Abstract
Persuasion is undoubtedly a critical negotiation skill. But while the literature has examined its role in negotiation, few, if any, scholars or practitioners have offered a clear strategic framework for putting persuasion into negotiation practice. The ethos, pathos, and logos modes of persuasion elucidated by Aristotle in the fourth century B.C.E. provide a clear, understandable, and easy‐to‐apply framework that students and trainees can use to prepare for negotiation, to deploy during the negotiation process, and to conduct debriefings following a negotiation. In this article, I describe how to apply this Aristotelian framework and explain an additional dimension of persuasion in negotiation that I believe is also critical: timing. Through the real‐world example of Anwar Sadat and his trip to Jerusalem, I demonstrate how this framework has worked in practice.
Introduction
Persuading others to see things our way, to act as we would like them to act, is exceedingly challenging, but it can be a critical element of negotiation success. The following anecdote illustrates many of the inherent challenges.
John worked with his mentor, Judy, for many years. He had begun as her assistant, and the two had built a strong relationship. With Judy's guidance, he moved up the company ladder quickly and was well‐regarded by his colleagues.
On one particularly complicated project, however, John noticed that, while Judy often agreed with his logic, she rarely took his advice. This confused him because he knew that he was making a strong logical case. He also knew that he and Judy had a strong emotional connection. So, he wondered, what was the problem?
This scenario is not uncommon. Many of us work with, and for, people with whom we get along well, but those colleagues may not heed our advice or find us persuasive.
John reached out for guidance to a colleague who had observed Judy and him as they worked together on this particular project. The colleague had a theory. “Judy is a senior executive and you started as her assistant,” he explained. “Granted you've moved up the ladder quickly due to your abilities, but you lack credibility or authority in her mind. You don't have an advanced degree and your background isn't in this field. Unfortunately you aren't the right messenger for your great ideas.”
His colleague's remarks initially angered him, but eventually John realized the colleague was right: in Judy's eyes, John lacked credibility. So, he enlisted a higher‐ranked colleague to join the project and asked her to convey his key ideas to Judy. It worked immediately — Judy took the advice, changed direction, and the project proceeded, while avoiding many of the pitfalls John had foreseen.
Aristotle's Persuasion Framework Plus One
What does the story of John and Judy reveal about the nature of persuasion? Negotiation theorists, practitioners, and teachers all know that persuasion is a critical component of negotiation effectiveness. The negotiator, after all, seeks to persuade the other party to say “yes” to what she or he seeks to achieve.
When the negotiator lacks other forms of bargaining power or leverage, persuasion becomes even more essential. Former Senator George Mitchell, an accomplished negotiator and mediator, said of his efforts to help resolve the conflict in Northern Ireland, “I had no real power. All I had was the power of persuasion” (Sebenius and Curren 2003: 13). Mitchell presumably learned to hone his persuasion skills during his many years of legislative debate in the United States Senate. For the majority of students who are still learning to become negotiators, however, it is not enough to highlight the role of persuasion in negotiation — they seek a concrete approach for developing their powers of persuasion.
Over the last two years, I have developed and used a simple straightforward persuasion framework in my own negotiation practice and have also taught it to students and clients. This framework offers a simple process for negotiators who seek to improve their persuasion skills. It is also flexible: as a negotiator deploys this framework, he or she can listen for what works and what doesn't, and use that information to adjust his or her approach.
To develop this framework, I began by looking at Aristotle's advice on rhetoric from the fourth century B.C.E. Aristotle identified three components of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. As he explained in his treatise, Rhetorica, “Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself” (McKeon 2001: 1329). He further claimed, “The modes of persuasion are the only true constituents of the art: everything else is merely accessory” (McKeon 2001: 1325). Each of these components (or modes), according to Aristotle, connects with the rest to form the foundation of persuasion.
Aristotle mentioned a fourth relevant dimension (or characteristic) that can influence the success of one's efforts to persuade: timing. Thus, even if the three core aspects of the framework are in place, but they are deployed at the wrong time, the effort to persuade may fail.
To demonstrate how this framework works in practice, I will analyze the efforts of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat on his historic trip to Jerusalem in 1977. Sadat masterfully employed these persuasion components, leading to a major negotiation breakthrough with Israel.
Understanding Influence and Persuasion
A significant amount of research has been conducted — some specifically focused on negotiation — on the psychology underlying influence and persuasion. In his seminal works, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion (2006) and Influence: Science and Practice (2008), Robert Cialdini identified what he called the six principles of influence. These six principles, he wrote, are generally the most common factors underlying influence and can easily be deployed by a person to persuade others. They are the following:
reciprocity, when people act in expectation that their favors will be returned;
commitment and consistency, when people take actions consistent with their self‐image;
social proof, when people replicate the actions of others;
authority, when people acquiesce to authority even if the request is questionable;
liking, when people are persuaded by those whom they know and like; and
scarcity, when something becomes more desirable because it is in short supply (Cialdini 2006).
Prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky 1973), which concerns people's management of risk and uncertainty, has also added to our understanding of influence. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky found that people are generally more motivated to avoid losses (risk aversion) than to accrue gains (risk seeking).1 For negotiators, this is relevant to how options and offers are presented. Using this knowledge, negotiators are advised, for example, to frame proposals in ways that show the other party how their offer would avoid losses.
In The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (2008), Richard Shell and Mario Moussa recommended that people use relationship‐based, emotionally intelligent approaches to persuade others of the value of their ideas, to “win them over” rather than to “defeat” them. They offered as an example a story about Napoleon at the Siege of Toulon. To persuade his troops to man an artillery battery in a dangerous location, he placed a large sign next to the cannon that read “The battery of men without fear.” It spoke to his troops' sense of honor and bravery and was manned continuously after the sign went up.
Several laboratory research studies have analyzed how and why persuasion works in the context of negotiation and related fields.2 Cynthia King (2010) argued that negotiators should seek a deeper understanding of the other party and use “win‐rhetoric” — rhetoric that focuses on winning at any cost — to convince the other of the merits of their case. Christian Grobe (2010), in an international negotiation context, showed with numerous studies how words were used to change a negotiator's bargaining position with a significant impact on the outcome. Noam Karsh and Tal Ayal (2015) conducted a study in which they looked at the two key emotions of pride and joy in conjunction with persuasion. They found that when pride was involved, subjects were more persuaded than if joy was the emotion in question. Finally, Peter DeMarzo, Jeffrey Zweibel, and Dimitri Vayanos (2001) found that the longer someone is exposed to a particular opinion, the closer his or her own opinion will move toward that persistent opinion.3
Persuasion in Practice
These and other studies illuminate how persuasion works and suggest various critical elements of influence. They don't, however, provide a specific framework for how a negotiator should improve his or her persuasive abilities in practice, which is the goal of the ethos, pathos, and logos framework.
This framework offers a simple model that negotiators can use both in preparation for and during a negotiation. It can also help negotiators identify which aspects of persuasion they are, and are not, skilled at using. For example, many people are adept at managing those aspects of persuasion that Aristotle characterized as logos: they are comfortable with the substance of their arguments and adept at making their case logically to the other negotiator. Those same people, however, may struggle with the pathos aspects of persuasion, that is, making an emotional connection with the other negotiator. With this knowledge, negotiators can work to improve their performance in those areas of persuasion in which they are least skilled.
In addition, this framework provides an additional analytical tool for negotiators to use as they “debrief” what transpired in the negotiation. University students and corporate training clients alike have reported that the framework has helped them pinpoint where they “missed the mark” in their efforts to persuade their negotiation counterparts so that they can make adjustments to their negotiation techniques.
Component One: Ethos
We believe good men more fully and more readily than others: this is generally true whatever the question is, and absolutely true where exact certainty is impossible and opinions are divided … It is not true, as some writers assume in their treatise on rhetoric, that the personal goodness revealed by the speaker contributes nothing to his power of persuasions; on the contrary, his character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses.
—Aristotle (McKeon 2001: 1329)
By ethos, Aristotle meant credibility, authority, and legitimacy. In negotiation, credibility and authority can arise from many sources, including the negotiators' position in an organization, expertise, and professional and personal credentials and affiliations (e.g., degrees, membership in associations, etc.). In negotiation, it has been said, the messenger is sometimes as important as — or even more important than — the message. John's story is a clear example of the role of ethos.
Negotiators often fail to consider and effectively utilize their own sources of credibility and legitimacy, although they are often aware that they lack it. The negotiator who believes herself to lack credibility must determine where to find it or how to create it. Thus, the process of building ethos in a negotiation is twofold: the negotiator needs to recognize and exploit whatever credibility she does have and recognize and somehow address the credibility she lacks.
This process begins by considering the other negotiator: what sources of credibility and authority does the other negotiator value? Although the negotiator may perceive herself as credible, if her counterpart fails to share that view, practically speaking, she doesn't have the ethos that she needs.
When the negotiator considers her own credibility, she must also consider how to convey this to her counterpart. Should she speak directly and specifically of her credentials and expertise, to make sure the other party is aware of them? Or should she allude to her authority more subtly? The answer will depend on what she is able to determine about how the other party perceives her, and what markers of authority and credibility the other party values.
