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When we hear bad news, usually the reaction is 1 of 2 ways:

1. We feel consumed and bummed.
OR
2. The brain rejects it entirely.

This is part of why grief starts with denial – when the information is too much for the brain to cope. To reduce the cognitive dissonance, the brain goes avoidant. When we hear good news, dopamine and happy hormones immediately flood our body, making us want more of that news.

You might be wondering… “What does this have to do with speaking?” A lot!

Back in your inbox this week with an important Public Speaking strategy that is simple but major.

No matter what you’re talking about, it’s crucial not to assume the audience knows the importance of the topic. You have to walk them through it, spell it out, and make it abundantly clear how the topic will impact their lives.

When you set the stakes for why the topic is personally relevant to your audience, their brain will process the information with greater cognitive elaboration (Perloff, 2023).

This level of focus and deeper thoughtfulness can impact persuasion drastically and allows folks to remember a message long-term, connect it to other related issues, and seek more information after the fact.

Sometimes, the importance or urgency of a topic is because of a negative impact. If you provide a negative message (and as always, backup your points with data to highlight the validity) and the negative emotion is too powerful, it can cause the brain to reject the message entirely. You don’t want to leave the audience hanging in a negative headspace or in a space of rejecting the message. This is a big no! You want to follow up with research, well-thought out arguments, and finally, solutions and options for them to move forward. That’s why the second part of this is crucial…

The other major tenet with setting the stakes is keeping it positive to ensure the audience is not crushed by the information, but rather feels motivation and agency.

When a message produces positive thoughts, increasing confidence in these thoughts enhances persuasion (Perloff, 2023).

Research shows people want to believe the positive; to believe the glass is half full. The brain wants the dopamine rush of happy information that attracts it to the message. When you’ve set the stakes and share positive news with data to validate it, the audience is quicker to lean in.

Balancing the negative with the positive helps resolve the initial dissonance. Hope motivates! That sense of tension and relief is what drives all narratives and storytelling – advertisements, movies, books. It’s the sad story and the happy ending. And it’s everywhere! Including Public Speaking. Let us know if you use this tactic and keep an eye out for it the next time you watch media 🙂

P.S. Our Spring 2025 Women’s Cohort is open for registration until March 1st! We’ll talk through streamlined preparation processes and multiple actionable speaking strategies to help you stand out in the crowd, using a combination of methodology from theatre, PR, education, and speech and debate. The training we provide will serve you for a lifetime. Hear it from our alumni first hand:

“I got one of my first big speaking engagements. The program fully prepared me for that moment. From there, I just feel like this is easy. When your confidence changes, you walk differently, you talk differently. ToPS – That’s the answer.”
-Nicole Davis, CEO, Keynote Speaker, Forbes List of America’s Top 200 CPAs

Much Love,