Tool No 7: Serving Hands
HOW? Serve your sentences up as if the words are coming from a big silver platter. Imagine that it changes shape as you’re holding it, becoming narrower or longer. Each time you serve a sentence, do it differently.
The question I’m asked the most often is: “What should I do with my hands?” Should I put them in my pockets? What about behind my back? Or folded in front of my stomach? The short answer is – use them.
Our hands signal what we’d like to do for other people, so they should not be passive. Use them to serve sentences, or to place or illustrate key words. The idea behind serving hands is that you are presenting each individual sentence from a dish. For each new sentence, the dish changes shape. It might be one metre wide or 10 cm wide.
Serving each sentence differently makes your delivery come alive. If you serve all your sentences from the same dish every time, the delivery becomes monotone. The changes in the shape of the dish make you seem dynamic and engaging.ownership of what you’ve just said.
