How to use gesture when you present – and speak to sound confident (even when you’re not)

“I don’t use gesture!  You’re making me do something unnatural, Frankie!”  exclaimed the client, as he waved his hands in the air.

“Alright. Carry on, then.” I replied,  “Do what you’re doing there.”

The problem is that most people don’t do in presentations what they naturally do when they’re comfortable communicating. They become robotic, forgetting how to use expressive body language. On virtual presentations, people get round this by hiding their hands.

Whether we don’t see your gestures or you’re standing as stiff as a lamp post, there’s a vital part of your presentation skills that you’re overlooking.  (Scroll down below the video to see the vital reasons for using gesture in the first place.)

Wondering how to move and sound more confidently when you present?

Unsure how to sound more convincing in a pitch?

This video address BOTH challenges.

Learn when and how to move and sound to seem more confident: even when you’re not.

(Scroll down for the transcipt)

But why use gesture in the first place?

Gesture reinforces credibility:

Neuroscientists at Colgate University explored the effectiveness of gestures, revealing that misalignment between body language and verbal communication can confuse audiences. For instance, a leader might unintentionally undermine their message by darting their eyes when expressing commitment to a course of action, shifting their weight from side to side when talking of steadfastness or clasping their hands tightly while declaring a welcoming attitude. Such mismatches dilute the intended message and reduce its credibility.

Meaning is reinforced when when gestures are congruent with words.

Gesture adds colour to the voice

If your voice tends towards the monotonous in presentations, it’s very likely to be due to a lack of gesture. In fact, even if participant in my presentation skills training aren’t mentally focusing on vocal pitch to add more colour into their delivery, they can still achieve lively vocal delivery by using well-placed gesture, that is, gesture placed on the words being emphasised.

Gesture dissipates nervous energy

Nerves can generate the ‘Flight’ or ‘Freeze’ impulses.

With both of them, the adrenaline vibrates around the body. If you’d just been out collecting firewood and you see a mammoth, that’s when you’d run – the flight. Freezing would have helped survival if threats were drawn to movement. In a presentation, that may manifest in one of those strange out of body experiences, where you watch yourself paralysed, unable to speak.  Either way, it’s the old mammalian brain that takes over your reactions. Running away off the stage at a conference would undermine your credibility and if you’re brain has jammed, telling yourself to ‘unjam’ won’t work. What does work is moving. Simply gesture, or move to another part of the stage or space and the nerves start to seep away.

Gesture helps to the speaker to formulate their thinking

In this post, I advise against a script, as it will squash your self-expression and make you sound robotic. Plotting out the bollards in the road – the points you need to hit – is far more practical and allows you to add or filter new thoughts as they come to you. Gestures not only help to formulate and package thought. They literally help you to think and speak.

Research such as this: demonstrate that we are more able to formulate our thinking and express it when there is gesture to back it.

Gesture provides a second channel of communication

This study reveals that gesture provides a second channel for communication. Researchers found that seeing gestures enhanced the comprehension of complex systems for listeners. Think how relevant this is if you’re an Engineer, describing to the Ops Team a function that’s out of their expertise or you’re in the Product Team needing to explain to Marketing how a process will impact on a campaign. Gesture helps convey complexity to your listeners, regardless of their expertise.

In short: Why Gesture?

1. Reinforce credibility;
2. Add vocal variety;
3. Dissipate nervous energy;
4. Aid the speaker in formulating their thinking;
5. Help convey complex information.

How to Gesture:

Be Deliberate: Focus gestures on key words or phrases. For example, when saying “We’re really excited to have you here today,” align your emphasis naturally with the words “excited” and “here.” When we speak, we tend to think in ‘thought packets’ not sentences. Each thought packet will have one or two words at the most to emphasise. Pausing between thought packets will help you be more purposeful about using emphatic gesture.

Make Gesturing a habit:  Although I encourage you to be deliberate, gesture and emphasis needs to become second nature. Practise intentional gestures daily—even when you’re not presenting. Start with simple movements emphasizing key phrases during conversations. Soon, gestures will feel effortless and natural when it really counts.

When you’re practising the opening of your presentation, think about the key words or phrases for that first minute and practise in front of the mirror. The benefit of this is that you’ll

1. 1. 1. be able to observe any repeated gestures and
      2. begin looking and feeling more confident with intentional gestures when you nerves might be buzzing away. Start consciously like this and you’ll more likely continue that way, conveying a more natural demeanour.

Your Actions:

1. After watching the video, think about your next meeting.
2. At that meeting, whether it’s online or in-person, use gestures to express yourself.

Presentation skills training may be the exact intervention to help sort through what to keep and what to ditch in terms of detail. Such training also has a significant effect on presentation nerves and presence.  Have a look at my pitching and presenting skills courses here for teams and individuals.  Contact me, Frankie Kemp, to discuss all my communication skills courses.

Video Transcript

Have you ever stood in front of an audience and realized suddenly that you’ve got arms and you don’t know really what to do with them and they’ve got these hands on the end and you’ve forgotten how to move?
Well, in this video I’m going to show you how to gesture when you present in a way that calms your nerves and makes you look and feel more confident. Let’s go.
Hi I’m Frankie Kemp from frankiekemp.com People Skills for Geeks, helping professionals in tech to become less vanilla and much more thriller.

So a lot of people don’t know how to move when they present. Now they do it naturally but when they present they seem to become so self-conscious that it inhibits people. So I’m going to say a phrase. I’m going to say it in two ways, both are not optimal but you’ll see what happens to the voice and the gesture. For example: “We’re really excited that you’re here today.”

That’s the first one when I’m not moving at all and you’ll find the voice is flat. The second one, wait for it…

“We’re really excited that you’re here today.” Too much, way too much.

Firstly, if it’s a virtual presentation you really mustn’t go beyond the screen. In Anglo-Saxon cultures you want to keep the gesture highest around here. From Iran to Italy the gestures can be a little bit higher but only when you really want to emphasizs.Now, the point is to make sure that your vocal pitch is aligned with your gesture and they only centre on your key words or phrases. So instead of looking like Robocop or a mad air traffic controller, what you would really want to do is just focus on the key words or phrases like this:

“We’re really excited to have you here today.”

That’s all. So you use the gesture and the vocal pitch will help you to come across with much more confidence and credibility.

What many people find is that they shake when they present so moving using a gesture, especially on key words at the beginning of a presentation, helps you to diffuse nervous energy. So it has a third benefit, apart from sounding confident and looking confident and credible, you also feel calmer because it diffuses energy. What tends to happen is when people start to shake vocally or physically they say to themselves stop shaking and they hold it in and it gets worse. So finding a key word as soon as possible where you can gesture makes you actually look so much more calmer and confident.

This article was originally published in March 2022 and was updated in March 2025.