Imagine you’re in a meeting and you’re trying to persuade your colleagues why they should agree to your idea. You are giving them all kinds of arguments but they are not convinced…and it’s even harder because you’re doing it in English, which is not your native language. What can you do to be more convincing?
One thing you can do is look back in time and listen to Aristotle, who described his “3 rhetorical devices”: the 3 keys to persuading your audience. He may have written this 2400 years ago, but they are still relevant - and effective - today.
These 3 “devices” are logos, ethos and pathos.
What's the meaning of logos, ethos and pathos? I'll give you a quick overview here, and then go into more detail on each one with examples, in future blog posts. (You can also find videos with examples of logos, ethos and pathos on our Youtube channel.)
Let me tell you about Marion, one of my recent coaching clients. Marion organises events for high-level lawyers, and she felt that her audience didn’t want to listen to her ideas (even though she is very experienced in events-management) and she found it difficult to persuade her audience.
Logos: If you are like most of my French clients, you are great at delivering logos. Logos is the logical side of your arguments: the facts and the figures. For Marion, this came very easily. She had all the rational arguments to explain how the event budget didn’t cover a dinner at a fancy restaurant, with budget statements and graphs to back up her arguments.
Ethos: This is your credibility. The question is how do you make yourself look more credible? It’s partly by working on your own self-confidence, reminding yourself that you are an expert in your field and that the people you are speaking to don’t necessarily have the same knowledge as you.
You then need to make this clear in your speaking: You can’t spend 10 minutes at the beginning of every meeting reminding people of your qualifications, so having some key phrases up your sleeve, such as “in my experience, XXX is the best option” or “in the past, XXX was very successful” demonstrates your credibility throughout the conversation. With Marion, we worked on having her talk about previous successes events that were similar to the current context, to show her clients that she knows exactly what she is talking about.
Pathos: If you are someone who leans towards logic, this could be your missing link in convincing your audience. Pathos is emotion, making your audience feel something. I don’t mean make your audience cry (you can if you want to but it might not be appropriate in your business context!) Pathos can be as simple as understanding what your audience wants and giving them the vision of themselves in this amazing situation. For example, Marion knew that the lawyers she was working with wanted to host the best event with great food and drink, something that all the attendees would remember for a long time. We worked on getting her to give the audience an image of themselves in the sad situation where the attendees could only have cardboard sandwiches for lunch and then giving them the vision of what kind of event they would have if they got involved and followed her advice.
So to summarise, the 3 keys that you need to balance to be persuasive are:
Logos - logical arguments, facts and figures
Ethos - your own credibility, why you are the person your audience needs to listen to. This could include making sure your audience knows about your experience and qualifications, and bringing in examples from your previous experience.
Pathos: Emotion. This can range from connecting to your audience with humour, storytelling or giving your audience the vision of what could be.
For Marion, she was concentrating too much on logos and missing out ethos and pathos. How about you: which one do you think is missing in your arguments?
If you’d like to work on this in English, we run “Persuasive Communication” training or you can call us for one-on-one coaching.
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