Crafting Unforgettable Connections: The Power of Emotional Storytelling

Step into the captivating world of storytelling with me as I unravel the secrets behind forging deep connections with your audience through narrative. Drawing from my journey in public speaking, I reveal how infusing raw emotion into your speech creates an unbreakable bond between speaker and listener. From crafting vivid personal anecdotes to sharing vulnerable moments, this episode serves as a guide to mastering the art of storytelling. By the end, you'll possess the tools to transform your next speaking engagement into an unforgettable experience where your message is not just heard but felt. Join me as we embark on a journey to elevate storytelling into an art form of profound connection.

NOTABLE QUOTES
"We want to make sure that we have that emotional buy-in because emotions help us remember things more." – Philip
"The closer you can get these stories to relate with you or your audience, the more emotional tie-in that you can get with your audience.." – Philip
"The more you get the audience and yourself tied into that story that relates back to that message the more emotional buy-in you're going to get from your audience." – Philip

RESOURCES  
Philip
Digital Course: https://www.speakingsessions.com/digital-course
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamphilipsessions/?hl=en
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@philipsessions
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-sessions-b2986563/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/therealphilipsessions

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:16

Have you ever wondered how to put emotion into the speeches that you share, the stories that you share, and get the audience bought in to the story that you have and really have an emotional draw from the audience? Well, in today's video, we're going to discuss this, and this is something that I have recently found out for myself, or had the realization of how this actually works. So, when we want to create emotion first of all, why do we want to create that emotion? We want to create the emotion because, especially for us speaking on stage, we're trying to present ourselves in a way that we become an expert, that we have people that will end up wanting to buy our product or service or work with us in some way, shape or form, and the best way to do this is by creating an emotion. I've said this plenty of times on the podcast, and I'm sure I've heard it from other places as well that facts tell and stories sell, people buy on. Emotions, essentially, is what that is. So if you're telling a fact after fact after fact on stage, that's great. You want to give information, you want to be factual, but if you're not tying in some kind of emotion when it comes to your speaking, it's going to be hard for them to really be bought in, because, at the end of the day, I'm a speaking coach. There's other speaking coaches out there, so, besides me being me, what makes that difference? Me creating an emotional bond between you and I as I'm speaking to you. And so, for you as a speaker, you as a leader, when you are speaking and you create that emotional bond between you and the other person, or you and the other people that you're leading or you're speaking to, you're going to have that buy-in from them, because now you are emotionally bonded and not just I'm your leader, here's what you're doing, or I'm the speaker on stage, here's what you should hear, but they're actually getting emotionally bought in. So that's the reason why we want to make sure that we have that emotional buy-in, because emotions help us remember things more as well, but we get that emotional buy-in from the audience that we're speaking to.

Speaker 1: 2:28

And so how do we create that emotional buy-in, though? And it is from the stories that you share, but not just any stories. I mean, stories are great, and you can tell a lot of great stories, but the more closely related to you that they are, the more your audience is going to connect with you and I just realized this from a speech I did the other day and I realized just the difference of the room and how it was based on a very personal or there was actually two personal stories that I shared and one of them happened to relate. I mean it was about me and the audience actually the audience themselves so that it created a lot of emotional buy-in and I realized a lot of times you don't have that opportunity. Another one was about my dad and it wasn't about the audience there but it's somewhat related with them because it was about his experience within the church. And then I talked about my experience with my church that I was actually doing the sermon for, and so when I talked about my story about me and them, obviously that created a lot of emotional buy-in, but then when I talked about my dad in church, they could still relate with that.

Speaker 1: 3:39

So you can have a story that's ultra personal, where it's personal about you and personal about the audience, and then you can have a story that's maybe personal to you but not necessarily to the audience, but it's relatable to them, and so the closer you can get these stories to relate with you or your audience or both of y'all, the more emotional tie-in that you can get with your audience. So when you're creating stories, don't just think about oh does this story relate with what I'm going to talk about today? And that's a great basis. If you have nothing, if you don't know who the audience is going to talk about today, and that's a great basis. If you have nothing, if you don't know who the audience is going to be at all, then having a story that will relate with the message you're sharing is great and that's a great start. But the better you can get at storytelling, the better it's going to be, because the more emotions you can tie in and you can get that buy-in from that audience, and the closer the story can be to relating with the audience or relating with you, the more emotion is going to come behind that, because of two things, and so let me give you an example of one side of this.

Speaker 1: 4:48

So if I started talking about how beautiful marriage is and being a father and going down that storyline, there will be some of you that are married, that are fathers or mothers. You'll be able to relate a little bit because motherhood, fatherhood, very similar. You've got kids in the mix there. But through that you're able to relate with my story. And if I start talking about some of the hardships or talking about the love that's there, the love that's nurtured there, you're going to be bought into that, you're going to understand that and emotionally we're going to be bonded because you're like, wow, phillip and I have more things in common and that's great and that's what you want with the story. That can be relatable to that audience.

Speaker 1: 5:34

But if I start talking about something more, I mean that's personal as well. But if I start talking about a personal story about what happened to me and I really go into details about that, if I start talking about I have a scar, wrong wrist, I have a scar on my wrist here. It's called a ganglion cyst that I had. So I had surgery on that, got that removed. I had some limitation in my ability to bring my hand back and everything back in high school and so if I start talking about that and what that was like and everything and going into that emotional side of things, well, maybe you have never had a ganglion cyst, so I can't relate with you on that necessarily.

Speaker 1: 6:15

You might be able to think about a time that you had a hardship, something that was physically ailing you, and how tough that was to go through that and that situation there, and so you could relate with that. Or maybe you don't relate with it at all, but you can see and Arisa's a little bit of a bad example but say I lost a limb and I start talking about that. While maybe you haven't lost a limb, you can understand and emotionally be bought into that a little bit, because you can only imagine how tough that must be to only have one leg, let's say. And so me talking about that story and of course then relating it back to what it is that I'm talking about in my message, will create more of that emotional buy-in than just having a random story that is maybe a joke, perhaps that has a punchline that relates back to your message.

Speaker 1: 7:13

So if you want to create emotional buy-in, the best way the ultimate best way to create emotional buy-in in your speech, to draw the emotions of the audience out and draw the emotions of your story out, is to have a story that relates with the audience being you as well as myself or yourself when you are speaking on that stage. So a story that both people you and the audience can be bought into. The second best way is to have a story that's relatable to you, that's your personal story. That will get some emotion from the audience. That will get some emotion from the audience. And the third is just sharing a story that's related to the content that you're going to be speaking on that day, that you're speaking on that day, and so those are really the three ways.

Speaker 1: 8:00

The first two are really going to get the emotional buy-in. You can get people laughing, all of that good stuff. But if you really want to draw people into that story, the more that you can relate with that audience, the better it's going to be and the more emotional buy-in that you're going to get from them. So, as you're preparing for your next speech, think about your stories. How do they relate to you, how do they relate to the audience and, ultimately, how do they relate to your message? So they don't relate to your message. There's no point in sharing that story. But once they, once you figure out who your audience is hopefully you know who you are and you know what message you're going to share you can craft a story around that, and the more you get the audience and yourself tied in to that story. That relates back to that message the more emotional buy-in you're going to get from your audience.