Wednesday, September 5, 2012

READ MY HANDS...

Closed Hand Pointing Gesture

What's Gestures Got to Do With it? 

I confess, I hate watching politics on TV! I know as a communication coach, one of the things I should be doing is watching all these politicians and critiquing what I see so all can learn from it. Unfortunately, watching most speeches, even from people I support, makes my skin crawl. Mostly because they speak at the people rather than to the people. They present a speech rather than engage an audience. However, I did watch Michelle's speech last night (which was Pitch PERFECT!!!) and I did see parts of Ann Romney speech last week and something very interesting jumped out at me - the stark contrast in their use of gestures and vocal tone.  Whereas Michelle used a warm, lower pitched compassionate tone, Ann used the higher pitch, shriller scolding tone.

Finger Pointing Gesture