If successful groups are status-generating machines, it follows that successful leaders are those that win status for its members. ‘They must not only be in-group prototypes; they must also be in-group champions’,

Emotional moments in story tend to happen when we identify with a character, and that character then experiences peak moments in their struggle against obstacles in pursuit of the goals of survival, connection and status. We emotionally connect to characters who feel in some way like people-like-us, understanding and responding to the world in the

If our audience believes they’re Harry Potter, then the persuader’s role is that of Dumbledore, who has arrived to help the underdog overcome their obstacle, and get what they need.

Writes the psychologist Professor Carol Tavris, ‘Without feeling attached to groups that give our lives meaning, identity and purpose, we would suffer the intolerable sensation that we were loose marbles floating in a random universe. We will do all it takes to preserve these attachments.’

Our brains are programmed to connect with other brains and turn reality into a shared narrative.

To achieve identification, we must understand our audience’s story-world – their heroes, villains, values, fears, hopes, obstacles and goals – and somehow reflect it back to them.

Listen to the stories of those you seek to persuade carefully and with an open mind. Use them to create stories they’ll identify with.

We use inferences about causality to tell sense-making stories about the world.

For the German poet Friedrich von Schlegel, they have ‘the greatest quantity of thought in the smallest space’; while for the literary scholar Dr Andrew Hui, they ‘have an atomic quality – compact yet explosive’. In these respects, they recall phrases such as ‘sour