people don’t really pay attention to their hands.

They end up in places that just feel natural.

In their pockets.

Draped by their side.

Folded in front of their chest.

Sometimes that’s cool.

Until it undermines what you are trying to say.

Imagine that you have spent time preparing your words.

It’s a wonderful message.

Full of hope and positivity.

You’ve even added in some of that fancy alliteration.

And then… you do things with your hands that undermine what you are trying to say.

You may not notice, but your audience will feel it.

Then you find that your message didn’t do that landing thing in quite the way you wanted.

And you only notice what you are doing when you start to intentionally record, watch and review your speeches.

When I look at some of my early speaking, my bumhole twitches.

It’s not bad, but there are so many things that I just didn’t know then.

One of those was how to use my hands.

I’d have my hands down by my sides.

Or in my pockets.

I was comfortable.

I thought it was showing people that I was relaxed.

Yet it actually gives off a faint whiff of arrogance.

And mate, that was not what I wanted to do.

When I realised this, I started to think more about how I use my hands.

You know, with that intention thing.

If you want to know more about how to use hands – not just on stage, but in all places you use your voice and body to communicate, then I turn to Mark Bowden.

He is the OG of body language.

If you look at his work, he talks about planes (which gets me all excited because we used to reference planes in podiatric biomechanics).

Each of the planes signals something different and I’m going to look at three today.

The first is the Passion plane – this is a horizontal plane in line with your heart. 

When your hands are here and you speak, you are speaking from a place of passion.

Think about the future or about the exciting things to come.

It’s a place of much higher energy.

If you have a message that is all about hope in the future, then this is where you want your hands to be.

The second is the Grotesque plane – this plane is pretty much anywhere south of your waist.

When you put your hands in your pockets or let them hang by your sides, you are in this plane.

It’s a place of much lower energy, disengagement and lack of trust.

The third is the Truth plane – this is the horizontal plane around your belly button area.

As a speaker this is the safest place to be.

It signifies confidence, trust and credibility.

When I started to use this stuff more intentionally things did change.

Using the truth plane, I had somewhere to start and to come back to.

Somewhere that could support the words, slides and message.

Now I’m not say you can’t use the other planes.

You absolutely can, but like all things you must do it intentionally.

A bit like changing pace and tone and adding pauses.

You can take the same words and deliver them from each plane and you get very different results.

I often demonstrate this in my workshops and my client work.

I take a message.

Deliver it in each plane.

Ask people to tell me how it feels.

And you can see people visibly responding to it. 

So what do you do with your hands?

Start by noticing what you actually do.

Record yourself speaking.

Watch yourself back.

See what you are doing with your hands.

And then ask – does this support what I am trying to say?

As always this will be work in progress.

I liken it to holding an egg.

Too tight and your break it. Too loose and you drop it.

The key is to hold it just right and be present with it.

How you use your hands is really bloody important.

There’s a difference between hands that support your message and hands that undermine it.

But they are still a tool.

And you get to decide how you use that tool.