Holidays often present our most memorable experiences because of the emotional range they touch – whether positive or negative. The strong emotional connections coupled with the high degree of personal interest in holidays fixes long ago memories in our minds as if they happened yesterday.
When we’re presenting ideas in business though, we usually don’t think about this relationship that creates holiday memories:
At best, business presentations assume some implied level of personal interest (since after all, it’s a business topic) and stop short of including any emotion (since after all, it’s a business topic). When you work through the formula above for most business presentations (Minimal personal interest x Zero emotion), you get NO memorability.
For your next business communication, use the formula to your advantage by thinking through and incorporating answers to the following questions when developing and delivering ideas.
To increase personal interest, for each person in the audience answer:
- What about the business is important either as a motivator (opportunities, cost savings, satisfying customers, increasing stock price, etc.) or as a fear (competitors, losing customers, deteriorating EPS, etc.) for this person?
- From what perspective does this person think about the business, and how does that shape their information processing and decision making?
- What words do they use to talk about the business?
- What are their most important personal motivators (advancement, looking good, being smart, etc.) and fears (losing a job, looking bad, being dumb, etc.)?
To increase the emotional connection of your presentation, think about how you could use:
- Surprise – is there a different way to order or communicate the content to be more surprising?
- Drama – would making it a suspenseful story or acting out part of it add a beneficial sense of drama?
- Humor – if the information is challenging, can you use humor (maybe a funny cartoon or story) to help reduce defensiveness?
- Excitement – is there an alternative format (movie clip, audience participation) that would be more exciting than Powerpoint?
One final consideration in seeking a more emotional connection – how receptive is your organization to incorporating an emotional angle and how will you signal what you’re doing? Both points are important so that you are bringing your audience along with you to get the maximum positive impact.
So back to holiday memorability. It’s late December - Christmas, Kwanza, and New Year’s are coming up; Hanukkah is over. I’ll stop focusing on creating business memories and get started on holiday memories if you’ll do the same! But let’s meet back here right after the first of the year. Have a blessed holiday season full of wonderful memories!
