Lesson 1 Criteria for Success

Note: Issues with replicating this theory
There has been some debate recently as to whether power posing is actually effective. Read more here: Power posing replication failure

2. Eye contact

Why? Making eye contact with your audience builds a connection between you and them and they feel more valued by you. This makes the audience more likely to respect and listen to you because they feel important. It also makes the audience trust you more because people tend to avoid eye contact when they're lying.
Confident body language can also be used as a feedback loop. Making eye contact is the easiest to way to receive feedback from the audience about your speech.
You can see if your audience are listening and read their facial expressions to see if they are interested, bored, angry, happy, and so on. You can then alter your speech accordingly based on the feedback you see. Without making eye contact, you could go through your whole speech irritating the audience!
How:

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  When talking to a large number of people, maintain eye contact with one audience member for 4 or more seconds before moving to another member of the audience for 4 seconds, and so on.
  
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  Make eye contact in a 'Z' formation - look at one person at the back left corner of the room, then the back right, then to the front left, and finally to someone at the front right. Be careful not to just repeat the Z formation with the same audience members each time you do it - you want to connect with as many members of the audience as possible.
  
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  In one-on-one settings, maintain eye contact for 9-10 seconds and then break away to save yourself from coming across as intense or like you're starting. (The same applies when answering a question from an audience of any size.)
  

Practice your eye contact in the virtual world with VirtualSpeech. A heatmap shows you where you were looking.

3. Hand gestures

Why? When used correctly, hand and arm gestures can help enhance your message and make you seem more confident and relaxed. Gestures amplify your stories and will help you come across as more genuine and believable. They're an essential element of our non-verbal communication in showing others how we feel, and in turn how we make them feel.
Hand gestures are one of the most clear non-verbal ways we communicate confident body language or nervous body language - and your audience will react more positively to the former.
How:

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  Think of your hand gestures as a storytelling tool; put verbs into action by acting them out with your hands.
  
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  Don't overdo it - gesture sparingly, and focus on action words. Make your gestures strong and defined.
  
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  Begin in a neutral position with your hands either side of your body so that your hand gestures flow smoothly.
  
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  Use symbolic gestures to communicate numbers and position, eg. 2 fingers for the number 2 and a raised hand for stop.
  
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  Use descriptive gestures to communicate movement, eg. shapes, size, length, etc.
  
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  Use emotional gestures to communicate feelings, eg. hands clasped together to show pleading, hands raise either side of your head to show despair.
  
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  When using visual aids, point and turn slightly to look at the relevant data, and the audience will automatically follow your hands and eyes.
  
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  Vary your gestures with different parts of your body. You don't have to just use your arms- you could use your legs, facial expressions and full body movement as gestures too.
  

Learn how to use body language to improve your professional relationships. Practice what you learn in virtual reality exercises. Learn more about the body language course.

4. Movement