Ethos, pathos, logos…

Aristotle believed master connectors followed a simple recipe to persuade their audience. He believed ethos, pathos, and logos have power to persuade. Let’s unpack ’em a bit. Ethos translates to the English word ethic and is all about establishing your character has credibility. Nobody listens for long to someone whose ethic they question. You are credible when you’ve deeply answered the big questions in life and decided to live your life accordingly. Strong CORE. And, leader, you are most credible when you have committed to becoming a domain specific expert on mastering your craft, your OPUS. Are you credible?

Pathos translates to the English word passion. A credible ethos that attempts to persuade on data and analytics alone comes up wanting. All decisions are emotional. Your ethos, laced with real emotion, carries your message from heart to heart. Master connectors speak from the heart. Of course, this requires they trust their heart. The stronger the self authored, authentic CORE, the more believable the delivery. Are you continuing to do the work within? Are you comfortable sharing your full heart?

Logos comes last, logically. Yes, logos translates literally to logic. Your argument needs to follow a flow. If you want to persuade, you must master being ccd (clear, concise, and direct) when it comes to your logos. Many an argument is lost because the logic was simply too lengthy and lost ’em somewhere before the punch line. Swing and a miss. Remember, you need a lawyers argument without a litigators longevity. Clear, concise, and direct is the one you want. Ethos, pathos, logos are Aristotle’s recipe for persuading your audience. You most likely have invested too much time on logos – too little on ethos. A little more time on number one, please. A little more time on One.

Live hard. Love harder…