You may have seen the film Bruce Almighty, where Jim Carrey is given God’s powers. Imagine if you were given the power to persuade. The ability to influence people to do what you need to get done. Instead of having to put up with Carol in accounts saying ‘Look, I said I’d do it next week’, you could simply will her into sorting out whatever you’d asked her to help with today. Bliss.
Just imagine how much easier life would be, how much you’d get done, how much you’d achieve, how stress-free life would be.
Well, we don’t need God’s powers, we just need to understand a few rules and then do what Daniel Pink, the New York Times bestseller, suggests: Observe. Reflect. Adjust.
Before you read on, consider this: ‘Persuade me to take the stairs.’ What would you say? We’ll come back to this in a moment.
The rules were written by Aristotle many Greek moons ago. He said that there were three ways to ‘appeal’ to people, as he called it. Ethos, Pathos and Logos. No, not the three musketeers, though they do sound the same. Instead, these are three ways that you can persuade someone:
- Logos is logic. The very foundation of the Greek civilisation. Apply logic, and you will get your point across.
- Ethos is credibility. Building on logic, this is about citing an authority, like when the judicial system talks about Smith vs Jones 1867, or more simply, when we use a case study or have an award or a certificate.
- Pathos is emotion. Very powerful and used in a lot of marketing. I didn’t want to spend thousands on the Mac I am typing on, but when Apple marketed it as a cool lifestyle product 25 years ago, I was hooked.
These are the three great persuaders, and combined, they are even more powerful.
So, coming back to the stairs challenge, what would you now say? Hopefully, your answer has upgraded from something like ‘Take the stairs because it is good for you’, to including all three persuaders. Something like, ‘Taking the stairs keeps you active, as many doctors know, because they want to be around to see their grandchildren grow up too’.
Can you spot each of the three persuaders in that sentence?
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