Selling Your Likability 47
They are gesture inhibiting
positions.
They are hand-hiders.
They are easy, but they are
wrong!
The people looking at the no-
no position are made uncomfort-
able because the presenter ap-
pears unhappy to be in front of a
group or a camera.What’s a person to do?
Once again, use your mirror.
Stand erect. Shake out your
shoulders. See where your hands
fall. As uncomfortable as this po-
sition seems to be, it happens to
be the perfect and natural start-
ing position.
Now notice I said “starting.”
After the first gesture, the hands
can go anywhere you’re comfort-
able as long as that first gesture
says “keep gesturing.” Like the
smile, the gesture has to be ap-
propriate and genuine. If it is, it
will help you look like you mean
what you say and you’re saying
what you mean.
When the CEO says, “The
company had a wonderful year,”
the word wonderful has to be ac-
companied by a physical move-
ment. Otherwise, the word might
as well have been so-so. Like the
smile, the only time the gesture
seems wrong is when it’s not genuine or appropriate.
In conversation most of us are constantly gesturing. How of-
ten have you heard, “If I didn’t use my hands I couldn’t talk”?At ease: The military mistakenly
calls this position “at ease.” It looks
anything but.Female fig leaf: Nothing looks
more aloof and defensive than your
arms folded tightly in front of you.