characteristics of effective Delivery 13.3 263
Read the How To box for more tips for effectively establishing eye contact
with your audience
Gestures
The next time you have a conversation with someone, notice how both of you use
your hands and bodies to communicate. Important points are emphasized with ges-
tures. You also gesture to indicate places, to enumerate items, and to describe ob-
jects. Gestures have the same functions for public speakers. Yet many people who
gesture easily and appropriately in the course of everyday conversations aren’t sure
what to do with their hands when they find themselves in front of an audience.
AdAPt gestures to AudIeNce members’ culturAl exPectAtIoNs
There is evidence that gestures vary from culture to culture. When he was mayor
of New York City during the 1930s and 1940s, Fiorello La Guardia, who was
fluent in Yiddish and Italian as well as in English, would speak the language
that was appropriate for each audience. One researcher studied old newsreels
of the mayor and discovered that with the sound turned off, viewers could still
identify the language the mayor was speaking. How? When speaking English,
he used minimal gestures. When speaking Italian, he used broad, sweeping ges-
tures. And when speaking Yiddish, he used short, choppy hand movements.
Cultural expectations can help you to make decisions about your approach
to using gestures. Listeners from Japan and China, for example, prefer a quieter,
less flamboyant use of gestures. One Web site that offers tips for people con-
ducting business in India suggests, “When you wish to point, use your chin or
your full hand, but never just a single finger, as this gesture is used only with
Use Eye Contact Effectively
• Look as you begin speaking. Have your opening sentence well enough in mind that you can
deliver it without looking at your notes or away from your listeners.
• Look right at them. Don’t look over your listeners’ heads; establish eye-to-eye contact.
• Look at everybody. Establish eye contact with the entire audience, not just with those in the
front row or only one or two people.
• Look everywhere. Look to the back of the audience as well as the front and from one side
of your audience to the other, selecting an individual to focus on briefly and then moving on
to someone else. You need not move your head back and forth rhythmically like a lighthouse
beacon; it’s best not to establish a predictable pattern for your eye contact.
• Look at individuals. Establish person-to-person contact with them—not so long that it will
make a listener feel uncomfortable but long enough to establish the feeling that you are talking
directly to that individual.
• Look into the camera. If your speech is being video recorded and you have no audience
present, then deliver your speech while looking into the camera lens. If there is an audience
present, however, look at your audience rather than only at the camera lens.How To