Hey do you ever feel like this I'm not sure what to do with my hand be good
just holding down by your side yeah great we're real happy with them with
what was going on and at the end of the day um you know you gotta be happy well
if you sometimes feel like Ricky Bobby then we're here to help
Hi Kelsey Tonner here from Be a Better Guide and in this video we're talking
about hand and arm gestures now using these movements allow speakers to be
more memorable to communicate more effectively and of course build a
greater connection with your audience studies consistently show that speakers
that use hand gestures have their audiences remember up to twice as much
as what they're saying another very interesting study done by the science of
people reviewed all the most popular TED talks and all the least popular TED
talks and after reviewing thousands and thousands of hours of video footage they
found that the least popular TED Talks used an average of 272 hand gestures for
the course of 18 minutes the most popular almost double 465 hand gestures
as an average and this is from hundreds of different speakers and different
topics coincidence we think not so if you want to tap into the power of
effective hand gestures as a tour guide stay tuned well first and foremost we've
got to find our bass posture now if you're like Ricky Bobby off the top and
you're not quite sure what to do with your hands you might be wondering well
how can I do a hand gesture I don't even know where I'm starting from so this
exercise is for you what I'd like you to do is look up into the sky straight
above you raise your hands up and do a nice big stretch reach as high as you
can and then let your arms fall just naturally now look down at your hands
and this is your base posture Wow it may not feel the most comfortable it
actually is going to appear the most natural
your audiences and oftentimes this is just naturally where our arms want to
lay so when we're thinking about hand gestures we want to be starting from and
then returning to this base posture our second tip is to stay inside your box
now you might be wondering well what box are you talking about well we're going
to draw an imaginary box together it starts from about your shoulders and
goes down to the bottom of your waist just about bellybutton and it extends
out oh just about to your wrists and so the vast majority of your gestures and
hand movements should be within this imaginary box if you review the most
popular TED talks of all time most of their gestures are falling within this
box if you go above it or in front of your face or sometimes too low this
often comes across as out of control and just distracting now every rule can be
broken and sometimes we want to go outside of this box maybe for
exaggeration or if we want to use humor and be a little bit wild and emotions
like there was an explosion or something like this but just know for the most
part we want to be keeping our gestures inside of that box so now let's look at
four important types of gestures that every tour guide should have in their
toolbox the first is the give it looks very much like this your options for
today's lunch are the chicken or the beef as you can see the motion is
folding the hands open like this palm facing upward now this is great because
it is offering information or offering choices right now that can be used
during a list that we want to tell them this but then we're also going to tell
them this and tell them this so as tour guides we're always communicating
information and stories interesting facts and figures so you'll probably be
using the give quite a bit another type of gesture you'll want to use is called
the mime so great storytellers will often act out the verbs that they're
using when telling their stories and in their sentences so a simple example
might be when Michelangelo was carving the statue of the David every day he
went out and chipped and polished and chipped and polished and chipped and
polished for a hundred days until it was or after killing the king the assassin
ran along the ramparts of the castle and dove into the moat never to be seen
again so as you can see we're reinforcing our verbal communication
with nonverbal communication neither type of gesture we'll want to use it's
called this show now this is a large category of gestures where essentially
we're trying to visually represent the idea that we're saying a couple simple
examples would be mmm just a little bit left woof and knew that sign we might
say there are four big choices we have to make in our life or the president had
two daughters any time we can represent a number with our hands or fingers we'll
often want to do that we might say something like there are three sizes
small medium and large or it was a big problem or I felt so sad you know we
often touch this or apparently demonstrate that feeling or that sadness
so as you can see we're not acting out the verb so much as creatively
representing what we're saying and one final type of gesture you'll want to use
is called the chop now this is used to deliver a strong message or add emphasis
to certain parts of your story and basically it looks just like this
the prints only had one thing that he needed to do right you can chop with one
hand you can chop with two hands sometimes when you're telling multiple
pieces of information we might say this was what happened in the 1800s this is
what it was like mid century and then this is what happened at the turn of the
millennium remember that the bigger the chop the more emphasis you're going to
add so we could say the mayor getting elected was the greatest thing that
could have happened to this city that's going to add a lot of emphasis by
practicing the techniques that we shared in this video you're going to be
communicating more effectively you're going to be gesturing with purpose and
being more memorable for your audiences now some of you might be thinking are
there some hand gestures that I should avoid doing you betcha
and that's why we created an additional bonus PDF entitled talking with your
hands seven common mistakes you can get a copy of that PDF just below
and see if there are any gestures that are holding you back but before you go
love to hear from you what advice do you have on using gestures while on tour
we'd love to hear from you now I would also love it if you took the time to
share this video with somebody who you thought might appreciate it thanks so
much for being here and I'll see you next time okay there's a little sneak
peek of something you don't want to do I came across this thing basically called
tea vexing and it's when people stand back here you keep your arms in like
this and then you make gestures but not moving your nose and what's funny is no
matter what you do you look ridiculous so under no circumstances should you
ever keep your elbows attached in there I suppose unless you are actually
playing a t-rex or Barney I think Barney doodle
here's here t-rex I've got some googling to do