Amy Cuddy - Your body language shapes who you are

Amy Cuddy at TED Talks

Thesis of Speech:

“Your body language shapes who you are”

Amy had a very interesting way of capturing people’s attention. She made people aware of their posture and to think how they stand in their chairs while they listen to her.

The speech talks about the different types of body language. Social scientists refer to them as non-verbal communication.

Some examples of non verbal expressions on power and dominance:- Expanding your body- Opening up- Feeling powerful

Amy used different strategies to maintain the engagement of the audience. She made use of comparative pictures between animal and human postures and captivated people with different real life stories.

Key points of the speechOur non-verbals govern how other people think and feel about us.

Our bodies change our minds.Our minds change our behavior.

Our behavior change our outcomes

She followed TED Commandment #3:

“Thou shalt tell a story”. She told a story about her life and demonstrated her points by real facts that

happened to her.

I think that her dynamism was good. I would give her 4 points. She could have left more space between important ideas and

make pauses to give her speech more dynamism.

What have I learned?

The topic she talks about speaks directly on posture and how people get nonverbal messages. I learned that it is very important to feel very confident in order to succeed and that your posture tells a lot about who you are and what you mean.

I really like Sir Ken Robinson. I think both Amy and Ken are great speakers, but I can tell that Ken has more experience. Sometimes I felt that Amy was a bit nervous or that she was searching for her

ideas in her mind. I think that Ken has a way of organizing his speech which makes it very simple to follow and allows you to understand

complex ideas in a very simple way.

My advice to my classmates in order to improve their speech is to be very, very confident, master the topic they will talk about and to practice a lot.

Thanks!

Image sources: TED Talk Videos