The Missing Element in Business Communication: Why Emotion Matters

 

“How come when I want a pair of hands, I get a human being as well?” — Henry Ford

Henry Ford knew exactly where the challenges lay when working with people. In his autobiography My Life and Work, from which this quote is taken, he makes that abundantly clear. Somewhere between the two hands that do the work lie a brain and a heart—and both have needs.

Today, Ford would likely be pleased to see that much of the manual labor he standardized as a pioneer of mass production can now be performed by machines. The relationship between humans and machines—a subject that preoccupies us today in the emerging age of robotics and artificial intelligence—was already a dominant issue during the industrial age. Entrepreneurs like Henry Ford devoted their lives to grappling with it. And for many artists at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, distinguishing humans from machines became a powerful creative force.

Amid the heated debate of the time over the virtues of technology and machine worship, film director Fritz Lang offered a striking response in 1927. His monumental and still highly influential science-fiction film Metropolis depicts a future in which human beings live in a world dependent on machines. Whether they inhabit the upper city or the underworld, whether they belong to the privileged bourgeoisie or the impoverished working class, what unites all people—and distinguishes them from robots—is their capacity for compassion and empathy. Lang’s work thus stands as both a tribute to human emotion and a warning against the dictatorship and tyranny of heartless machines.

Yet Lang’s warning went unheard; the film was a box-office failure. After its premiere on January 10, 1927, it was shown in only a single theater in Berlin, where fewer than 15,000 people purchased tickets over the following four months. The financially struggling UFA studio then withdrew the original version. It would not be until the end of the twentieth century that the film was rediscovered.

Today, Metropolis is celebrated as a classic of expressionist art and hailed as a pioneering work of the science-fiction genre. Countless directors have cited Fritz Lang as an inspiration. Once the most expensive film ever made for its time, it is now regarded as one of the most significant works in cinematic history and has been part of the UNESCO Memory of the World Register since 2001. 

At the time, critics found it excessively enamored with technology—and overly sentimental. Even today, the film does not make things easy for viewers. The exaggerated facial expressions of silent-film actors can seem overblown, while the text and story may strike us as melodramatic. Yet if one strips away the historical patina, a theme emerges that feels more relevant than ever:

Human Versus Machine

Are we not discussing today what fundamentally separates humans from machines? Are we not defending creativity, intuition, and inspiration as uniquely human strengths that machines can never truly replicate? Are we not increasingly turning to emotion, empathy, and emotional intelligence as markers of human distinction—especially in the business world? Soft skills are celebrated as essential leadership qualities. Team spirit, intuition, social intelligence, and communication skills are experiencing a revival in the face of increasingly powerful computer intelligence and sophisticated robotics.

Apparently, the difference lies in the heart. And that is precisely what your next presentation should convey. Because only you—as a human being—can respond to the emotional needs of your audience. A machine cannot do that. At least not yet.

“You’ll need to identify your audience’s emotional needs and meet them with integrity. It’s not enough to get the facts right—you've got to get the emotional arc right as well. Every storyteller is in the expectations-management business and must take responsibility for leading listeners effectively through the story experience, incorporating both surprise and fulfillment. At the end of the story, listeners should think, ‘We never expected that—but somehow, it makes perfect sense.’ Thus, a great story is never fully predictable through foresight—but it’s projectable through hindsight.”

Peter Guber, producer of films such as Rain Man, The Color Purple, Batman, Flashdance, and The Kids Are All Right, understands the importance of emotional needs in storytelling. He also believes that speakers in lectures and presentations have a responsibility to address their audience’s emotions consciously and actively.

For communication scholars Richard Maxwell and Robert Dickman, emotion is an essential element in defining stories. To them, a story is “a fact wrapped in an emotion that compels us to take an action.”

Paul Smith, author of Lead with a Story, condenses this definition even further into a simple formula: Fact + Emotion + Action = Story

So concise, so simple. But what exactly are emotions, and by what means do stories awaken powerful feelings?

Cold Sweat and Goosebumps

Anyone familiar with Pixar’s 2015 animated film Inside Out will recognize its five main characters: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. The central setting of the film is the mind of young Riley Andersen, and viewers experience the girl’s coming of age through the perspective of her five dominant emotions, each personified by Pixar’s animators as a small cartoon character.

If you ask University of California anthropologist Paul Ekman, he would add two more to Pixar’s cast: surprise and contempt. According to Ekman, all humans share seven basic emotions, regardless of the culture in which they were raised. The more experts one consults, the more emotions are added to the list: embarrassment, hatred, love, wonder, and trust. Our catalog of so-called primary affects can grow to include as many as twenty emotions.

Each of these emotions is a psychophysiological phenomenon. It is triggered by the conscious or unconscious perception of an event or situation. Often, however, a single stimulus is enough—something that reminds us of an experience that once stirred an emotional response. The stimulus alone can reactivate that emotion. Feelings, therefore, do not merely reflect external facts; rather, they mirror our assessment of what we perceive. Emotions are intuitive reactions of the body.

Large parts of what Daniel Kahneman describes as System 1—the fast-reacting, intuitive center of thought—are involved when emotions come into play. That is precisely why they are so difficult to control. Cold sweat and moments of shock, goosebumps of excitement, and tears of emotion—all of these are barely manageable. Emotions can quite literally overwhelm us and can only be suppressed with great effort.

Across many cultures and over centuries, it was considered improper to display emotions in public—precisely because they were viewed as signs of psychological weakness, lack of control, and immaturity. Even today, emotionality is still regarded in many settings as somewhat inappropriate. Theater director and screenwriter Gregor Adamczyk sees this as one of the reasons storytelling is rarely used in everyday business life:

“Most people place great importance on appearing especially professional at work. Unfortunately, they often mistake professional life for a poker game. They believe they will seem competent only if they remain completely in control. (…) Yet an inner attitude that whispers, ‘Behind every emotional reaction lurks the danger of losing face and credibility,’ strips our communication of its most important component: emotion.”

Thinking alone, however, is not enough for a compelling presentation. Feeling is essential. Empathy guarantees heightened attention and motivation while also anchoring what is said in long-term memory—even if this initially feels uncomfortable in a business context.

Need more compelling reasons to incorporate storytelling into speeches, talks, and presentations? Then keep reading. In my latest book Between the Lines: How Smart Brands Use Story to Win Markets and Build Trust will be released in early May. Pre-order now.

This text was written by a human; AI tools were used for translation, spelling and grammar checks. Photo: Олег Мороз on Unsplash