Presentation Skills That Will Take You to the Top (Collection), 2/e

52. “Look, Ma, no hands!”

Anchorperson or Weatherperson

The advice about gestures in the previous chapter—to use your hands and arms to illustrate your words and to reach out to your audience, replicating a handshake—has an opposite point of view, and it comes from none other than The Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan.

Throughout his political career, Mr. Reagan rarely used any gestures. A DVD called Ronald Reagan: The Great Communicator is composed of clips from more than 100 public appearances during his eight years as president. In all the clips, he made an expansive gesture with his hands and arms only once.¹ In 1964, in one of his first appearances ...