Use story to control people's emotions

A woman in a yellow shirt eating a hot dog.

Youch. What an aggressive title. The first thing to get straight is that you can influence your audience but not control it. If you try to control it, your story will be contrived and the audience will think more about the terrible storyteller than the failed story. But let's not shy away from emotion.

Picture a friend telling you about his argument with an unreasonable hot dog vendor who was stingy with the onions and things escalate and yadda yadda this is the end of days and “what kind of society…”. Your friend wants you to empathize with his anger, and perhaps you laugh instead because it’s funny.

Make sure your audience feels something. 

You must demonstrate genuine emotion in your story or else it’ll be a bust. The strange part is that the emotions you're projecting might not be the ones your audience feels and that’s ok.

If you want your audience to act, be deliberate.

If your friend wanted you to join him in confronting up the hot dog vendor, he would feel his story failed because you wouldn’t join him. Then your friend could have appealed to myriad other emotions (e.g., distress over injustice, loyalty to a comrade, etc.) that could lead you to want to do something to the hot dog vendor. If confronting hot dog vendors isn’t your thing, then your friend failed to assess his audience.

The same is true for igniting action at work.

Instead of thinking, "I’ll make an urgent announcement that makes people panic and then they’ll do my bidding" try for some other more genuine emotion that would get them to comply.

Instead of "fill out this insurance form on time or you'll make a lot of annoying paperwork for me, you lazybones" go with "fill out this insurance form on time and I’ll make sure your kids are covered, you loving parent."

Oh...and don’t bother confronting a hot dog vendor. They’ve got that hot meat water and no patience for shenanigans.