3 Keys For How To Turn Data Dumps Into Persuasive Presentations

Here’s a story about two people who are persuaded to make two different decisions:

At a store when the clerk mentions the lottery jackpot has climbed to $32 million, Lydia responds, “I’m feeling lucky. I’ll buy a ticket!” Janet, an insurance underwriter also in line, uses expected value calculation and decides not to. Lydia allows her emotions to guide her. Overcome by the news that her daughter was awarded a full college scholarship, she’s smiling at strangers and buying lottery tickets.

To understand why Lydia and Janet made their decisions, we can turn to Nobel-winning economist and author Daniel Kahneman. In his groundbreaking book Thinking Fast And Slow, he outlines two models of decision-making:

• System 1 is fast, intuitive, emotional
• System 2 is slow, analytical, deliberate

Lydia used System 1 thinking, while Janet used System 2 thinking. With individual decisions, what’s at stake is likely only a few dollars. But when it comes to policy and organizational decisions, the stakes are much higher. If we rely on System 1, we can be led by biases and errors in reasoning. But no one is immune to System 1 thinking. CEOs and other leaders are just as likely to be led by intuition and emotion as someone in line at a convenience store. Yet the impacts of their decisions are huge and have ripple effects.

Consider how small gains and losses can have a disproportionate effect. For example, a CEO feeling wounded by a poorly run board meeting may be adverse to a new opportunity outside his comfort zone even if the assessment is extremely positive.

Though psychologists have names for these irrational lines of thought such as loss aversion, endowment effect, prospect theory, or sunk-cost fallacy, most people do not stop to reflect on their biases and emotions.

Analytically driven leaders can help their organizations, teams, and clients use System 2 thinking by making sure when they present their data they do so persuasively — by bridging the gap between these two systems of thought with storytelling.

3 Keys To Persuasive Data-Based Presentations

1. Practice Empathy

The first key analytical leaders need to remember is empathy. Because analytical leaders are steeped in the world of rational thought, they are used to spending the necessary time to find and analyze data. Thus, they can forget what it’s like for others who are not so trained.

This is the Curse of Knowledge. Once you know something, it’s nearly impossible to remember what it was like not to. Therefore, in order to create a persuasive presentation analytical leaders must practice empathy for their audiences before presenting data. Practice empathy by answering these questions:

1. Who is my audience? What do they need to know?
2. What three things do I want my audience to understand after listening to my presentation? Name those three things with no more than 30 words.
3. Outside the topic I am presenting on, what are the most pressing challenges my audience is facing?

Practicing empathy will help you know what information to lead with in your persuasive presentation and how to frame it for your audience.

2. Frame Numbers With Words

The capacity of our memory is finite, especially when it comes to numbers. In the 1950s, psychologist George Miller completed a study that determined that the average person has the ability to hold about 7 numbers (+/-2) in their working memory. This remains true today.

So if you find yourself armed with pages of number-laden data to present, you learn to be selective. And remember to share those numbers within the context of words. For most people, the story the numbers tell is more meaningful than the numbers themselves.

For example, scientists studying the impact of climate change know that the difference in an increase of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels versus an increase of 2.0°C increase changes the risk of weather-related events astronomically. But to most people, the difference between the numbers 1.5 and 2.0 seems trivial. So, if you are creating a persuasive presentation on the risk of climate change on waterfront properties, you don’t need your audience to remember the degrees of change, but rather the outcomes of these two scenarios.

3. Create Meaning With Stories

What’s more, we must remember that numbers themselves are not the goal. “Data doesn’t create meaning. We do,” says Susan Etlinger, Senior Director, Strategy and Thought Leadership at Microsoft.

For example, when describing the importance of taking precautions for rare events, Alex Martin, Green Actuary & Sustainability Editor at The Actuary Magazine, uses an everyday story that we all can relate to: “When you get in the car you put on a seatbelt. You think, ‘I’m a great driver.’ But you still put your seatbelt on, just in case, because you’re thinking, ‘Oh, there is a one in 1,000 chance that someone hits me.’ That’s one of the few places where we, as intelligent human beings, take precautions for the rare events that we think are never going to happen.” With this story, Alex’s audience is now primed to listen to his findings regarding the risk of rare events.

The Takeaway

Analytical leaders are trained in the science of data, analysis, and rational thought. But they aren’t always trained in the art of persuasion. To make your expertise accessible to other audiences, you must build a persuasive presentation by practicing the art of empathy, framing, and storytelling.

You can learn how to structure a persuasive story in this companion article. What story will you tell at your next persuasive presentation?