Someone reading this (maybe you) is going to say to me, “Sonya, my team just won’t go for including emotions in my presentation. They are too serious/professional/intellectual/busy, etc.” I hear you, but here’s the reality:
- Just like visuals in a story or presentation, feeling states activate the audience’s imagination. They engage the emotional brain and make your story or content more real for them.
- We like to think we lead with our intellects, but that’s just not true. We make decisions from our emotional brain and justify them with our intellect. In other words, we are feeling creatures who think, not thinking creatures who feel. If you are new to this concept, check out Simon Sinek’s Start With Why book or TedTalk.
- Activating the emotional brain helps engage empathy. This can be helpful if you are advocating on behalf of a project, people, ecosystems, etc. Some examples: 1) presenting to engineers and advocating on behalf of your product users, 2) fundraising for a conservation project.
Feeling states don’t necessarily have to be dramatic, like grief or rage. It could be something like feeling energized about a new product launch, feeling apprehensive before a big change, or feeling overwhelmed by a big launch or an upcoming event. However you do it, especially when you’re crafting a story, evoking those feeling states is an important part of making your story real and alive to your audience.
Think about it again through the lens of the brain. If I give you facts, that might activate one part of your brain. If I give you visuals, now another part is activated. If I give you feeling states, now I’ve activated even more of your brain. If your brain is fully alive and lit up, you are more likely to be engaged in this story and remember it!
Here are two of my favorite, compelling examples of using feeling states:
1. “We all know that pit in our stomachs when we lose something. I didn’t just lose something small; I lost $76 million. And I didn’t just lose $76 million in cash; I lost a NASA satellite.”
- What does this evoke for you? The storyteller could have omitted emotion by saying simply, “The satellite failed to respond,” but that would not have had as much gravity and made the audience sit up and listen.
2. “I recently got a promotion to senior leader, and now I have to give a lot of presentations. But when I started, I was terrified of public speaking. I mean, anxiety for days, not being able to sleep the night before a talk, sweaty palms, feeling like I was going to black out.”
- If you were struggling with fear of public speaking (a very common fear), would you empathize with this storyteller? Would you want to hear her methods for overcoming her fear?
As always, choose how you use feeling states in a way that’s going to reach your unique audience. Though including feeling states in a story or presentation is a golden rule, there are no golden rules about how you do it – it just has to fit your content and your audience.
So, get creative! How can you liven up your presentation or story and make your audience sit up and pay attention? I want to encourage you to make the most of the time you have in front of them; I want them to hear what you have to say!
What will you upgrade in your talks, presentations, and stories? Send me an email or post a comment – I’d love to hear from you!
Please forward this to any mission-driven creators, leaders, and innovators out there to communicate the brilliance of what they have to offer. Thanks!
Could you use some 1:1 coaching to uplevel your talk, presentations, or stories? Or, could your team use a collaborative workshop to strengthen their communication skills? Meet with me for a free 30-minute conversation.