How Even the Best Speakers Use Data Wrong

Professional SpeakingStorytellingCommunication Skills

Apr 16

Description: Discover why data alone fails to engage and inspire action, as evidenced by a poignant personal anecdote. Learn how storytelling captivates emotions, leading to meaningful action, backed by research insights. Explore the dynamic interplay between narrative and data for effective communication and driving change.

I get up on stage, look at the audience and take a long pause. Then I say,

“I need to apologize because I'm about to ruin your day. What I'm going to tell you now is going to make some of you sad, some of you angry, and at least one of you is going to want to jump on social media and start shouting about it. Now you've been warned, so here goes:

“Every year, thousands of people leave their jobs. Because they don't know what their rights are, they get taken advantage of by their employers, and that costs them money and causes them distress.”

I pause again and look around. No one is looking sad or angry. A whole bunch of blank faces stare back at me.

Just like I knew they would.

“Ok, that didn’t really work, so let me try something different.”

And this is what I tell them next:

It’s last year, and my wife, Patricia gets a better job. So she calls her company and gives her notice. And they say,

“Ok, sure, but please come in so we can talk about it in person” - she was working from home at the time.

So she goes in and, after three hours waiting, they finally get her into a meeting room, and then her two male bosses come in. The first guy is polite enough, but the second one starts having a real go at her. He starts saying things like,

“How dare you think another company is going to be better than us? After we treated you so well! We let you work from home during the lockdown. We didn't fire you when you told us you were pregnant. If this is how little you think of us, there's no point in you spending another minute here. Just get your stuff and leave.”

My wife is a lot calmer than I would have been in that situation and all she says is,

“Okay, just tell me if I need to sign something and I'll go.”

So she gets home, tells me what happened, and then she says,

“But I think they made a mistake in the paperwork because it says here that they're taking two weeks of my salary because I never gave them my notice!”

And she had. But she did it over the phone. So she doesn’t have anything in writing. And because she signed the papers they put in front of her, that’s it. She has no other recourse, and they get away with it.

I’ve shared this story with thousands of people since this happened last year, and the reaction I get is always the same:

Some people feel sad for my wife, some people feel very angry that this type of stuff still happens, and there's always one or two who ask me for the name of that company so they can go on social media and destroy their reputation.

Now, I don't know how you're feeling right now, but I'm willing to bet that you feel a lot more after you heard her story than you had felt when I shared that statistic earlier.

And if you think about it for a moment, that is crazy! You don't know my wife. You don't know that she's kind, she's lovely, she's definitely the better half of our relationship.

But why would you possibly care about something that happened to one person, once, more than something that happens to thousands of people every single year? That doesn't make sense, it’s not rational, it’s probably not a good thing… but you know what? It's human.

Now don't get me wrong, what happened to my wife was terrible - for her.

For me, it was actually fantastic, because now I have this great example of how human beings are not really moved by reason! And this should come as no surprise to anyone, because if you genuinely believe that you can change someone's mind or their behavior by reasoning with them, or even worse, by telling them what to do, well… I guess you don’t have any children 😅

If you want to engage, influence, and inspire anyone, reason is not enough. You also need emotion. In the words of the neurologist Donald Kahn,

“The difference between reason and emotion is that reason leads to conclusions, and emotion leads to action.”

And that is why you can't lead with data, and why storytelling is so important. Because stories make us care. They make us feel something, so we do something.

Now I'm not saying you don't need the facts and the figures. You do, those things are important too. But if you don't move people emotionally, they just won't do anything about it.

Stories beat data

"Rokia, a 7-year-old girl from Mali, Africa, is desperately poor and faces a threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your financial gift. With your support, and the support of other caring sponsors, Save the Children will work with Rokia's family and other members of the community to help feed her, provide her with education, as well as basic medical care and hygiene education."

In 2007, this (fictitious) Save the Children letter, which included a picture of Rokia, was given to Carnegie Mellon students as part on an experiment.

Some of the students were given a different letter, which also asked for money to fight hunger in Africa, but this letter didn’t mention Rokia and instead contained statistics about food shortages in Malawi, lack of rain in Zambia, and the dislocattion of millions in Angola.

After reading the Rokia story, students donated $2.38 on average.

After reading the data, students donated only $1.14 on average - a whopping 52% less.

Paul Slovic, one of the people running the experiment, explained that

“When it comes to eliciting compassion, the identified individual victim, with a face and a name, has no peer.”

In other words, we relate more to personal stories than to numbers - and this is even more true when the numbers are so large that they feel abstract to our daily lives.

What about stories plus data?

This is one of the most fascinating things to come out of that study:

To many, the obvious winning combination would be to lead with the stories and follow up with the data to add scale to the issue (“If you care about this one girl, surely you will care that there are thousands like her”) - but that doesn’t actually follow.

When presented with the Rokia story followed by the statistics, students donated an average of $1.43 - a 25% improvement on the data alone, but still far less than the results of the story on its own.

Paul Slovic speculates this is because of what he calls the “drop in the bucket” effect, where people realize their contribution won’t make a meaningful difference and they feel less engaged.

Similar experiments run after this one suggest a slightly difference explanation: we are more likely to take action when our “emotional brain” is engaged, but any mention of data engages our “analytical brain” which is harder to move to action.

So speakers should… only tell stories??

Well… no.

It’s important to be clear that the results above were done in a very specific context: with students, about charity, and with very low sums of money involved.

Would the exact same happen with professionals? In other contexts? With real money at stake?

I don’t believe so - and that’s what my experience as a speaker (and coaching speakers) confirms: you need the stories but you need the data also, if for no other reason than proving that your stories are not just anecdotal evidence of whatever you’re arguing for, but are actually a perfect example of your data.

That’s the way to use stories in any talk (or communication): real-life examples that prove your point.

The story is not the evidence, and no one story proves a point on its own. A story is simply one data point, which you share first to engage the audience, make the point clear and memorable, and make them care.

Once they care, you can back up the story with data. Because if they don’t care… it’s not the data that will win them over.

So if you’re serious about inspiring others, making a difference and creating real change in the world, don’t lead with the data - and start telling some stories too.