It’s our job as presenters to move people. Whether it’s moving them toward understanding, leading them to purchase something, or guiding them to feel or think differently, it’s all about the motion. Famous presentation coach Jerry Wiessman says it’s about taking the audience from Point A to Point B. And that’s easy enough in theory, right? But what can we tangibly do? How do we set things in motion?
While there are many tools that help us accomplish the goal of moving the audience, few things work as powerfully as a great metaphor.
Why are metaphors so powerful?
Metaphors are language tools. Specifically, Literary Devices defines a metaphor as “a figure of speech that makes a comparison between two unlike things.” I like to call them “creative connections.” When you create a metaphor, you borrow certain qualities or meanings of words and use them in new ways. This use of language creates a sense of novelty, which is highly attractive to us.
In fact, researchers Nico Bunzeck and Emrah Düzel have studied the brain’s reaction to novelty. They found that “When we [encounter] something new, we see it has a potential for rewarding us in some way. This potential that lies in new things motivates us to explore our environment for rewards. The brain learns that the stimulus, once familiar, has no reward associated with it and so it loses its potential. For this reason, only completely new objects activate the midbrain area and increase our levels of dopamine.”
So when we hear language used in an unexpected way or see a novel image, our brain literally wakes up to this newness. Metaphors cause us to pay attention and remember information longer. But as noted in the research above, they also “motivate us to explore.” That, my friends, is the motion we are looking for in our presentations. The moving force we hope to create for and in our listeners.
How can we use them in our presentations?
To craft powerful metaphors in your presentations, follow these steps:
- Look for places where you can make creative connections. What is hard to understand or unfamiliar? Zoom in on those areas of your content. Then, look for ways to link unknown or unfamiliar content to something the audience knows or is more familiar with.
- Avoid clichés. You’ve probably heard metaphors like “he’s a hoot!” or “she’s a momma bear.” Those are great uses of metaphorical language, or at least they were at one time. But remember what Bunzeck and Düzel found in their research: “Only completely new things cause strong activity in the midbrain area.” So a metaphor the audience has heard won’t move them.
- Find the sweet spot of explanation. In order for the metaphor to work, the audience has to clearly understand how the old thing connects to the new one. For example, if I were to say, “public speaking is like swimming” you might be confused. But the metaphor loses some of its magic if I explain it in too much detail. So I wouldn’t want to say, “public speaking is like swimming. The public speaker is like the swimmer and the context of being in front of an audience is like the water in the pool. So just like you can’t learn to swim if you don’t get in the pool, you can’t learn to get better at public speaking unless you get up in front of an audience.” Ugh. That’s way too wordy. So I’d need to find the sweet spot between leaving the audience confused and bogging them down. It might sound something like this: “public speaking is like swimming. You can only get better at it if you are brave enough to get in the water.” A great metaphor leaves a little bit unsaid. In this way, it activates the brains of your audience members to make those novel connections that move them.
Metaphors can capture and motivate your audience through the use of novel language and creative connections. Want to move your audience? Employ the power of this literary device in your next presentation.
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