On Rhetoric

I have long been interested in Rhetoric. 

Rhetoric is the art or skill of persuading people by the spoken word. The ancient Greeks studied this assiduously, as their version of democracy rested on persuading the people in the market square. Whoever could win the argument won the day! 

Ever since, orators have used and built on the discoveries they made, and the basic rhetorical toolkit remains as powerful today as it has ever been - when well used. 

As a trainer and presenter, I often structure key points carefully, using particular rhetorical structures quite deliberately. I also coach others to use them when working on their presentation skills.

Here are some of the main techniques. 

Antithesis: 

This is the presentation of ideas by way of a strong contrast. 

I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. 

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. 

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. 

Rhetorical questions: 

These are questions where the answer is implied by the question, or is assumed to be known (or knowable) by the listeners. 

What’s Montague? [...] What’s in a name? 

Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? If you prick us, do we not bleed, if you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? 

What have the Romans ever done for us? 

Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? 

Three part lists:

These may be single words, phrases or whole sentences. The pace and intonation of the delivery is particularly important to make these effective. 

Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.) 

Cry God for Harry, England and St George! 

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers... 

Liberté, fraternité, égalité. 

Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer 

I stand before you today as the representative of a family in grief, a nation in mourning, and a world in shock. 

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness 

Lies, damned lies and statistics 

Litotes (understatement) 

This can be used for a subtle emphasis with a slight comic effect and to evoke sympathy. 

And to do that would risk the financial collapse of the company, which would be slightly embarrassing. 

Hyperbole (overstatement) 

This is used to convey emphasis by exaggeration, and is best used very sparingly. 

I’d sooner die! 

--

For a good exploration of the first few of these, in the context of political rhetoric and stimulating 'spontaneous' applause, see Max Atkinson’s Lend Me Your Ears.

For a more comprehensive list of rhetorical devices, with examples, try here.

Blogging about failure

Something I've been thinking about recently - and a stimulating conversation with Andrew Derrington brought it back to mind today - is sharing reflections about failure.

I am a great believer that we can learn a lot from things going wrong. Many years ago, I used to convene meetings of AMED in the North East. Far and away the most successful meeting I can remember was one where we invited members to share their greatest training disasters.

To their credit, members rose to the challenge, and we heard some hilarious stories; and there was a high degree of resonance: in most cases, we agreed, we had all been there. And in discussing our disasters, and each others' perceptions of where things had gone wrong, we all learned a great deal.

So I would like to blog about failures I have had; but there are a few problems.

One is that I don't have that many. That's not a problem in other contexts, of course, but if I want to blog about failures, it would be useful to have a few to choose from.

The second, and related to the first, is that the one or two things that have gone wrong still hurt, even though they may be some time ago.  Moreover, and this is the point, they may still be sore for my client; and that brings me to the most difficult issue. These are not just my stories: others are involved, and almost inevitably, if I am to reflect honestly on them, that may involve criticism of them.

Of course, I can anonymise them, and change details, etc to protect people or organisations from being identified, but my fear then is that other clients may think I am writing about them, and viewing as a failure something they (and indeed I) don't see as one...

The other concern, of course, is that by writing publicly about my failures, I may put off current or prospective clients  or collaborators.  However, I think  any client who wants to work with someone who claims never to have got anything wrong is probably not a client I'd want to work with, so I think I can take that risk.

So... (deep breath) here goes. No1 in a (very) occasional series.

Some time ago, a former boss - let's call him Paul - in an organisation I'd worked in, and who knew I was interested in writing, took me out for lunch at a Greek restaurant.

To be honest, I  was flattered. I had only set up the business a short while previously, and was naturally keen for new business. So after a few retsinas, Paul broached the business part of the conversation. There was a need to train managers in the organisation to write more clearly and succinctly. So he had commissioned a specialist consultancy to develop an Authorship Skills programme. Now he needed someone to deliver the programme. Here he laid on the flattery a bit, saying that the specialists had developed a great programme, but he wasn't convinced their training skills were anything like as good as mine; though they were cheap.  So if I were prepared to match their price (which was lower than my day rate) the work was mine.

It was, he assured me, a way back in to working for the organisation, and in future, naturally, they would pay my usual rates, but on this occasion... And then there was the volume of work...

