We expect powerful people to give us the overview, the high-level view.  Specifically, a recent study found, we rate people as more powerful when they speak in abstract terms (9/11 was a terrible terrorist attack), rather than specifics (more than 3,000 people died).

More generally, previous studies have shown that people learn new things using two parts of their brain, the first gathering the data, and the second (the pre-frontal cortex) putting them together in a pattern.

Take these pieces of how the brain works and put them together with an understanding of framing, and you get a strong picture of how important a high-level framing statement is to help audiences learn and establish your authority as a high-powered person at the podium.

Audiences come into a speech asking why, why am I here, why is this presentation important, why should I pay attention?  Start with your story, then, and grab the audience, as I indicated in an earlier post about James Bond – but then bridge to the rest of your talk with something like, so that’s what I want to talk about with you today – how our deeper understanding of the Middle East can only help in anticipating the next moves of jihadist movements.

That sort of high-level direction gives the audience a nice sense of your authority as a speaker and helps them consolidate and remember what you’re saying.

The details bring a story – and a speech – to life.  But the high-level phrasing balances that life with authority.  Presentations and speakers need both.

And stories and speaking go even deeper than that.  Connecting with another human being is one of the highest forms of social being for us humans. At the heart of it is good storytelling. When I’m telling you a story, and you’re engaged in it, you match your brain waves to mine. If I’m telling you a story with a familiar structure, your brain actually anticipates what I’m going to say next.

The point is that that’s good for both parties. We want to be in sync with other people. It’s how we communicate well with others and it’s why good storytelling is so powerful. That feeling of synchronization is a profoundly satisfying one. We want to hear stories, especially ones where we can guess what’s going to happen next, a split second before we’re told.

Thus, when communication works, we are literally aligned with one another, down to our very brain patterns. That’s both inspiring and reassuring to know; when we communicate successfully, we are actually experiencing the same thing. We are not alone.

And stories are even more important than that. They are how our brains work. For example, they are why we all feel that it’s safer to drive than fly, even though the statistics prove the opposite. We remember the horrifying stories of plane crashes and forget the stats. That’s because we attach emotions to events to create stories and memories. Our brains are constructed that way.

So storytelling is essential if you want to use the brain the way it’s meant to be used. We remember the emotional, the particular, and the violent especially. We forget the boring, the general, and the anodyne.  We find you authoritative when you give us a high-level view of your topic.  We remember better when you reveal the pattern to us.  We’re engaged more thoroughly at first when you pitch us directly into the fray – the details of the story.

That’s why storytelling is an art.

Part of this blog was adapted from my new book, Power Cues, published by Harvard in May 2014.