Stories that Move Mountains: Storytelling and Visual Design for Persuasive Presentations

All Motivation is Personal

Change is personal. Inanimate objects do not care if they're changed. People care. People have emotional attachments, desires, and relationships. In order for those emotions to work in your favor, you have to speak to individuals as people. If you want members of your audience to care about you, you have to demonstrate that you care about them.

Some changes are driven by altruistic motives, for the welfare of others, but most of the changes you need to communicate have to directly address your audience's question, “What's in it for me?” (We sometimes abbreviate this as WII.FM.) Think of this as the radio station your audience is tuned into, playing in the background while they go about their daily lives. Occasionally, a tune or announcement catches their attention. The reasons “Why” are these announcements and familiar tunes. If you don't trigger the “What's in it for me?” response in the audience, then the story will lose a great deal of its influence.

The key to focusing on the right information at this stage of the process is to put yourself into your audience's shoes and think about what's in it for them. It may be the achievement of business goals or a personal dream. It could be the desire to be a part of something important that has strong alignment with their personal feeling of self-worth, or the chance to do something interesting for the first ...