Want to Improve Your Communication? Use Your Hands
The best communicators use their mouths AND hands.
“It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” — Vanessa Edwards
A TED research study found that the most popular speakers used an average of 465 hand gestures compared to 272 hand gestures of the least popular speakers. While we may never grace the TED stage, what’s important is that gesturing can help improve our day-to-day communication.
Studies have consistently shown that using hand gestures with words enhances communication. Let’s think of an analogy. Effective communication is like the championship. Words and gestures are the players and coaches that enable the team to win the championship—it takes a cohesive team with a repertoire of different skillsets and plays to win.
And we all gesture…though we may have forgotten.
Gestures are human’s earliest language.
Children use gestures to communicate their needs to caretakers before they can speak. From an evolutionary perspective, gestures are the building blocks of effective communication and prepare us to speak with words. Gestures create the bridge between nonverbal to verbal communication, and we all have learned how to communicate with gestures.
And parents—please pay attention.
Gesturing more to children is key to child development. Studies show a strong link between the use of gestures and communication development in children—children who produce more gestures early on have larger vocabularies and better storytelling capabilities as adults.
The encouraging part? Any parent has the power to influence their child’s development by gesturing more!
90% of communication is nonverbal communication
The most popular cited study of nonverbal communication comes from Dr. Albert Mehrabian, which found communication is 90% nonverbal. While not an exact science, remember that effective communication includes both words and body language.
“Gestures carry out cognitive and communication functions that language can’t touch.” — Annie Murphy Paul, The Extended Mind
Gesturing is our secret weapon to communicate effectively. Gestures and words make up a team, and a combination of both gestures and words has been shown to be the most effective communication combination. And while gesturing helps the listener with understanding, it also helps the speaker with thinking…
Gesturing helps us think clearer
“Gesturing can help people form clearer thoughts, speak in tighter sentences and use more declarative language.” — Dr. Carol Kinsey Goman, body language expert
Studies show that gestures precede words and help us retrieve words more easily. Have you ever had those “tip of the tongue” moments? And somehow by waving your hands multiple times, the word then magically comes out of nowhere? Gestures activate neural activity that makes thinking and speaking come together—that’s the magic of gestures!
Annie Murphy Paul (The Extended Mind) notes that gestures “can free up our mental resources by offloading information onto our hands.” Gestures help us understand and explain complex ideas with a realness that words alone cannot do.
Hand gestures make you seem more charismatic.
Gestures also help us persuade and influence. When you speak with both your mouth and your hands, your brain is doubly engaged.
A 2019 study showed that company founders who used gestures in their pitches were 12% more likely to attract funding. Gestures make us look more confident, and gestures help bring certainty when an idea is uncertain.
Takeaways:
Gestures have benefits for both listeners and speakers. Gestures and words give the listener two channels to understand. At the same time, gestures help the speaker think more clearly. Here’s what you can do…
- Use more gestures: Moving our hands increases our understanding of complex topics, reduces cognitive load, and improves our memory. Got a presentation coming up? Try using your hands to emphasize key points.
- Use more “visual artifacts”: People are more likely to gesture when they have something to point at. Try to use more visual artifacts such as pictures, charts, or diagrams when teaching or presenting.
- Learn with gestures: Want to learn a new language? Try to find a teacher who gestures more because we learn more effectively with words AND gestures
Remember that most will remember not what you say but what they see.
Perhaps it’s time to restart those improv classes…
But before you go…try these gestures!
Social Triggers has some great gestures you can check out. Here are some of my favorites:
Thanks for reading until the end! Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. And if you enjoyed reading, please give me a follow!
David
