Stories for Work. Dolan Gabrielle

      Our audience will be forming these types of questions whether we’re trying to get them to buy-in to an organisational change or motivating them towards next year’s goals.

      Usually, we try to influence them with a PowerPoint presentation of facts and figures or an outline of the pros and cons of whatever it is we want them to feel excited about. These strategies are all based on logic. Yet, science says that we make up our minds to the types of questions I listed based on our emotions and how we feel about something.

      Research by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio shows emotion plays a significant role in our ability to make decisions. While many of us believe logic drives our choices, the reality is that we have already made an emotional decision and we then use logic to justify the choice – to ourselves and to others.

      Damasio’s research involved examining people with damage to their frontal lobe, which is the area of the brain where emotions are generated and that helps to regulate personality. Except for their inability to feel or express emotions, the participants had normal intellectual capacity in terms of working memory, attention, language comprehension and expression. However, they were unable to make decisions.

      The vast majority of participants could describe in logical terms what they thought they should be doing, but they found it difficult to actually make a decision, including making a simple choice like deciding what to eat. This indecision came from them going over the pros and cons for each option again and again. Presented with a choice to make, we struggle to make a decision without some form of emotion influencing it.

      Damasio’s research does not stand alone. According to Christine Comaford, neuroscience expert and author of the New York Times bestseller Smart Tribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together, 90 per cent of human behaviour and decision-making is driven by our emotions.

      Not fully understanding this is often why we get incredibly frustrated when our team members do not do what we want them to do. In our mind, our request makes logical sense! But as best-selling author Dale Carnegie put it, ‘When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion.’

      That’s why it’s important to note the difference between a case study and a story. Case studies are based on logic, facts and figures (as you’ll see from those provided in chapters 13 to 15). They still play an important role in business, but not from the standpoint of connecting with someone on an emotional level.

      Marketing executives and advertisers are acutely aware of the power of using storytelling and emotion in business to drive purchasing decisions. You only have to look at the latest car advert for proof!

      A study of over 1400 marketing campaigns submitted to the UK-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) rated how effective marketing campaigns were, based on profit gains. The results showed:

      This research indicates that using logic alone has the least impact and using emotion has almost double the impact. (For more on this research, go to www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog and search ‘emotional ads’.)

      Storytelling is deeply rooted in making an emotional connection with another person. That’s why if you’re looking to make an impact or influence someone at work, it makes scientific sense to use a story.

      Remember Paul Zak’s research on oxytocin and storytelling? His research goes on to show that when we listen to a tense moment in a story, our brains produce the stress hormone cortisol, which helps us to focus.

      In one of his studies, participants watched an emotional story about a father and his son. Both cortisol and oxytocin were released in varying degrees in the participants. When cortisol was present, the participants with higher amounts of oxytocin also present were more likely to donate money to someone they had never met.