Some fairly recent blog entries talk about the emotional impact of storytelling and persuasion. Kenrick E. Cleveland offers several postings, highlights of which include:
Stories have been used to elicit emotional responses, whether by design or by accident, since the beginning of man and some of the best stories are extraordinarily moving. … When we tell stories in business and when selling, we need to keep in mind the emotional state the story is going to put our prospect in. When we’re persuading, we’re really using stories to control emotional states.
Cleveland also talks about having “an arsenal of emotionally persuasive and powerful stories at our ready at all times.”
In another entry, he talks about personal stories, saying, “I contend that personal is exactly what people crave.”
Kevin Dugan echoes Cleveland in a posting about stories, emotion, and public relations. “Telling your own story is great practice for doing it on the job,” Dugan says, hitting home with my ideas on storytelling and career.
I have my students develop “Who Am I?” stories. While these stories in themselves may not be directly useful in the job search, they are, as Dugan asserts, excellent practice for the self-awareness and authenticity needed to propel one’s career. A superb example that combines emotion with revelation about personal qualities comes from a former student of mine named Kellie. You can read her wonderful story beginning here.
Dugan notes, however, that in PR, “the use of fact and emotion in a story is critical… A message focusing just on emotion can be easily dismissed. At the same time, isolated facts are not remembered easily by an audience. In a world cluttered with messages competing for audience time and attention, stories and our messages require both elements to be effective.”