How to Present, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 13Congruent body language

Your body plays a fundamental role in the believability of your message — as dancer and choreographer Martha Graham said, ‘The body never lies'. I remember going to a presentation where the CEO said, ‘We have an open-door policy', while making a gesture with his hands where they moved from the centre of his body with his palms down to the outside of his hips. We call this body posture ‘the Leveller' (I discuss this in more detail later in this chapter). The Leveller is not an ideal posture to do when trying to invite your audience to connect with you, because it is a no-nonsense, ‘don't argue with me' type of posture! By using this gesture, the CEO effectively cancelled out his words. I thought to myself at the time that his true thoughts about the open-door policy were revealed in the gesture he did! Have you ever seen something like that?

Psychologist Albert Mehrabian's research into verbal and non-verbal messages suggests that in face-to-face communication we apportion only 7 per cent of the meaning of the message to the actual words that are said. Another 38 per cent of the meaning derives from the tonality (the way you say the words), and 55 per cent of the meaning comes from body language (how you move your body).

And you may know, we use body language as the final test for deciding on the congruence and authenticity of a presenter. In this chapter, I give you everything you need to pass this final test. (Note that the information in ...