How can feedback improve your body language when telling stories?

1 Identify your strengths and weaknesses

The first step to improving your body language is to identify what you are doing well and what you need to work on. Feedback from your peers, mentors, coaches, or even yourself can help you assess your strengths and weaknesses. You can ask for observations during a presentation or a story and get impressions shared with you. Recording yourself and watching your own performance can also be beneficial in understanding aspects such as posture, gestures, eye contact, facial expressions, and voice. Are you standing or slouching? Are you using your hands and arms to emphasize points or crossing your arms? Are you looking at the audience or away? Are you smiling or frowning? Are you speaking clearly, loudly, and confidently or mumbling? These are all important factors to consider when evaluating your body language.

2 Get specific suggestions

The second step to improve your body language is to get specific suggestions on how to do so. Feedback can be incredibly helpful for this, as it can provide concrete examples and recommendations. Ask your feedback providers to give you examples of what you did well and what needs improvement, as well as ways to do it. For instance, they might suggest improving your posture by standing with your feet shoulder-width apart or sitting with your back straight and shoulders relaxed. They could also recommend using open and expressive gestures that match your story, or avoiding distracting or defensive gestures. Additionally, they might suggest looking at different parts of your audience to improve eye contact, or smiling when telling a positive or humorous story and showing empathy or concern when telling a negative or serious story. Furthermore, they could advise varying pitch, volume, and speed to create interest and emphasis when speaking, as well as avoiding filler words, pauses, and vocal fry.

3 Motivate yourself to practice and improve

The third step to improve your body language is to motivate yourself to practice and improve. You can ask your feedback providers to acknowledge your efforts and progress, and to give you positive reinforcement and constructive criticism. Additionally, setting SMART goals, tracking your improvement, and rewarding yourself can help you stay motivated. For instance, you could set a goal of improving your eye contact by 10% in the next month or use three new gestures in your next presentation. To measure your improvement, you can use tools such as self-assessment, video recording, or feedback forms and compare your results with your baseline and goals. When you reach a goal or make progress, celebrate your success, share your feedback, or treat yourself to something you enjoy.

4 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?