Emotion in your presentation: 7 ideas that move people
If nobody feels anything during your presentation, little of it sticks. Your audience nods, takes notes… but your presentation doesn’t really move them. Especially with experts, emotion seems “not done”, until you realise they’re human too. Emotion literally lights up different parts of the brain. The emotional centre taps your memory on the shoulder: “This is important, keep it.”
Your audience remembers what it feels for longer than what it merely finds interesting. And yet we still build presentations around facts, models and charts. Content: great. Reaction in the room: lukewarm. Nobody disagrees with what you say, but nobody gets excited about it either.
A quote often attributed to Maya Angelou puts it sharply: “people will forget what you said and what you showed, but not how you made them feel.”
Your critical audience responds to feeling too: researchers, doctors, engineers, policymakers. With one caveat: they see straight through exaggerated pathos and big words. So no fake drama, but real emotion, close to their world. Here are 7 ways to go from a dry slide deck to a presentation that really gets through.
1. Start with a person, not a model
We often open presentations like this: “In this model, we distinguish three types of patients…” Sounds smart. Feels like nothing. Try this: “Sofie, 34, biomedical engineer. Responsible for several trials. Sleeps badly because of the margins of error in her data.” One person, one anchor point. Your audience gets a face, a situation, a context. They see themselves, a colleague or a patient. After that, you can move on to your model, but by then the model has come to life.
2. Share not only your decision, but also how it felt
Business presentations focus on: “We decided to…” Much stronger: what did that choice do to you? Where did you hesitate? What concern was behind it? “We decided to pause the study. Not an easy call. I lay awake over it for a few nights, because I knew how much work you had already put into it. But the risk of drawing the wrong conclusions felt even worse to me.” You bring the person behind the role to the front. That builds trust, not weakness. Keep it short and relevant, though. No ten-minute emotional confession.
3. Tell about your obstacles, not just the success story
In many presentations, everything seems to have gone logically in hindsight. As if every project went in a straight line to success. Nobody believes that. But hardly anyone tells the real story. Your obstacles are exactly the part people recognise themselves in. From my own story: “After my illness and radiotherapy, quite a few people advised me not to continue with Presentation Lab. At times, my courage sank into my boots. But that very doubt made me sharper about what I want to do. Doing what I really love brought me back to life.” Tell it calmly, factually, honestly. Your audience feels: this is real. And that sticks. Your obstacles don’t have to be larger than life. A failed pilot, a collaboration that didn’t run smoothly, a decision you waited too long to make. As long as it’s true and close to their world, it works.
4. Use concrete words, make it tangible
“We’re improving the efficiency of the process.” Nobody feels a thing. Try this: “You save 4 hours a week on average. That’s the Friday you go home at 4 pm instead of 6 pm.”
Or: “You no longer have to check 300 rows in Excel on a Sunday evening before you dare to show a chart.”
The more concrete, the more it lands. You see the picture, and so do they.
5. Make your logistics human
Schedules, shifts, routes, volumes. In many presentations, you get stuck in diagrams and processes, while there’s a lot of emotion underneath. “We’re improving the logistics process” sounds neat. Feels like nothing. This sounds different: “We turned the schedule around so drivers are no longer on the road until 10 pm as standard. The idea that they hardly ever saw their children on weekdays didn’t sit right with me. Now a voluntary late shift delivers to the big hubs, and the rest are home by 6 pm.” One sentence of doubt, one concrete example. Then back to your content. Your audience understands the logistics, but above all feels: someone thought about people here, not just about systems.
6. Choose the image with the most emotion
Not: an apple in a fruit bowl. But: an apple still lying at the bottom of your son’s school bag after seven days. Everyone can see it, and almost smell it. Test yourself: does this image evoke something, or is it mostly pretty and corporate? Advertising images are chosen so carefully for a reason. They want to move people. That’s exactly what you want too. Choose the photo that sets the most in motion in your audience’s head. Your own photos are often much more interesting than the best stock photo.
7. Humanise your figures and charts
Especially in technical or scientific presentations, strong emotions are hidden in the data. A fictional example. Not just: “We see a 27% drop in car use for trips under 3 km.” But also: “Out of every 100 short car trips, 27 disappear. Imagine what that could mean on a busy morning at the school gate. Fewer cars, less jostling. And yes, maybe a bit less shouting in the car too.” A small translation, but a bigger effect. Your audience understands the figures and feels the impact.
An important nuance for experts
Your audience isn’t hunting for pathos, it’s hunting for credibility. Emotion here isn’t drama, but recognition. You make your audience think: “I have that too. I know that. That’s me.” And then you have exactly what you want: a presentation that sticks.
One tip already makes a difference. In the training, you learn step by step how to build a strong presentation faster and smarter. One that gets through, persuades and scores.