Ethos, pathos, and logos. They're the three pillars of persuasive speech. Ethos is a person's character: Are you trustworthy? Pathos is the motivating factor: Are you connecting emotionally? Logos is reason: Are you providing the evidence?
But ethos, pathos, and logos are not just mere rhetorical devices. Logos is your expertise and competence, made of facts and logic. Pathos is the area of empathy, how you relate to others. Ethos is what you intend, your integrity. Taken in a professional sense, they go from mere instruments of persuasion to the ingredients of trust.
In the past few weeks, I've talked to company founders, engineers and scientists, data people, and people people. They've all expressed a different version of the same problem:
- How can I connect online? To collaborate with colleagues and the team, but also get along with family and friends.
- How do I communicate what's in my head online? To educate customers on what we actually do and inspire prospects.
In other words, how do bridge the gap between walk and talk?
The problem is slightly different for every company, organization, or individual.
- Some need more work on the walk part: Refine product potential, define and tighten service benefits.
- Some need more work on the talk part: Zero into the core value, identify and sharpen the triggers.
Walk is your vessel of value,
talk creates the trigger
to unlock and transfer it.
When there is enough (perceived) value in what you create—a respirator valve, a sculpture, even a newsletter—there's a transmission of emotion and an outcome of trust based on the evidence.
Why perceived? That's the trigger: the embodiment of the experience. A life-saving valve, a life-enhancing artifact, a life-illuminating piece of information.
Trust goes both ways. The engineer trusts in the usefulness of the valve based on specs and context of use. The artists trusts in the awe he's felt creating the work transmitting to those who admire it. The writer trusts that the focus and craft they've applied to the article, book, newsletter, will inspire and instigate the reader.
So the question then becomes:
How can we support
this transfer of value
with digital and technology?
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Note provided context to this.