Developing Attraction through Building Rapport in Powerful Presentations

• Consistent eye contact can indicate that they are thinking positively about what the speaker is saying. Individuals with anxiety disorders are often unable to make eye contact without discomfort. It can also mean that the other person does not trust the speaker enough to "take his eyes off" him or her. Lack of eye contact can indicate negativity.

• Eye contact is often a secondary and misleading gesture because we are taught from an early age to make eye contact when speaking. If someone is looking at you but is making the arms-across-chest signal, the eye contact could be indicative that something is bothering them, and that he or she wants to talk about it. Or if whilst making direct eye contact they are fiddling with something, even whilst looking directly at you, it could indicate their attention is elsewhere.

• Disbelief is often indicated by averted gaze, or by touching the ear or scratching the chin. So is eyestrain, or itchiness. When someone is not convinced by what is being said, the attention invariably wanders, and the eyes will avert for an extended period.

• Boredom is indicated by the head tilting to one side, or by the eyes looking straight at the speaker but becoming slightly unfocused. A head tilt may also indicate a sore neck, and unfocused eyes may indicate ocular problems in the listener.

The overall rule with body language is that you must pay attention to the whole person and not just the language in isolation. And more importantly feel the energy between the people in the interaction. This energetic level will be full of critical signals that can support the reading of the situation with accuracy, enabling you to take action where necessary.

The major element in understanding gestures is check what is going on in your mind. When you are nervous, your gestures will be interpreted as nervous. When you walk tall with pride and command, your gestures will deliver the hidden message direct from your mental attitude of pride, command and assertiveness. Gestures are the outward behaviour of your inner thoughts. As you take care of the health and vitality of your teeth by flossing every night, the same cleaning process is required with your mental attitude and thinking.

A gesture is a form of non-verbal communication made with a part of the body, used instead of, or in combination with, verbal communication. The language of gesture allows individuals to express a variety of feelings and thoughts, from contempt and hostility to approval and affection.

In Powerful Presenting you want your gestures to be natural and spontaneous as well as deliberately engineered as in the five presenting postures. You achieve this by ensuring your mental attitude is focusing on what you want to happen and not what you don't. Think, I am relaxed and confident as opposed to, I am so nervous about this presentation. The reason for this is that your mind cannot process negatives. If I say to you, think about a blue tree, what happens in your experience? Yes, you must first think about and probably see a blue tree before you are able to rid the picture from your mind. So, if you think you will be nervous your mind and body will react according to your thoughts.