Before I share hand gesture body language tips with you, I’m going to be upfront about something.
I’m not a body language researcher. I’m not an FBI agent. I don’t have a doctorate in nonverbal communication. What I do have is an insatiable curiosity about people, the kind that started when I was twelve, snuck a body language book out of my mom’s library, and spent the next several years quietly deciphering everyone in every room I walked into.
Over the decades I’ve been testing and reading these signals as a trainer working with leaders, as an executive who was being read while she was doing the reading, as a mother figuring out what her kids weren’t saying, and as an entrepreneur who has watched a lot of handshakes and pitches play out in real time. You pick things up. You notice what works. You notice what quietly costs people without them ever knowing it.
The most popular post on my entire website, consistently, hundreds of downloads, is my piece on hand gesture body language tips. Which tells me something. We all sense that our hands are doing something in conversations that we’re not fully in control of. And we want to know what.
So this episode pulls straight from that post. Seven hand gestures, what they actually signal, what they might be costing you without you realizing, and what to do instead.
You’ll hear why open palms register as honest before you’ve said a single word and what hidden palms quietly communicate. Why the speed of rubbing your hands together changes how trustworthy you come across in a pitch. What your handshake position tells someone about you in the first two seconds of meeting you. The behind-the-back posture Sandy uses before she walks on stage when she needs to feel grounded fast. Why tightly clenched hands look like composure but almost never are. What thumbs reveal about ego, contempt, and confidence and why most people have no idea they’re doing it. And the steepled hands gesture that can make you look credible or insufferable depending on what came right before it.
Plus the story of the business proposal Sandy walked away from and exactly which gesture made that decision for her.
Your hands have been in every conversation you’ve ever had. They’re going to be in the next one too. Might as well know what they’ve been saying.
Want more? Listen to the award-winning Magnetic Communication Podcast episode on Face and Neck Body Language Signals.
