3 October 2024
It’s about elevating a speaker’s character, credibility and empathy. It’s about making content engaging and memorable. It’s about doing this without direct feedback.
In meetings and conferences, as well as casual conversations, part of an audience is passive or indirect. They are in receive-only mode – if your are lucky. Often they are tuned-out or switched-off.
Indirect audiences include, of course, remote listeners to a webinar or podcast.
Here is a little story to illustrate this, followed by some Notes on Pathos
Yoda to Aristotle
“YES-S-S!!”, Thomas celebrated, punching the air as he left the meeting room.
The operations steering group (OSG) had signed off on Thomas presenting to the next board meeting. He’d prepared his OSG pitch using the ‘Pyramid Principle-’[1] (a consultant’s handbook) to organize his argumentation and win over critical representatives from Sales and Supply. The other OSG members (Development, Logistics, Procurement, Engineering, Legal and Finance) also signed off but they had not paid much attention, being preoccupied with their own contributions to the rest of the agenda.
OK, Thomas didn’t really fist-pump; and neither did he say “Yes-s-s!!” out loud. That would have been gauche. Inside his head, however, he was feeling pretty good…until:
“Got the minimum result, you did; but much to learn, have you, young Skywalker”
Thomas hadn’t noticed his thespian boss, Michael, following him out of the room.
He gave Michael his most acerbic ‘what-on-earth-do-you-mean-by-that’ look.
“Logos and Pathos”, said Michael, switching from Yoda to Aristotle
“I beg your pardon”
“My office, three o-clock tomorrow; OK for you?”
“Yea, I can do that. Do I need to prepare anything”
Answer, came there none as Michael strode off.
“Logical flow is important” Michael counselled Thomas at the three o’clock meeting, “but don’t put it above emotional connection. Pathos before Logos. When you got the OSG members to sign off, did they feel like a supporting team?”
Thomas had to admit, it had been flat. So Michael explained how he had failed to engage potential, future supporters. None of the OSG wanted to challenge Thomas’ dry logic so they’d let it go. Michael explained how that approach would crash and burn with the executive. Then he explained Pathos whilst Thomas asked questions and took notes. [See Notes on Pathos, below]
As Thomas left the boardroom three weeks later, he did allow himself a discrete fist pump and a suppressed “Yes-s-s!”. But this time it felt appropriate. And board members who noticed smiled approvingly.
They were supporters.
Notes on Pathos
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of effective and persuasive verbal communications. Its parts are:
Logos. Logic structure and the facts upon which it is based.
Kairos. Choice of time and place for a message to land well.
Ethos. Credibility of the speaker and the trust an audience is willing to invest.
Telos. Purpose for something to exist or the reason for an action.
Pathos. Empathy, sympathy and emotional appeal.
These notes are about using Pathos in verbal communications: private conversation, group discussion, formal meetings, conferences, seminars and podcasts, as well as in broadcast and social media.
It is especially about indirect audiences. These exist in nearly every rhetorical context and consist of all those who are not giving immediate feedback. They could also be called passive listeners and include, of course, remote audiences. For a podcast, they are the primary audience.
Components of Pathos in spoken communications include:
- Story
- Connection
- Voice
- Words
Story
Narrative structure
Stories are the natural way to engage an audience, stimulate their interest and keep them listening.
There are at least four parts to stories
Exposition: introduces the characters (not always human), the location and the mood. It is also likely to have a trigger for action, the reason why the existing state of things may not persist.
Rising action: introduces change and challenge, sometimes seen as setting out on a journey, real or virtual. Tension rises.
Climax or denouement: triumph or disaster, and the consequences
Resolution: the new state of being and how it is dealt with.
A story structure can be used for the whole of a presentation and for sub-stories and anecdotes. There are many types of narrative structure but they share these components and flow.
Time Shift
A story has a natural time-line but its telling does not have to stick to it. Flashbacks, flash-forwards, parallel narrative, nonlinear narrative and subplots make an audience sit up and listen more attentively.
Practise
If you have a good story, repeat and refine it. Never worry that some of your audience have heard it before; a good story gets better with telling. Keep practising and improving.
