Be the Hope: How the Emotions We Choose Shape Our CX, EX, and Culture

This week, I watched an incredible interview between Pete Davidson and John Cena discussing the emotional toll of the 650+ Make-A-Wish events Cena has participated in. I highly recommend watching it; it is a very poignant piece. In a short clip (spoiler alert), he makes the stunning statement that his job is to “Be the Hope.”

This happened in the exact same week we saw Karl Stefanovic fully embrace the independent podcast life by interviewing highly controversial figures like Tommy Robinson. This tactic for viewers is becoming increasingly transparent: creating content deliberately at odds with general community standards just to farm a million comments and views from people who cannot help but share their counter-view. I call it grifter marketing.

As someone who runs a business called Storytellers Australia, where we actively focus on User Experience (UX), Customer Experience (CX), and Employee Experience (EX) using storytelling, I am endlessly fascinated by the emotions people and brands choose to represent themselves.

This choice transfers into all aspects of our lives and businesses. Do we choose a positive emotion like hope, love, gratitude or encouragement to build our Customer Experience? Or do we rely on a negative one like fear, worry, blame or outrage to drive a quick reaction? My perception is that the emotion you choose ultimately decides if you are a GOAT like John Cena, or a newly turned grifter like Karl Stefanovic.

But before we mandate “good vibes only,” I want to bring attention to two big caveats about the stories we tell:

1. You may not realise your framing is negative (The EX Impact) Our business, like the entire marketing industry, has had to make a massive pivot in the last year and that came with taking a financial hit. Through that process, I unknowingly turned my income worries into fear-based leadership. The story I was telling my team became: “You must do this, or we fail.” I didn’t even realise my unchecked worry had become a psychological hazard for our Employee Experience (EX) until the moment it dawned on me. The stories we tell internally shape our culture.

2. Negative emotions can be used for a net positive (The UX/CX Journey) Walt Disney is famous for including a little bit of fear in his feel-good movies to make the triumph sweeter. Martin Luther King Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, talked about creating tension as a necessary step toward substantive and positive peace. Some of my favorite films of the ’80s, like Labyrinth or Little Shop of Horrors, have a thrilling darkness to them. In UX and CX, intentionally acknowledging user pain points, frustrations, or fears is often the necessary tension required to guide them toward a joyful solution.

We don’t all need to be the golden beacon of hope that John Cena is – that is why he is the GOAT, but we can be much more deliberate about the stories we tell, the experiences we design, and the emotions we choose to put into the world.

At Storytellers Australia, we help brands build their CX, UX, and EX on a foundation of deliberate, impactful storytelling. What emotion is your brand leading with today?