As I noted earlier, I have chosen to illustrate the ethos, logos, pathos, and timing framework for persuasion in negotiation using the story of Anwar Sadat's trip to Jerusalem in 1977. What does Sadat's example tell us specifically about ethos as a persuasion tool?
The purpose of Sadat's trip was to open a negotiation channel and forever change the relationship between Egypt and Israel, who were enemies. As president of Egypt, Sadat clearly had credibility and authority, at least in the conventional sense. As the leader of Israel's most powerful enemy, however, he lacked legitimacy in the eyes of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Being president was not enough.
But as president, Sadat had taken actions that likely increased his ethos with the Israelis. First, he sent signals that he was willing to break with long‐held Egyptian policies and approaches. He had instituted a multiparty system that suggested a willingness to approach situations differently. Second, he had spoken frequently, before and during his visit to Jerusalem, about what the Israelis had in common with Egypt, emphasizing that Judaism and Islam arose from common belief systems. While this was partly an effort at pathos, or creating an emotional connection, it was also about building credibility in the eyes of the Israelis. Exhibiting his knowledge of Judaism was another tactic Sadat used to show his legitimacy.
Although Begin certainly continued to view Sadat with skepticism, the Israelis had enough faith in his ability to make and follow through with a peace agreement — a belief enhanced by American guarantees — that they were willing to engage Sadat at the Camp David talks convened by U.S. President Jimmy Carter in 1978.
A negotiator has several options for enhancing his ethos. First, he can actually gain more knowledge and improve his skills in relevant areas — technical areas, for example — and convey that new knowledge to the other party.
But ethos may be as much about how one expresses his expertise as much as what he actually knows. So the negotiator who seeks to enhance his ethos should project confidence: by attending to tone, posture, and body language.4
Finally, as the story of John and Judy illustrates, sometimes the negotiator needs to involve a third party, someone who can vouch for one's ideas. The involvement of the United States, for example, made the Israelis more willing to listen to Sadat. This may be a short‐term solution, but it can give the negotiator more time to address any longer‐term credibility shortcomings he may have.
Component Two: Pathos
Secondly, persuasion may come through the power of the hearers, when the speech stirs their emotions. Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.
—Aristotle (McKeon 2001: 1330)
Pathos, which refers to the emotional connection between the negotiator and her counterpart, is the framework's second component. This may be the most important aspect of persuasion because when the heart pulls, the head tends to follow. Effective negotiators understand the importance of building an emotional bond with the other negotiator. Negotiation literature has explored extensively the use of emotion to both connect with and manipulate the other negotiator. To effectively use pathos as a tool for persuasion in negotiation, the negotiator, once again, should consider her counterpart: what will speak emotionally to the other party?
For Sadat, as the representative of Israel's archenemy, developing pathos was a challenge. The Israelis felt strong disdain toward Sadat and Egypt. How did he overcome that and connect with them?
Sadat thought at length about what would send the right signal to the Israelis that he was serious about peace. “No one could have ever conceived that the president of the biggest Arab state,” he said, “… should declare his readiness to go to the land of the adversary while we were still in a state of war” (Sadat 1977: 1). In the end, he took the only action that he believed would truly move the Israelis — making an unprecedented trip to Israel and addressing the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
Sadat appealed to the common humanity of Israelis and Egyptians. In his speech to the Knesset, he said, “If I said that I wanted to avert from all the Arab people the horrors of shocking and destructive wars I must sincerely declare before you that I have the same feelings and bear the same responsibility towards all and every man on Earth, and certainly towards the Israeli people. … For the sake of them all … I have taken my decision to come to you, despite all the hazards, to deliver my address” (Sadat 1977: 1).
In emotional language, Sadat acknowledged the poor relationship between the two countries, expressed his regret, and suggested hope for a better future: “… we welcome you among us with full security and safety. This in itself is a tremendous turning point, one of the landmarks of a decisive historical change. We used to reject you. We had our reasons and our fears, yes. Yet today I tell you, and I declare it to the whole world, that we accept to live with you in permanent peace based on justice” (Sadat 1977: 3).
These emotional pleas, I believe, were critical to Sadat's success in persuading Israel — breaking down barriers, challenging taboos, and acknowledging a difficult past history. They helped the parties come to grips with their past in order to create a different future.
Component Three: Logos
Thirdly, persuasion is effected by the speech itself when we have proved a truth or an apparent truth by means of the persuasive arguments suitable to the case in question.
—Aristotle (McKeon 2001: 1330)
The third component of Aristotle's persuasion formula is logos, or logic and reasoning. This is perhaps the element of persuasion that negotiators typically think about first as they prepare for negotiation. From the Greek philosophers to Descartes and beyond, logic has been an important foundation of discourse. Negotiation theory has also focused extensively on the role of logic in bargaining.
