This is the fourth installment of a four-part series.
Logos (Reason)
If a message establishes credibility while it emotionally connects with an audience, then the argument itself should be able to stand on its own merit. The point here is that if you have attended to the other two issues properly, make sure you also have a well-thought-out, intelligently-crafted message.
Coaching Points:
- This arena deals with the logical strength of the case you are presenting. If you are making a presentation to a group, one way to strengthen your argument is to include voices of dissent, as well as how you overcome these objections.
- Another method for establishing certainty in an argument is to lean on the cutting-edge scholarship in a given field. Our field is change management and communication, so we need to stay up on the latest scholarly journal articles and books in these fields. Citing the world authority on ERP implementation, for example, will help solidify your argument.
- Get your facts straight and take your time to think them through. The last thing you want to do is be in a position where you have to make a case for something or an important decision with partial or wrong information. As they say in carpentry: “Measure twice, cut once.”
Aristotle may be notoriously complex, but remember that he simplified things for us. If you want to be more persuasive in speeches, messages, or any sort of communication, there are not an infinite number of things to think about. There are really only three aspects of being persuasive. The question you constantly need to be asking yourself is how to embody Ethos, Pathos, and Logos more fully.
Amid the current financial crisis, leadership teams and C-suite executives in organizations of all shapes and sizes are having discussions about ways to reduce uncertainty and boost employee morale. While leaders realize that communication is critical to transparency and credibility, executive teams are exploring additional ways to increase employee engagement during these turbulent economic times.
In doing so, researchers are finding that well-connected employees, those who have extensive social networks that bridge gaps between departments (or silos), are more likely to do better at work. As a result, social networking tools are becoming an integral component to enhancing employee engagement and elevating employee performance.
Consequently, maintaining consistent leadership communication paired with opportunities for employees to build social relationships with others at work will not only build employees’ level of trust, but will also give them a sense of community within the organization.
Prior to getting started, keep in mind that some social networking tools might fit better in your company than others. To that point, before implementing a social networking tool in your organization, consider the following critical next steps:
- Create a social networking advisory council of well-connected employees who can audit the organization and evaluate employee needs and wants.
- Identify social networking tools that work best inside your organization and fit into your company culture.
- Recognize potential obstacles in the implementation of these tools in your organization.
- Set realistic expectations around tasks and timelines for implementation.
For more information about social networking at the office, click here. Or, to read more about communication advice for leaders during the financial crisis, click here.
With new technologies and unparalleled global connectivity, survey data collection has become easier than ever. As a result, more and more companies are taking advantage of survey research and are looking to add new tools to their organizational assessment portfolios.
If your company is one of them, and it’s your job to provide support in this area, you probably know it’s not an easy task. There are literally hundreds of surveys out there—designed to measure satisfaction, engagement, alignment, culture, leadership—you name it! Many come with fancy labels and elaborate models to attract your attention. For many firms, survey research has become a commodity business of sorts, and the competition is fierce. Those who have been at it long enough can claim an additional advantage—they have done thousands of surveys and can provide benchmarks* to boot. So, how do you pick?
My answer usually is—you don’t—It’s not a fruit basket!
Unfortunately, many companies approach organizational assessment as if it were a menu of choices. And when they do, they often end up with… apples and oranges. It’s all fruit, but somehow it doesn’t go well together. Companies that approach assessment with this mindset frequently end up with an odd combination of research tools often from different vendors—tools that produce data, and often a lot of it, but paradoxically, generate little consistent or actionable understanding.
What’s worse, some of these tools, when used indiscriminately, can do serious damage—they may send wrong or conflicting messages about what the company values and considers important or what actions the company intends to undertake in the future; the questions or the survey format altogether may be poorly suited for the company culture, its employee population, or the current company situation. Finally, lack of a well-integrated assessment strategy and consistent follow-up, combined with survey fatigue, often erode employee morale and confidence in leadership. So, resist the temptation—don’t go fruit shopping!
Instead, the question you should be asking each time is—What do we need?
Invariably, the answers to this question reside in your current company situation, its immediate challenges, and future aspirations. You won’t get at these answers with standardized tools which by their very nature are designed to provide more generalized insights across different companies and industries, and tend to overlook your company’s specific challenges, potential strengths, and unique opportunities. What you should be looking for instead is a more customized approach which starts with an honest assessment of your short-term and long-term needs, and leads to a well-integrated research portfolio specifically designed to identify and target your company’s weaknesses and leverage its strengths for long-term organizational success. So, next time you wonder “which one do I pick,” think about the “fruit basket” and make sure you ask the right questions.
*Also, see CAUTION: Benchmarking Ahead written by Kellie Hamrick for an interesting take on benchmarking.
This is the third installment of a four-part series.
