Category: Who We're Reading
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.
One of the books making the rounds at CRA this month is Why? What happens when people give reasons … and why by Columbia’s Charles Tilly.
The book is about explanations and how we give them, and how reasons stem from and shape relationships. Malcolm Gladwell recently reviewed the book in the New Yorker; read it if you’d like the survey-class version of the book. In it, Gladwell reviews Tilly’s four general categories of reasons:
- Conventions: Conventionally accepted explanations
- Stories: A very specific account of cause and effect
- Codes: High-level conventions that can invoke procedures and rules
- Technical accounts: Stories informed by specialized knowledge and authority
What’s interesting is that we tend to use different reasons for, well, different reasons, and those reasons are relationally driven. Gladwell:
Reason-giving, Tilly says, reflects, establishes, repairs, and negotiates relationships. The husband who uses a story to explain his unhappiness to his wife—“Ever since I got my new job, I feel like I’ve just been so busy that I haven’t had time for us”—is attempting to salvage the relationship. But when he wants out of the marriage, he’ll say, “It’s not you—it’s me.” He switches to a convention. As his wife realizes, it’s not the content of what he has said that matters. It’s his shift from the kind of reason-giving that signals commitment to the kind that signals disengagement. Marriages thrive on stories. They die on conventions.
Consider the orgy of reason-giving that followed Vice-President Dick Cheney’s quail-hunting accident involving his friend Harry Whittington. Allies of the Vice-President insisted that the media were making way too much of it. “Accidents happen,” they said, relying on a convention. Cheney, in a subsequent interview, looked penitently into the camera and said, “The image of him falling is something I’ll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there’s Harry falling. And it was, I’d have to say, one of the worst days of my life.” Cheney told a story. Some of Cheney’s critics, meanwhile, focussed on whether he conformed to legal and ethical standards. Did he have a valid license? Was he too slow to notify the White House? They were interested in codes. Then came the response of hunting experts. They retold the narrative of Cheney’s accident, using their specialized knowledge of hunting procedure. The Cheney party had three guns, and on a quail shoot, some of them said, you should never have more than two. Why did Whittington retrieve the downed bird? A dog should have done that. Had Cheney’s shotgun been aimed more than thirty degrees from the ground, as it should have been? And what were they doing in the bush at five-thirty in the afternoon, when the light isn’t nearly good enough for safe hunting? The experts gave a technical account.
Here are four kinds of reasons, all relational in nature. If you like Cheney and are eager to relieve him of responsibility, you want the disengagement offered by a convention. For a beleaguered P.R. agent, the first line of defense in any burgeoning scandal is, inevitably, There is no story here. When, in Cheney’s case, this failed, the Vice-President had to convey his concern and regret while not admitting that he had done anything procedurally wrong. Only a story can accomplish that. Anything else—to shrug and say that accidents happen, for instance—would have been perceived as unpardonably callous. Cheney’s critics, for their part, wanted the finality and precision of a code: he acted improperly. And hunting experts wanted to display their authority and educate the public about how to hunt safely, so they retold the story of Cheney’s accident with the benefit of their specialized knowledge.
Academics tend to call reasons “account giving,” and there’s a wealth of literature on the topic. To plumb the depths see this Google Scholar search. One article I’ll be reading from that search: Account-Giving for a Corporate Transgression Influences Moral Judgment: When Those Who “Spin” Condone Harm-Doing.
The folks at CRA are heavy readers, and we’re often asked what we’re reading and what we’ve liked. I read 19 books in 2005, with a few others that I started but did not finish, and below are thumbnail reviews of those that qualify as business books. Note that I tend not to finish books I don’t enjoy, so most of these reviews are favorable.
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I was once taught that great leaders are optimistic, and they find the good in everyone and everything. Under unusual circumstances, I found the time to read over the past few days, and wanted to share the good I discovered …
It’s a book called Freakonomics by economist Steven Levitt and NY Times reporter Stephen Dubner. It’s an entertaining collection of questions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. In addition to giving you great material for cocktail parties, the authors ask unusual questions, such as “Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers? What’s more dangerous–a gun or a swimming pool? What do teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?
The authors describe a novel way of looking at things, making connections, asking questions, and measuring why people behave the way they do–all qualities of a great leader. It may not change the way you think everyday, but it will certainly make you consider connections you’ve never imagined.
My Partner Randall recently passed out Management of the Absurd by Richard Farson to the consultants in the firm. Farson is a former CEO, professor, and psychologist who studied with the famous Carl Rogers for many years. His thesis: Life is absurd, human affairs usually work not rationally but paradoxically, and we can never quite master our relationships with others. As a result, leaders should appreciate paradox and focus on how to best play their part in it.
