blog

Time to Get Emotional

by Derek

I'm sitting at the ICI lunch on the second day, and I'm completely enthralled by the speaker. The speaker is the historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Doris Kearns Goodwin. She shared with the audience some experiences in her past and related stories about Abraham Lincoln, the subject of her latest book. Beyond being captivated by her speech, at times during her talk I found myself welling up with emotion. At first, I thought I was just getting soft in my old age, or that it was the quality of the lunch food that was causing my eyes to moisten. Or, maybe it was simply the fact that she was a diehard Red Sox fan. But as I spoke with others at the conference after lunch, I learned that several people got emotional during the session. I'm not sure if they got emotional for the same reasons as I did, but for whatever reason, they had a substantial emotional response to her speech.

I found myself asking what it was that created such an impact with me and others. Goodwin was not a flashy speaker. She did not pace along the stage waving her arms. She did not have impressive PowerPoint slides. She did not sketch elaborate diagrams on flip charts. She did not challenge the audience. No similarities could be drawn to Matt Foley, the motivational speaker portrayed by Chris Farley on SNL. She simply stood behind the podium and spoke clearly and eloquently. What drew me in and captured my attention was her ability to tell good stories - a combination of great content, sincerity, and humor, conveyed effectively for the situation. Most importantly, she elicited an emotional response from me that made the experience memorable.

Another speaker later in the day discussed the importance of connecting information to emotion. Citing psychological studies on how humans process information, he expressed the importance of placing information within an emotional context. It is not enough to simply present information; people need to make an emotional connection in order to decide how to make use of the information. This insight is so important for our information-intensive industry. The discussion was focused on the conveyance of compliance information (always a highly stimulating topic), but it applies to so much more. Story-telling can give people the emotional context by which they can understand, remember, and take action on information.

So, once again, the lunch session pointed me to the importance of telling good stories in our industry. While some of my esteemed colleagues have discussed story-telling in previous posts, I felt it was important to discuss the ties with emotion. A powerful story can elicit an emotional response that can ingrain a product, message, or experience in the mind of your customers.

Whether it was her intention or not, I intend to read Ms. Goodwin's book on Lincoln because of how fascinating I found her stories to be. Hopefully, while reading this, I have made you chuckle, grin, or maybe even grimace. If not, I have failed in my efforts to effectively convey this story, and you are likely to forget it as quickly as that memo about the TPS reports, or after reading another quip from Lee or Mike.