So I talked about gesture when we were working with the slides, you can be very voluble with gestures, you can be extremely lively and make lots of gestures. There are a couple However, I do recommend that you avoid. And this is a sense of how authentic you can be if you're a gesticulating person gesticulate. If, on the other hand, you're a very calm person, then that's who you are, you don't need to gesticulate, necessarily, gestures are best done, consciously, consciously. If you're not conscious, when you're making gestures, they will tend to become either repetitive and meaningless. So doing the same thing over and over again, which really ceases to mean anything at all.

Or alternatively, they can actually undermine what you're saying. And I'll give you a couple of examples of gestures you might want to avoid. This is from Virginia satir. And her work on families. This is one that she calls the blamer. Now, if you going to do this, you're telling people off and they will instinctively recoil from that kind of thing.

Bill Clinton used to do this when he was speaking, and they softened him back, move that index finger in like this. So he would speak like this, which is a lot less threatening to people who are listening. Another set of archetype, which I think is important to become conscious of and use only when relevant is a gesture called applicator. It's this one open handed, I carry their weapons. I mean, you know, threat, please, please don't hurt me. It's often what people will do.

If you do this to them. They'll stand back and go like this to you. Now, the applicator is a begging gesture. It's a very weak gesture. And I've seen people deliver entire talks, even TED Talks, doing this the whole way through to emphasize if you want to wave your hands like this to emphasize what you're saying, my strong suggestion to you is turn the vote Just turn your thumbs vertical, and you will find suddenly that you have a much more neutral gesture. It does not mean begging.

It doesn't mean Please don't hurt me. It doesn't mean please, please, please. It's simply a way of emphasizing what you're saying. And you'll see many politicians talking like this a lot of the time. It doesn't mean a lot, but it kind of underlines the words you want to stress like that. So watch out for this one.

Unless, of course you're begging please give generously. Well, that's appropriate. So, gestures, if you're going to do big gestures, rehearse big gestures and get comfortable with them. If you're going to do small gestures, then rehearse that. And these are culturally sensitive. Of course, some gestures have meanings in some cultures and not in others.

I love the Italian gesture, this one, but we don't have it in the UK. If you do that to a British person, they won't really know what you're talking about, and indeed this one as well. So There are many gestures which don't travel. There are gestures which are obscene in some places and polite in others. Be careful and be conscious of the gestures you're using in order to amplify what you're saying.