Here’s something that everyone loves and responds to:
Stories.
Everyone loves stories. They live vicariously through the characters in a story, they love to cheer for the heroes, and they especially love to hate the bad guys.
You can use stories to provide proof — even with claims that are not supported by math or science.
I’m not saying that it’s okay to mislead people. Lots of things are true that are not addressed by science. Science is good at “how,” but terrible at “why.”
Likewise, math is great for counting things, but offers nothing about the things in life that count.
Stories are simply more powerful than facts or statistics. Our brains light up when we are pulled into a good story.
If you look at any successful nonfiction book, you’ll see a story. Whether it’s Napoleon Hill’s mission assigned by Andrew Carnegie (likely untrue), or even Malcolm Gladwell’s theory that 10,000 hours of practice will lead to high achievement.
As a Thought Leader, you should have a set of stories about yourself, and about your subject, and about the mindset you want your followers to have.
Sometimes, those stories are told outright, and other times they are embedded and implied.
Either way, the choices of which story you tell and how you spin it are entirely in your control.
And since you get to control the story, you can use that story to control the person you tell it to.
Use this power wisely.
If you would like to seriously up your persuasion and propaganda game (we’re all playing it whether we want to or not), sign up for my daily Thought Leadership emails at You Can Be A Thought Leader.