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About this lesson

Conflict is the key to telling a story worth listening to, and sharing your emotions allows the audience to connect personally.

Quick reference

The Appeal of Conflict and Emotion

In many great stories, things don't go smoothly. They describe conflict, challenges, and how someone overcomes them. Add to that a dose of real emotion, and now you’ve got a story your audience will remember and relate to.

Conflict Is What Makes Stories Interesting

  • Stories with no conflict are boring — nothing happens.
  • All compelling stories include a problem or challenge that must be overcome.
  • These problems don’t have to be dramatic — day-to-day business challenges work too.
  • Your story should include:
    • What the problem was
    • Who experienced it
    • How it got resolved

Everyday Work Is Full of Story Material

  • We deal with problems every day — emails, calls, customer issues.
  • These are great sources of real, relevant stories.
  • Use examples where you helped solve a problem or supported someone in a challenge.

Stories Succeed Where Slides Fail

  • PowerPoint is great for facts, but not for emotion.
  • Slides full of bullet points, data, and graphs don’t move people.
  • A story, however, shows how people feel and connects on a human level.

Emotion Is the Key to Connection

  • Don’t just say what happened — say how it felt.
  • Were you anxious, excited, disappointed, relieved?
  • Emotions make you relatable and your story memorable.
  • Don’t worry about being polished — people respond to honesty.

Speak, Don’t Script, Your Emotions

  • Most people struggle to write emotions but are more natural when speaking.
  • Avoid over-scripting your story — speak from the heart when describing how you felt.
  • Emotion is what creates empathy, and empathy is what creates engagement.
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  • 00:04 Once Upon a time there was this family.
  • 00:06 They were all healthy, they were all good looking and they all got along really well and they lived happily ever after.
  • 00:16 What kind of a story is that?
  • 00:18 I'll tell you what kind. It's the worst story ever.
  • 00:21 You'll never see a book about that subject.
  • 00:24 You'll never see a movie with that plot line.
  • 00:27 Why?
  • 00:29 Because there's no conflict.
  • 00:30 There's no problem.
  • 00:32 When you're telling a story, you have to talk about some conflict, some problem that was overcome.
  • 00:40 All of you face problems from day-to-day.
  • 00:44 How often do you just go to your office or go to your desk in your Home Office and you don't get a single e-mail, phone call or text all day long about any problems and it's just the end of the day, your boss or your biggest client just send you an e-mail saying hope everything was great today.
  • 01:02 Why don't you go home early?
  • 01:03 How often does that happen?
  • 01:05 I'm pretty confident in thinking that never happens.
  • 01:09 All of us deal with problems, sometimes not earth shattering, but problems, conflicts, challenges every single day in our lives.
  • 01:19 So what stories do is they let us talk about those problems in an interesting, compelling way.
  • 01:27 So if you're going to tell a story, you need to have some problem for the characters, ideally.
  • 01:34 Again, most of the time it's a problem you had or one of your clients or customers or a constituent had, and how together you face those challenges, how you face that problem, how you solved it and how it was resolved.
  • 01:49 I love PowerPoint.
  • 01:50 Look, some of my best friends are PowerPoint, but let's face it, PowerPoint is not particularly good at conveying emotions the way most people use it because typically they're listing facts, bullet points, numbers.
  • 02:03 When you're telling a story, it is absolutely critical that you express the emotional component with the characters and what's happening.
  • 02:14 Are you sad?
  • 02:15 Are you disappointed?
  • 02:16 Are you happy?
  • 02:16 Are you afraid?
  • 02:17 What is it you're feeling emotionally?
  • 02:21 This is what will connect you to the audience.
  • 02:23 This is what will allow the audience to have some empathy for you.
  • 02:27 Especially if you're saddened because of a set back or you're scared because something horrible has happened, don't be afraid to convey the emotion.
  • 02:37 This is the big problem I have with so many of my clients around the world.
  • 02:41 When they're writing their speech out or they have a speech writer write their speech, it's much harder for most people to write out their emotions than it is when they're simply talking to share their emotions.
  • 02:55 We're not used to writing about our emotions.
  • 02:57 We are used to talking about our emotions, and this the big problem with PowerPoint slides, with people accumulating data points, numbers, facts.
  • 03:09 Well, you have to have some of that, but how do you feel about that?
  • 03:13 Which ones get you most excited?
  • 03:16 Which ones are the most depressing?
  • 03:18 When you're telling a story, you've got to express your emotions.
  • 03:23 That's what's going to hook people.
  • 03:25 That's going to make them be on the edge of their seat for you, or feel sorry for you or feel excited for you or to empathize with you.
  • 03:36 That's why it's crucial a story without emotion is really just a recitation of facts.

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