Post by Zoe Hayes

Now here's a DOOZY: Every person who decides to follow you, hire you, or back you makes their call the same way. NOT on logic alone. On a feeling they probably can't explain. Want to know what's really running the show? EMOTION. Yep team LinkedIn, I've got the neuroscience to back it. In Descartes' Error, Antonio Damasio documented patients with damage to the emotional centres of the brain. IQ untouched AND Logic untouched. They could lay out every option and weigh every pro and con without a flaw... And then they couldn't CHOOSE. Not the big calls, not even where to have lunch. Every fact laid out in front of them, BUT nothing to tip the scale towards a decision. Because the thing that tips the scale is feeling. Take it out and the whole apparatus just… stalls. That floored me when I first heard about it. We've been sold reason as the grown-up in the room and emotion as the messy one to manage. Turns out emotion is the one that actually moves us. Now for the extra good bit. What does this mean for YOU? Every "should I follow her, hire him, book this person, back this idea" call your audience makes runs through that same wiring. They gather the facts. The facts matter, truly. Then they FEEL their way to YES. So the instinct to keep it professional, strip the feeling out, lead with the credentials? Backwards. Lovingly, completely backwards. Last week a brilliant brand strategist fondly called me an emotional storyteller. Not because I'm soft (ok, sometimes). Because across 30+ brands and 15 industries I've watched emotion do the heavy lifting every single time, on winning attention and keeping it. So when senior people build the entire case on logic, the track record, the airtight rational argument for why they're the obvious choice, I get it. I really do. All true. All necessary. And on its own? It moves no one. The spreadsheet gets them to the brink. The FEELING is what carries them over. So don't strip the emotion out when you amplify your brand. In a world this noisy, it's the thing that cuts through. And it's the thing that helps the right person choose you. #BrandStrategy #IdentityBeforeVisibility #ExecutiveLeadership #FounderJourney #PersonalBranding [Image: Zoe definitely not in her PJs with her favourite morning motto mug.]