Share your feelings

Most presenters think that through logic, pure facts and detailed information they can win the audience over. They invest a lot of time and energy in their presentation, they are extremely accurate with their information, but the expected success doesn't come.

Our world is shaped by rationalist thinkers such as Plato, Socrates and Descartes whose view was that reason is the real source of knowledge. And we have been trained accordingly. We have been told that showing emotions makes us vulnerable and loses us our credibility and professional image - especially in public.

But this view seems dated now, largely thanks to the surprising results obtained by Portuguese neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in the 1990s. He discovered that people who can't feel emotions (because of right brain damage) can't make decisions either - not even about simple things like what to put on in the morning or what to eat at lunchtime.

What does this mean for the presenter? That we need to create emotions in our audience if we want people to act on our message. And the simplest way of doing this is to demonstrate our own passion for and interest in our topic. After all, how can we expect our audience to be inspired by our thoughts if we can't show the same?