To achieve significant competitive advantage and sustained success, regardless of your goal or industry, profession or political aspirations, you must be in the emotional transportation business.
Why?
Because everyone at sometime needs to persuade someone or a group of “someone’s” to do something – buy my product, join my company or vote for me – your call to action. And, emotional transportation is your super-charged vehicle that gets you to this destination quickest and most joyously.
Emotional transportation works by taking the critical facts, figures and information necessary to validate your value proposition and embeds them in an emotional experience such as a purposeful story, interactive exchange or event.
Emotional transportation works by taking the critical facts, figures and information necessary to validate your value proposition and embeds them in an emotional experience such as a purposeful story, interactive exchange or event. This makes the often otherwise forgettable facts memorable, resonant and actionable because the emotional experience renders something your listeners can more easily hold onto, recall and retell. Most importantly, they don’t just tellyour facts and figures, but their emotional experience which pays forward your facts and figures in their own authentic voices, ultimately making them advocates and evangelizers for their and your success.
As we have started the crucial debate season for the 2012 Presidential election, which candidate is best poised to ride emotional transportation to victory?
To get elected the first time, Obama successfully activated this “emotional transportation,” by taking his critical information and embedding it into an emotional narrative. He’s since admitted that one of the biggest mistakes of his first term in office was thinking that his job was just about getting policy right instead of telling and delivering on his story. He acknowledged this to Charlie Rose, asserting, “the nature of this office is to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”
During the first debate, not only did Obama not follow his own advice, but he put the brakes on any and all emotion, relying on boring facts and figures and looked more like he was asleep at the wheel rather than being in the emotional transportation business.
While Romney was awake, he didn’t drive the emotional transportation vehicle either. He also admitted to Charlie Rose that being President isn’t about telling stories, it is about leading.
As we head into the second debate, while it is true that Presidents must lead, you lead people by aiming at their heart. That’s where elections are won!
