If we needed further proof that humans are emotional beings, and make decisions emotionally, we can ponder a study done by a non-profit organization that wants to increase compliance with childhood vaccinations.

As you probably are aware, the Internet still believes that some vaccinations cause autism, in spite of the fact that the scientific community has discredited this idea.

So the organization found parents who still hold to this bit of Internet folklore and gave them the facts about autism and vaccinations. The results were fascinating. People who were told the facts did have their minds changed. They were more likely to believe that vaccinations don’t cause autism.

But they were less likely to immunize their children.

People Aren’t Logical

In struggling to make sense of this sad conundrum, the organization hypothesized that talking about vaccinations and autism awakened fear centers in these poor addled parental brains. As a result, the larger, older fear of autism surfaced, and trumped the logical construct that had newly been built around the facts.

Fears are tenacious. More than that, we make decisions unconsciously, based on those fears and other emotions. We make the decision, then we act on it, then we become consciously aware of our decision. It’s the action that leads to conscious awareness, not initially the decision.

What does this matter to speakers? The only reason to give a speech is to change the world. To change the world you have to change the minds of the audience in front of you. To change those minds, you have to access them at the unconscious level, the emotional level – the place where decisions are made.

So You Have to Tell ‘Em Stories

Conscious appeals to logic, facts, and data won’t do it. You have to tell stories that get people to change emotionally. That’s the only way to be successful as a public speaker – to change the world.

What kind of stories should you tell? I’ve blogged before about the five basic stories that matter most to humanity. You should tell one of those. Here they are again, in brief form.

We experience reality, most of the time, as one of the five basic stories. We’re always in one or another. So match your message up to one of the five and you’ll connect deeply and powerfully with your audience.
For example, if you ask your employees to embark with you on a long and arduous journey to develop a new product, they’ll complain about the obstacles along the way, and they may even lose heart and quit, unless you invoke a Quest story. Then, the obstacles are to be expected because that’s what happens on a quest.

The first of the five archetypal stories, Quests begin with ordinary people in an ordinary status quo situation. Then, a problem arises, or an event occurs that forces the hero to leave home, or depart from the status quo, in order to seek some goal or right some terrible wrong and re-establish the social order. The hero’s hunger for the goal is palpable. Even if the journey is long, the hero hangs in there because of the importance of reaching the goal.

The heroes meet obstacles and suffer reversals — but eventually overcome them all to reach the goal.

Here’s the important part. This story has lodged itself so deep in our psyches that we don’t think of it as a story. Rather, it’s the way life works. If we set off on some quest, the harder we try, and the worse the journey, the more we deserve the reward in the end. We believe that, because we believe in the ultimate fairness of the universe.

It’s not logical. It’s a story we tell ourselves. But we believe it. And that’s why it’s powerful.

Don’t make the mistake of casting yourself as the hero — always make your followers the hero and cast yourself as the mentor who guides the group to that goal at the end.

The Quest story is the most basic one we have, and your people will get the idea very quickly because the story is so deeply ingrained in us. For more information on the subject, read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the definitive book on the subject.

After the Quest, the other fundamental stories are: Stranger in a Strange Land, Love Story, Rags to Riches, and Revenge.

Sometimes I feel Like a Stranger in a Strange Land

A Strange Land story works best in changing times. These stories are our way of handling things when everything changes – the economy, the paper mill, the rules, the demands of a global society. In a Strange Land story, the heroes suddenly find themselves in a new landscape, one that offers strange terrain, language, or rules.

We don’t know the way. We’re lost. What we used to do to succeed no longer makes sense any more. We’re dazed and confused. We need to learn to navigate this strange new place.

Along comes a leader to show us the way. The leader (that’s you) offers a new vision, or a new set of rules, or a new way of coping that enables us to survive and eventually thrive in this new landscape. We crave mastery, from bewilderment, and that’s the journey our leader takes us on.

Everyone Needs a Love Story

Love stories are simple. Two people meet, fall in love, fall out of love, learn a little more about each other, decide to stick together, and live happily ever after. You know the drill. But their profundity is revealed in the nature of the way the two fall out of love and then find each other again – that’s always symptomatic of what’s wrong with society today. Is it the difficulties of marriage and property? That’s Jane Austen. Or is it the problem of men never growing up, staying immature and behaving badly in a society that permits them this license? That’s Judd Apatow.

We crave love stories because our future is tied up in them in the obvious ways, but also in not so obvious ways. If men can’t learn to function like responsible adults in a world of too much grown-up play, where does that leave us? How will we take care of each other? What does society owe its people and vice-versa? These are the deeper questions love stories investigate.

If you’re a leader with an idea about how people need to get along better, love stories are for you.

We all go from Rags to Riches

Rags to riches stories help us believe that ordinary people still have a chance to succeed in a society that all too often seems stacked against us, in favor of the already rich and powerful. They’re about average people who, with a little luck and hard work – but not genius – manage to succeed and achieve material wealth, or honor, or power, or fame. They’re good stories for people who are trying to promote economic justice to tell.

Finally, There’s Revenge

We live in a chaotic world. But we always have. Most people – throughout history – have believed that our world is the most chaotic it has ever been, right now, unlike the golden age of X years ago. There is evil in this world, and revenge reasserts the order that society all too often fails to give us from the start. We need to be protected. A good villain and justice served are powerful ways for leaders to persuade their followers that they have the right idea about life.

Again, these stories are structures that we impose on reality in order to make sense of it. If you want your message to make sense to your audiences, then you must connect it to one of these five basic stories. You might do it with a specific reference to a particular, well-known Quest story, like the Holy Grail, the Wizard of Oz, or Raiders of the Lost Ark, or you might use the elements and the language of a Stranger in a Strange Land story in order to bring your followers into that magical space without actually telling them bluntly that ‘you’re on a quest’. It’s better in this case not to be blunt, but rather to evoke the stories with their unconscious power to orient us and bring us into a state of mind where we see the outcome as ordained by the structure of the story.

As you’re speaking, don’t draw attention to the fact that you’re telling a story. That will lessen its power. Just tell the story. Appeal to emotions, change minds, and change the world. That’s the only reason to give a speech.