“Do you recommend starting with a statement or a story?” We had just introduced 4 different ways to grab your audience’s attention and one of my students wanted to know how best to select the right one for your audience. “How do I know which one will be best for my audience?” He was on the right track with his questions because the answer always lies there… with the audience!

We definitely have choices for how to engage our audience from the very start. Depending on your audience and the situation for you speaking, one method may be more effective than the other.

You Could Go With The Data Option

My business customers have no lack of data when it comes to presenting to their audiences. All of my students have mountains of information, research, and data to pull from when presenting their update or their persuasive message.

Logical arguments are great, but as much as I want to believe every choice I make is based on logic, research studies continue to show we make all of our decisions based on feeling. Then we use logic to justify and support the decision.

Feelings Are Important

In one sense, you could say we all make statements “because we felt like it” instead of it logically being the best choice. Angela Duckworth, in her book Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, she points out how feelings are the basis of almost every decision we make. In fact, in one study, participants had suffered brain trauma and through corrective surgery had lost the part of their brain responsible for feelings. Unfortunately, they were human robots with no emotions.

As neuroscientists studied these patients they all had something else in common besides the inability to feel emotions. None of them could make a decision. Even the most simple of decisions and they could not select something. It’s obviously a sad situation, but also completely fascinating. Further proof that emotions play a huge part of every decision we make.

The Feelings Option

Knowing that feelings play a huge part of any decision your audience is going to make, my question to you would be… What kind of a feeling will your presentation generate in your audience? If you think about so many of the presentations you’ve sat through at work, my guess is that the feeling generated by many business presentations is one of sleepiness or boredom!

While I’m sure you grab the audiences attention with your logical arguments, supported by data. It is important to consider the feeling you’d like to generate and then make sure you are incorporating the delivery tools to make that happen.

One of the best ways to generate feelings in your audience is with a story. It works so much better than just presenting the statistics.

You tell me what sounds more engaging to you:

“Every night in the greater Houston area, over 300,000 children go to bed hungry at night because they can’t afford enough food.”

OR

“I’d like you to meet Emma. Emma is 4 years old and she lives with her single mother in the 7th Ward area of Houston. Emma’s mom is currently working for Houston Metro during the day and a local bar as a waitress in the evening. Emma’s father left them both at home when Emma was only 3 months old…”

So What’s Next?

Consider using a story to supplement your persuasive argument the next time you present. Your audience will feel like giving you a Corporate Ovation when you’re done!

Until next week…

Russ