When presenting virtually, Mark advises us to keep our hand gestures at chest level. Why do that? Well, keeping your hands at heart level, (what he describes as the passion plane), communicates excitement. This is something you want for your online presentation, right?  

The hand gestures that we use in the passion plane and that perfectly replicate the rhythm of our speech, are called baton gestures. As you’re guessing from the term, they resemble the hand gestures of a conductor and perfectly accentuate the key points of your message. They communicate the energy and vigor you’re trying to drive home in the seemingly challenging online environment. Even behind the screen, your audience can still see the movement of your hands (because they’re at chest level, remember?) and starts putting together the sound and the images (the gestures) to end up with a congruent message. Make sure you practice your baton gestures to increase the impact of your virtual presentations. 

The illustrators, as Mark calls them, can also be integrated into your presentations. They are just what they sound like – the pictures you’re drawing with your hands when talking. Whatever you have on your slides, like sophisticated bar charts, impressive figures, make sure you illustrate it with these vividly graphic hand movements. (They need to be in harmony with what you’re saying, of course).  

Mark says even brilliantly designed slides stand no chance against the skillful use of illustrators. And yet again, this proves what Mark advocates: nonverbal communication is the biggest part of all communication and inadequate body language can fail you, no matter how awesome the slides. 

Making your palms visible to the audience at navel or heart level says “I’m open. I mean no harm”. The open-palm gestures help you look more approachable, or less threatening as Mark puts it. He encourages us to show more, to make our hand gestures rich and visible as this creates a safe space for the attendees to trust us and listen to what we have to say. Check out the full session recording to hear the scientific explanation of this phenomenon and hear Mark talk about the truth plane. 

Often, we don’t even realise we do the adaptor gestures – scratch our cheek, play with a coffee mug, touch a piece of jewellery repeatedly… Unfortunately, those may awaken new narratives with the audience and completely distract them from yours. Mark stresses we need to limit adaptors to the minimum, especially if we tend to lean into repetitive gestures, the so-called self-soothers.