On the whole, his is shaping up to be an argument for authenticity. Im just getting into the book, but one selling point is how Farson has structured the chapters as tenets of paradox. Examples of his chapter titles:
* The Opposite Of A Profound Truth Is Also True
* Once You Find A Management Technique That Works, Give It Up
* Planning Is An Ineffective Way To Bring About Change
* Big Changes Are Easier To Make Than Small Ones
* Morale Is Unrelated To Productivity
* Organizations That Need Help Most Will Benefit From It Least
And on they go. The foreword, by Michael Crichton, forecasts that Farsons thinking will prompt you to feel stimulated, intrigued, amused, and exasperated. Given how some of the paradoxes run up against conventional wisdom, for many who have been reading much of the pop leadership literature out there today, thats likely true.
That being said, a cursory review of the chapter titles also summarizes, sometimes nearly verbatim, much of the counsel we give clients, especially in our executive coaching practice. Examples (again, chapter titles from the book):
* Effective managers are not in control
* Technology creates the opposite of its intended purpose
* We think we invent technology, but technology also invents us
* The more we communicate, the less we communicate
* In communication, form is more important than content
* Listening is more difficult than talking
* Every act is a political act
* Every great strength is a great weakness
* Leaders cannot be trained, but they can be educated
And my personal favorite,
* There are no leaders, there is only leadership
I’d say we agree with all of these, and thats part of the reason Randall found the book so compelling. Im finding it compelling as well, and Im certain Ill have read it before returning home this Friday.
Weve listed the book in the Books In Our Bags section in the right-hand column, along with the other books the folks in our firm are reading at the moment. We dont list the dogs, so consider anything over there a recommendation.
Fast Company’s No Consultant Left Behind explains that “as a public service, the Consultant Debunking Unit (CDU) has applied standard reading-level assessment formulas* used by educators to some of the most popular management texts.”
Good to Great: 8th-grade reading level.
Who Moved My Cheese?: 7th-grade.
Trump: Think Like a Billionaire: 5th-grade.
This post: 10th-grade reading level.
Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point popularized economist Thomas Schelling’s work on social networks — with snappy terms like connectors, mavens, and salesmen.
His latest work, Blink, tackles the snap decisions we make every day. Fast Company’s The Accidental Guru shares an example:
The impetus for Blink started with Gladwell’s hair (as did his brief splash in the gossip pages when he got “a little too close to some candles” and it ignited during a recent literary event, according to the New York Post’s Page Six). For most of his adult life, he had worn it closely cropped, but several years ago decided to let it grow out into a woolly Afro. “The first thing that started happening was I started getting speeding tickets. . . . I wasn’t driving any faster than I was before, I was just getting pulled over way more.” Then there was the day Gladwell was walking around New York and cops surrounded him, mistaking him for a rape suspect. “I’m exactly the same person I was before,” recalls Gladwell, who’s half black (his mother, a therapist, is Jamaican). “But I just altered the way someone makes up very superficial, rapid judgments about me.” Rather than merely grouse — legitimately enough — about prejudice, Gladwell, who has the tendency to look in on his own life as a case study, was inspired to try to understand what happens beneath the surface of rapidly made decisions. “The idea that something that is extraordinarily harmful in society could be exactly the same in its form as something that’s incredibly useful is really interesting to me.”
I was asked by a colleague of a client today a Public Affairs professional whos ramping up his level of work and counsel what books I might suggest to someone looking to elevate their advisor game. Heres what I rattled off, some of which weve posted about in the past, and some of which is new. Its just my take, but I think each book helps an advisor to leaders better understand communication, organizational dynamics, and the profession of offering counsel. Heres the list:
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We constantly send books to clients, and a book weve been giving recently is Buck Up, Suck Up, and Come Back When You Foul Up by James Carville and Paul Begala (yes, that Carville and that Begala). Its slender, its paperback, its entertaining, and its a fast read (although you do have to look past some political posturing). And while it offers memorable reminders of many core communication tenets (e.g., be open with bad news, communicate in stories, etc.), more important is the books advice on managing political capitala topic from which we feel leaders in general and communication professionals in particular can benefit.
A favorite communication-related passage of mine:
The people youre trying to reach have been raised in the sound-bite culture. Theyre used to professional politicians, admakers and entertainers getting to the point in a matter of seconds. You need to do the same. You cant expect people who only listen to their president for a few seconds to listen to you for an hour and a half.
Get the book here at Amazon.
Love is the Killer App. I know the title sounds touchy-feely. But the fact is that youll probably enjoy the book.
Sanders, Chief Solutions Officer at Yahoo!, makes this argument: In the New Economy individuals will be rewarded primarily by the extent to which they add value to their professional counterparts, and the best way to do so is through offering intangible rather than tangible value. What counts as intangible value? Knowledge, contacts, and compassion. Sanders is a three-part method:
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