So I ended up running poorly-designed workshops for managers who didn't want to be there, and felt patronised to boot, for cut rates, in an area that was outside my core competence.  Unsurprisingly, I didn't enjoy these, I don't think they really addressed the issue, and I was never invited back to do any other work for that organisation.

But I learned a number of valuable lessons, early in my freelance career:

• Don't drink when negotiating a contract
• Don't drink with clients you don't really trust
• Don't listen to flattery
• Don't say yes immediately to things you are unsure of - take the time to reflect
• Don't cut price for the promise of future business
• Don't agree to run programmes designed by someone else sight unseen (though I have breached that since, which may be the subject of the next in this series)
• Don't work outside your core expertise without explicitly discussing that with your client
• Don't assume your client has undertaken good (or indeed any) diagnosis
• Don't agree to sheep-dip programmes where everyone is compelled to attend regardless of need

The last two points underpin most of the rest, in this instance: these workshops were always going to be tough, because the need they addressed was ill-defined, only perceived by some senior people, and not recognised by the victims of the process.



What brought all this back to my mind was hearing about Andrew Derrington's workshops, targetted at academics writing research proposals.  Here the need is specific, identified and acknowledged; and Andrew clearly has the expertise and experience to deliver them.

The contrast could scarcely be greater.

Progress on That Book

As you may recall, I have been working on a book about narrative for some time.  The label 'Book' in the sidebar will take you to previous references to it in this blog, and 'Narrative' will give some insight into the themes.  I am ashamed to see, looking in my diary, that I conducted the 40 or so interviews for it in 2010 -2011.

However, I have now practically finished the first draft, and will shortly be sending out relevant chapters to those interviewed, to check that I have not misunderstood or misrepresented anything.

Then there will be the editing - and I am still working on what kind of diagrams or illustrations may be useful.

However, it feels as though a milestone has been reached, so I am in celebratory mood, and feel re-energised to put more effort in to getting it to the next stage.

So tentatively, I am hoping to have something to show for it in 2014 - but don't hold your breath!

Leader? Me? You must be joking!

One of the most frequent requests I get for coaching is to work with people newly-promoted to a leadership role.

And once they are comfortable, with me and the process, they often express some reservation about their suitability or competence for the role.

If incredulity is your response to the idea of being a leader, it may be a very natural one.  It may also be mistaken.

Many people shy away from the notion of being a leader because they have in their minds someone who:

• Is very charismatic
• Is very authoritative (or even authoritarian)
• Can rouse people to action by fine or fiery words
• Knows all the answers

...and so on.

In fact, the notion of such hero-leaders is not upheld by the research, and is going out of fashion in organisations.  Instead, many are recognising that the true role of the workplace leader is to enable the people who actually do the work to deliver.

This helps us to recognise that other approaches to leadership may be equally - or even more - effective.

Some of the key requirements of leadership, then, are to ensure that the team is effective in planning, doing and reviewing the work.  That does not mean the leader has to do all of the planning, and still less all the doing.  But he or she has to make sure that those three things happen effectively and that the team has what it needs to do them.  Those needs may include clarity of purpose and direction, sufficient resources, whether of time, training, staff, or kit, good quality feedback on their performance  (including praise for work well done) and so on.

Again the leader may not provide all of those: he or she may simply prompt the team to sort some of them out for themselves; or remind others in the organisation of these needs and get them met that way (eg the need for positive feedback).

So the role of the leader may be most helpfully seen as providing the necessary support for the team to deliver.

Which is why I like the idea of an organisational hierarchy as an inverted pyramid, with those who deliver services at the top, and those who immediately support them next highest, with  the Chief Exec tasked with supporting the whole edifice!

I am also very interested in the role of emergent leaders.  I use this to describe those who, without a formal leadership role, step up and take a lead on a specific issue when the need arises.

It may be the team member who spots a problem, such as a safety hazard, and resolves it; or one who sees an opportunity, and grasps it.  I have seen numerous examples of both of these: and indeed one of my current projects is working with the head of a large organisation to develop the culture within which this will happen more frequently.

So another role of the leader, in my thinking, is to encourage, enable and support such acts of agency by individuals.

And finally, because I still hold to my heretical view that people are more important than organisations, I believe a leader should ensure that work is a positive experience for those he or she leads: not necessarily enjoyable all the time (though that would be good) but ultimately rewarding: allowing people to grow, to use their gifts and talents, and to accomplish something of worth and significance.