Emotional appeals are rare in business communication, but they are much needed. Get two concrete tricks to make your message stick.

Emotional appeals leave the brain a lot faster than logical ones (statistics, data, numbers), so here’s ttwo tips to work with your emotional appeals.

Emotional appeals are about either the speaker or the topic

You are using emotional appeals when your communication is either 1) touching your listeners feelings about you or 2) touching your listeners feelings about the subject.

Here are a couple of ideas for your next presentation or meeting:

“Personally, what I find motivating and thrilling about entering a LEAN-process with our team is…” (Emotional appeals connected to you, your credibility and authority).

“Working with LEAN-tools is not a sleeping pillow or something that make our brains unnecessary, but something we can lean on in questions of process management…” (Emotional appeals connected to the listeners feelings about the subject)

Pauses are key to make messages stick

A great way to work with emotional appeals in business communication is actually saying nothing at all. Yes, pauses. are. incredibly. effective.

As pausing is a crucial part of music and acting, pausing is – or should be – a crucial part of business communication.

Pauses create tension.

Pauses create excitement.

Pauses increase attention to what you are saying – both the words before and after the pause.

Besides that, pausing helps control breathing and pace – which are also important factors when it comes to conveying a message.