See What I Mean: The Power of Metaphor and Analogy
How your audience thinks and emotionally reacts is shaped by the associations your words spark. All you need to guide those thoughts and reactions are the right words.
Welcome to the sixth lesson of The Persuasive Presenter course. As always, there’s a quick video introduction followed by a deeper dive in text.
Watch, read, and let me know what you think!
A middle-aged man storms into his doctor’s office, steaming mad.
“Doc, my new 25-year-old wife is expecting a baby. You performed my vasectomy five years ago, and I’m very upset right now.”
“Let me respond to that by telling you a story,” the doctor calmly replies.
“A hunter once accidentally left the house with an umbrella instead of his rifle. Out of nowhere, a bear surprised him in the woods… so the hunter pointed the umbrella, fired, and killed the bear.”
“Impossible,” the man snaps back. “Someone else must have shot that bear.”
“And there you have it,” the doctor says.
This hardly needs to be said, but… The doctor could have just come out and said the man’s wife must be cheating on him. It was the analogy that allowed the patient to reach that conclusion on his own, which is always much more persuasive.
Lead Them to Their Own Conclusion
This brings us back to one of the core principles of persuasion we established early in this course. It’s not about telling people what to think or do. It’s about leading them to decide that the way you think is the right way for them to think as well, and then take action accordingly.