THE LOGIC OF EMOTION SCIENCE
Like many successful business leaders, you’re proud of your ability to analyze complex situations and make good decisions. It’s a skillset you’ve developed for decades — a lot of logical, left-brain stuff. So far, you’ve done it without emotion-science.
Logic plays a critical role in the advancement of humankind. We often grow personally, societally, and spiritually by overruling initial emotions that may be selfish or fear-based. Instead, we think through potential outcomes and may replace our initial inclinations with actions based on a higher good — for ourselves and others.
AI-ASSISTED LOGIC
We’re now in an age where the conscious process of evaluating outcomes is being accelerated by artificial intelligence. Advanced computers with human qualities are speeding up logical analysis and decision-making. Siri is just in her infancy.
If that’s the playing field on which humans must compete in the next hundred years, why would we want to study emotion-science? Isn’t that a misdirected diversion? Isn’t that going backward?
EMOTION-SCIENCE — THE OTHER 90%
Neuroscientists estimate that our conscious, logic-driven decision-making process accounts for only about 10% of decisions. For the other 90%, our unconscious emotions are driving our actions.
It’s the same for your employees and customers too.
Our emotional brain is at the core of everything we decide. It makes instant decisions on what it wants to see happen. Then our logical brain is expected to rationalize the details. Sometimes it overrules. Most of the time it doesn’t.
EMOTION-SCIENCE PROVIDES THE FULL PICTURE
Isn’t it critical to know the underlying feelings that drive 90% of decisions for your employees, customers, and potential customers? Before you can change their minds with logic, or appeal to their inner feelings with a more appropriate emotional pitch, don’t you need to know their starting points — their true feelings?
That’s why emotion-science is so important. Consider these examples:
- You’re trying to build loyalty among a segment of employees by offering bonus opportunities for exceptional performance, team-building exercises, and on-site perks. But there’s a mismatch because they really crave quality of life, vacation time away from the office, and a higher sense of purpose in their work.
- Your marketing efforts pitch potential new customers on the advanced functionality of your products, their time-saving features, and cost-competitiveness. This seems logical; but it misses the mark because they’re really seeking the emotional validation that comes from a perceived higher status.
- Your product team rolls out a new self-service forum for tech support questions and faster self-checkout for existing customers. But what if the thing customers crave most — that attracted them to your brand — is a feeling of belonging? They may prefer old-school, human-to-human contact if you want to keep them.
EMOTION-SCIENCE USES AI TOO
There are now many ways to gather emotional intelligence — all of them ethical, non-invasive, reliable, and affordable. An entire ‘Emotion AI’ industry is springing up to help researchers and business leaders better capture, interpret, and understand emotional indicators.
Emotion-science provides the starting point and emotional coordinates of the people you’re trying to influence. It tells you what motivates them, what they’re experiencing, and where their heads and hearts are at — right now.
By knowing this, you’re in a better position to make the correct logical arguments to reinforce employees’ and customers’ emotional preferences. You’re also better equipped to offer a different way of thinking, if needed, to support their higher good.
That’s what Brand Aura does. We provide the emotional coordinates for you to understand where your people are coming from. You can then apply the right logic to connect with them at a deeper level.
Imagine how reassuring that will feel.
Brand Aura is a marketing research, publishing, and strategy company that helps business leaders to improve employee retention, customer acquisition, and customer retention to achieve sustained growth. Our most recent research study, Employee Retention, Motivation & Culture: The Intelligence to Build and Lead an Emotionally Connected Team, is available at BrandAura.com. Brand Aura also offers custom research and strategy engagements to assist clients.