Another way to project confident body language is to move your body in a measured manner and stop your movement, when you need to speak.

The key message for this Module is:

When you need to speak while standing

Move, Stop, then Talk

When you are standing and have to speak, for example when delivering a presentation a common mistake is to move your body and speak at the same time.

This movement with speaking is distracting to the audience and it also can reduce you access to ideas that you want to speak. Paradoxically, stilling your body speeds up access to your thoughts.

When need to move and speak at the same time, use the following three steps – Move, Stop, then talk.

In practice it could look like this, (mk demonstrate move, stop talk,) When starting a presentation I might start presenting in this position for a moment or so,

and then I stop speaking,  move to a new position, stop, then start talking again like this.

Now I would start speaking again for a period of time and repeat that Move, stop, talk sequence to a different position and so on.

The opposite of Move, Stop, then Talk, is to keep moving while talking –  like this. So here I am moving back and forth while I’m talking and you can see that my movement is distracting to you. As I keep moving you have to work harder to focus on my message.