Connection
A presenter does not have to be a subject matter expert (SME). Unless narrowcasting to nerds, it is not necessary. (See Alliteration below). Specialism can even get in the way of objectivity and independence. But audiences are reassured if a speaker has some familiarity with the subject. It can come from the following:
Reading around the subject.
Experience in a field where related practices or technologies are used.
Familiarity with analogous systems in different fields
Knowledge of an area that is affected by the subject matter
A connection does not have to be deep or wide, and should not be overplayed. It is enough that the audience accepts the speaker’s interest in the topic.
A simple, well-told story can confirm a connection and validate the speaker’s opinions.
Voice
Not everyone is a natural actor but anyone can create powerful, attention-grabbing delivery by adjusting their Pace, Pitch, Rhythm and Volume, and by the use of Pauses.
Many presenters claim to hate listening to their own voice. They say they find it embarrassing. They try to suppress what makes their voice distinctive. They succeed only in being flat, monotonous and boring.
Listen to famous orators. The best brazenly exaggerate mannerisms and eccentricities! Common techniques include laying unusual stress on certain words or syllables; using extremes of loudness and softness; or extending selected vowels to an extraordinary length. Many, of course, play up a regional accent with great effect.
Instead of being embarrassed by the idiosyncrasies of your own voice, embrace the distinction and work with it!
Words
Words are powerful but few people think much about them. Techniques that use word choice and order to win over an audience are called rhetorical devices. There are many but, with apologies to all students of rhetoric, some are aggregated here.
Analogies
This group includes Simile, Metaphor, Comparison, Amplification, Imagery and Personification.
They create images that the audience is likely to be familiar with.
Examples:
“America has given its coloured people a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds’ “ [Martin Luther King]
“I want to wake up in a city / That doesn’t sleep.” [Kaner & Ebb]
Alliteration
When the initial sounds of words are repeated, it is called Alliteration. Sounds within words can also be repeated, with good effect. When these are vowel sounds, it is Assonance; and when they are consonants, Consonance.
Examples:
“Her hair was quite golden with grief” [Oscar Wilde]
“It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth / The minor fall, the major lift” [Leonard Cohen]
Exaggeration /Hyperbole
“…hyperbole is the best figure of speech ever! It allows writers to exaggerate and amplify writing for greater emphasis.” That description and example is from Grammarly.
Other examples:
“There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.” [Harper Lee]
“Eight days a week” [Lennon/McCartney]
Repetition
Repetition can take many different forms (with names like Asyndeton, Parataxis, Parallelism and Anaphora!) to create the most famous rhetoric.
Examples:
“We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills...” [Churchill]
“Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania. Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado. Let freedom ring from the curvacious slopes of California. But not only that, let freedom, ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi and every mountainside. When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every tenement and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old spiritual, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.” [Martin Luther King]
“With great power comes great responsibility” [Voltaire]
Sets of Three
The human brain responds especially strongly to three of something, perhaps because it’s the lowest number that can create a pattern; and it is also the number of things held easily in short term memory.
Contrast & Opposites
Just as in a picture, oratorical contrast (Chiasmus or Antithesis) gets an audience’s attention and cements images into memory.
Examples:
“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country” [Kennedy]
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” [Wilde]
“We’re not thinking machines that feel; we’re feeling machines that think” [Antonio Damasio]
Note relevance of Damasio’s quote to Pathos.
Questions
Questions force people’s brains into thinking mode, and even an indirect audience is engaged by a ‘rhetorical’ question.
Examples:
“What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?” [Frederick Douglass]
“How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?” [Bob Dylan]
“What’s love but a second-hand emotion?” [Graham Lyle]
Humour
Many of the above techniques create natural humour. Go with it. Do not, however, set out to be funny unless you are really good at it. (See Jokes below)
On that point here are some things to be wary of; and Jokes are in the list.
Sirens
Sirens (or daemons) are mythical creatures that draw sailors to their doom. They seduce ships’ crews onto dangerous, rocky shores, with their alluring voices.
Here are some things to avoid.
Excess: of anything, including any of the above, is tedious.
Jokes look awkward and staged if not delivered by a comedian.
Clichés reduce impact and make you sound lazy.
Acronyms appear contrived and artificial.
Fillers, such as ‘I think’ and ‘generally’ weaken whatever they refer to.
[1] The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking, by Barbara Minto