Visual Communication

For the past two days I have looked at word choices and verbal pauses. More could be said, but it would be more of the same. Perhaps working on choosing vivid rather than lifeless descriptors would be worth a post, but you can think that through. I would like to add one more post to the series on another aspect of delivery – the visual element.

What listeners take in through the “eye-gate” is massively significant. Some elements of visual, or non-verbal delivery, can be improved in everyday life. Here are a few possibilities, select only those that are issues in your delivery:

1. Eye contact. Perhaps the most important ingredient in any delivery recipe, eye contact takes work for many of us. In every conversation or presentation (which might be the telling of a story to a group of friends standing around the coffee machine at work), practice making meaningful eye contact with the entire group. How easy to develop a blind spot (never looking to the people on your left). How easy to get in the habit of looking over people or past people. Practice will help your preaching, not to mention your daily conversations!

2. Posture. How do you stand while in a conversation? How do you stand when saying goodbye at the front door (a very English pastime)? How do you hold yourself when approaching the counter in a store? Developing healthy and confident, but not arrogant or contrived posture is worth the effort. It is so easy to undermine a message by sending “don’t trust me” or “this is not important” signals!

3. Distracting movement. Some people pace, others shuffle, some sway, some fidget. If you discover you have a propensity to distracting movement, work it out in normal life. It will only help in life and ministry.

4. Distracting gesture. Apart from some obviously offensive gestures, I am not highly against any gesture. Hand in pocket can be fine. Pointing might be appropriate. Touching the face may not detract from a message. However, any repeated gesture can become highly distracting. If you find you have one, work it out in normal life. Finger to finger push-ups, one arm hanging limp, jingling keys in the pocket, the werewolf, the T-Rex (elbows attached to the side but lots of hand gesturing), what Bert Decker calls the fig leaf, or the fig leaf flasher, the Clinton (gesturing as if holding the pen), even slapping yourself on the head. Anything can be distracting if overused!

5. Smile. A grossly underused tool for connection and building trust. It wouldn’t hurt the world if we all practiced this more in everyday life, and it might show more in our preaching too!

Find out (from friend or from video) what you need to work on, your listeners will appreciate it!

Yesterday we gave some thought to the vocal variations needed for effective delivery. Today let’s remind ourselves of some aspects of visual delivery – the non-verbals that are so powerful. The key here is for the visual (non-verbals) and the vocal to work together with the verbal (words) to make the communication consistent and impactful. Words must reign supreme in the thoughts of the preacher, but words can be undermined by inconsistent visual presentation, or poor tone of voice.

Visual delivery issue – eye-contact. This is absolutely and definitely number one on the list. Eye contact is so powerful. Without it there is no trust. With too much there is perceived intimidation or inappropriate intimacy. We need to make sure we’re making genuine eye-contact with the people we speak to … perhaps 3-5 seconds at a time, then on to someone else. Beware of “blind spots” (mine is the people in the center of a spread out group, yours?) Beware of having your head in your notes all the time (and it is probably much, much more time than you think!) Beware of looking over everyone to the clock on one side and a fascinating emergency exit sign over the door on the other side.

Visual delivery issue – gesture. To put it simply, gesture needs to be consistent with words, increased in size for larger audiences and not repetitively monotonous. It takes practice to point to the right when you say left, or when referring to the past, because this is backwards to you the speaker. It feels unnatural to make gestures bigger when in front of a large crowd, but it looks weird to them if you don’t. And be careful of any repetitive habits . . . anything can be annoying or distracting once it’s repeated a few times – the finger point, the spider on a mirror, the hand in pocket, the werewolf, the T-Rex, the glass ceiling around the waist, the fig-leaf, the fig-leaf flasher, the Clinton, the face scratch, the arm twitch, the weight shifting, the rock’n’roll four-step, etc. (thanks to Bert Decker, Hershael York and others for the labels picked up over the years!) Any of these are fine, once or twice, but repetitively can become highly distracting. If you don’t know what you do a lot, ask someone!

I’ll finish this list tomorrow . . .