Pathos (Personal Connection)
Aristotle was highly-attuned to the fact that the persuasiveness of a message is thoroughly connected to the state of mind of the audience. He reminds us to take the emotional temperature of a given audience prior to communicating with them. He also encourages us to deconstruct the contents of whatever emotion we find. If an audience is angry, is it because they desire something, or are they experiencing pain in one way or another? Is there a way to address this pain or desire without inflaming it further? Attending to these emotional states is fundamental to communicating a message, not an ancillary afterthought. If the tone of our message can make headway toward soothing an angry audience—or at least not make things worse—then the odds of the message getting through are exponentially increased.
Coaching Points:
- You can take the emotional temperature of a given audience through a more or less formal interview process, depending on your time, resources, and interest. Sometimes, a handful of conversations might be enough to make a situation clear. If you discover a group is angry, don’t stop there. The more precisely that you pinpoint the exact reason for why an audience is hostile, the better you will be able to address it and ultimately communicate successfully with them. For example, I spoke with a number of people in an organization who were angry, because they felt that they were left out of the loop with regard to a major change taking place. In this case, the anger was misplaced. The higher-ups had no problem sharing information in real-time; they just didn’t think to do it. So we came in and said to everyone that a new communication process will be put in place to describe the changes, which put everyone in a great mood. Then we were able to communicate the message that we set out to communicate in the first place. Having changed the mood from hostile to pleasant, they were naturally much more receptive.
- Another lesson to learn from Aristotle’s idea of Pathos is the importance of emotionally connecting with your audience. One tip for giving criticism, and I need to give John Cook credit here, is to acknowledge that you have made a similar error in the past, or that you empathize with a person’s behavior in a given situation, but nonetheless need to give them negative feedback.
- If you are speaking with a group that you don’t know, it is important to find touchpoints where your concerns and goals match theirs. Establish early on and often that you are not so different from your audience. For example, take a minute in the hall to hear about someone’s family issues, or talk about the football game. Or, take a minute to illustrate that everyone—yourself included—is in the same boat if a major initiative fails, and that you all stand to gain if the initiative succeeds.
This is the second installment of a four-part series.
Ethos (Credibility)
What did Aristotle think about how to establish credibility? To him, credibility was the product of embodying three characteristics: 1) practical knowledge; 2) virtuous character; and 3) good will. It’s interesting to note that if you lack any one of these, either your know-how or your honesty can be challenged. What struck me about these three characteristics is that establishing credibility is not limited to expertise or knowledge of a particular subject. You can present yourself as incredibly knowledgeable, but if you don’t convey a virtuous character or good will, people might think that you know what you’re talking about, but for whatever reason aren’t telling them. Thus, being a good, honest, and dependable person—and conveying this fact—is as important to your credibility as knowing what you’re talking about.
Coaching Points:
- The overall practical point is not to forget that establishing your credibility is essential to communicating persuasively. You don’t want to be a braggart, but you can’t appear so deferential and humble that it takes a couple years for people to realize that you are smarter than you first appear. (A) One way to communicate credibility is never to talk down to an audience. Without inundating them with jargon or acronyms, speak to them as you would a colleague, except make sure to define terms, elaborate on concepts, etc. If you dumb it down too much, you risk your audience thinking that the whole thing is obvious, and that you haven’t clarified anything. (B) If you are giving a speech in front of an audience that doesn’t know who you are, make it a point to convey your experience and practical knowledge subtly through a story or aside at the beginning of the speech. For example, tell a personal story that both references your role in a high-profile engagement and makes headway in the overall presentation.
- One way to establish yourself as virtuous is to tactfully reference a charitable activity that you do: volunteer work, non-profit work, etc. In addition to the fact that these sorts of activities build your character as a virtuous one, your public participation in them sends the message that you are not simply a Gordon Gekko from Wall St. lacking scruples and a moral compass.
- One way to establish yourself as having a sense of good will is to offer free advice. Since so few people do it, it makes CRA stand out when one of our consultants explains to a client exactly what we would do in a given situation. It helps establish our brand as friendly, open, and willing to provide expertise even when we might not gain financially from it.
This is the first installment of a four-part series.
At CRA, we use Aristotle’s three methods of persuasion—Ethos, Pathos, and Logos (found in his Rhetoric)—as the foundation for creating quality messages. We gloss these terms as Believe, Do, and Know. In other words, a good message makes the audience believe we are credible. It establishes a personal connection, which helps to encourage that the message is acted upon. Finally, a good message helps the audience to know something new and important by presenting reasonable and intelligent arguments.
I thought it would be useful to return to the source to help fill out these concepts a bit more. One interesting point to begin with is that there are only three ways for a person to be persuasive according to Aristotle. These can be characterized broadly in terms of: 1) the character of the speaker; 2) the emotional state of the hearer; and 3) the argument itself.
Three posts, corresponding to Ethos, Pathos, and Logos respectively, will follow this introductory post over the next three weeks. Each will include practical coaching points designed to help translate Aristotle’s observations into the practical world of business.
