Principle VIII: To control the second conversation, you must focus on your emotional intent rather than conscious awareness.

As I’ve explored in earlier blogs, the paradox of controlling your body language comes when you try to use conscious thought to direct what is largely unconscious behavior. Because the natural flow of communication is intent – gesture – thought – word, you run the risk of looking unnatural when you consciously think about your gestures: thought – gesture – word. The result is that the gestures come to late in the sequence and look stiff and awkward, or fake. It’s what happened to George H. W. Bush during his election campaign when his handlers decided he didn’t look aggressive enough. They coached him to use what looked like karate chop gestures, and as a result he looked silly, because the gestures lacked the fluidity and timing of unconscious ones.

So instead of focusing on the gestures themselves, to look natural as a speaker, focus on the underlying intent or emotion that you’re trying to convey. Of course, for this method to work, you have to have some idea of what your underlying emotion is. Many business speakers run into problems here because they believe – erroneously – that emotions should be kept out of business and speaking about business.

To the contrary, any business speaker with charisma expresses emotions clearly and forcefully.  Think of Steve Jobs with his enthusiasm for the new iPad.  Emotions are literally infectious; we pick them up from the people around us.  So enthusiasm from a speaker (or anger, or joy, or sorrow) spreads rapidly to the audience as long as the emotion is focused and relevant.

Here’s how to make your unconscious gestures work for you in practical terms.  Get clear about what underlying emotions play throughout your speech or presentation.  Then, rehearse your speech thinking about those emotions as they come up.  Try to heighten them, bringing them to the fore by taking short pauses to get grounded in one after the other.

When you’re ready to give the speech, spend a few minutes before you start focusing on the first emotion in the speech.  Are you excited?  Joyful?  Angry?  Whatever the emotion, get it foremost in your mind in the seconds before you begin.

Then go out on stage and give the speech.  You’ll find that the gestures take care of themselves.