In their seminal work, Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving In, Roger Fisher and William Ury argued that successful negotiations will produce agreements that are both “wise” and “efficient” (1981: 4). To convince other parties to change their position, Fisher and Ury recommended that the negotiator “invite them to state their reasoning, suggest objective criteria you think apply, and refuse to budge except on this basis” (1981: 92).
Aristotle emphasized constructing a logical case, again, from the perspective of the other. Too often when we seek to persuade others logically we do so from our vantage point. This is natural, but often we thus fail to persuade the other negotiator as we intended. For logos to work best, we must construct a case that the other negotiator can easily see supports her own goals.
If a negotiator has ethos and pathos on her side, she will have made an excellent start. But without logos, her efforts to persuade are likely to fail. Because logic and directness play important roles in Israeli culture, using logos was especially critical for Sadat.
Sadat built a logical case for his initiative, which included identifying the poor alternatives that the parties would have confronted if they failed. “I wish to assure you,” he said, “that … I am availing myself of a number of facts that no one can deny.” Among these, he continued, “direct confrontation is the nearest and most successful method to reach a clear objective … the call for permanent and just peace based on respect for United Nations resolutions has now become the call of the entire world … [t]he Arab nation, in its drive for permanent peace based on justice, does not proceed from a position of weakness. On the contrary, it has the power and stability for a sincere will for peace” (Sadat 1977: 2).
“What is peace for Israel?” he continued. “It means that Israel lives in the region with her Arab neighbors in security and safety. Is that logical? I say yes … It means that Israel obtains all kinds of guarantees that will ensure these … factors” (Sadat 1977: 3).
Sadat ended the speech with a mixture of logos and pathos. He described the opportunity, the alternatives, and the failures of the past. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he stated, “peace is not a mere endorsement of written lines. Rather it is a rewriting of history. … Peace in its essence is a dire struggle against all and every ambition and whim. … For the sake of our peoples and for the sake of the civilization made by man, we have to defend man everywhere against rule by the force of arms so that we may endow the rule of humanity with all the power of the values and principles that further the sublime position of mankind” (Sadat 1977: 4).
Component Four: Timing
Observe due measure, for right timing is in all things the most important factor.
—Hesiod5
As I have put the Aristotelian framework into practice, and have witnessed students and trainees do so as well, I have found that an additional factor, timing, can have a significant impact on its effectiveness. Aristotle also recognized the role of timing.
These three kinds of rhetoric refer to three different kinds of time. The political orator is concerned with the future: it is about things to be done hereafter that he advises, for or against. The party in a case at law is concerned with the past; one man accuses the other, and the other defends himself, with reference to things already done. The ceremonial orator is, properly speaking, concerned with the present, since all men praise or blame in view of the state of things existing at the time, though they often find it useful also to recall the past and to make guesses at the future.
—Aristotle (McKeon 2001: 1335).
This is important because the negotiator needs to know where to focus the conversation — on the past, the present, or the future — and whether the time is right for the negotiation.
Determining when to negotiate requires logos, a careful consideration of whether the facts indicate that the time is right. But it can also involve a form of pathos — by paying attention to other's emotional states, the negotiator may glean that the moment is conducive to make his case. People who learn to read others' body language, facial expressions, and tone of voice can use that information to judge the readiness of the other party. Amy Cuddy has extensively studied nonverbal cues in the context of negotiation and leadership and how to influence others. She and colleagues found, for example, that nodding one's head to indicate affirmation leads people to find the head nodder more persuasive (Carney, Cuddy, and Yap 2010).
Sadat needed to consider the timing of his visit. He believed that the Yom Kippur War in 1973, in which Israel, Egypt, and Syria fought to an eventual stalemate, created an opportunity because after that the parties realized that neither could defeat the other militarily. He referred in his speech to “a wall of the fear of the force that could sweep the entire Arab nation. … Together we have to admit that wall fell and collapsed in 1973” (Sadat 1977: 5). But by 1977 enough time had passed, Sadat apparently perceived, for the combatants to begin to talk.
Using the Framework to Debrief a Negotiation
In The Art of Negotiation, Michael Wheeler (2013) has advised readers to make certain to conduct a “postmortem” or debriefing of their negotiation experience. I have found that the ethos, pathos, and logos framework also helps negotiators figure out what happened after the negotiation and how to improve their performance the next time.
Consider the following conversation I had with a trainee following one of my workshops. A woman approached me excitedly — she had figured out something that had been bothering her since she began her current job. She had arrived at her current employer, she explained, after having worked her way up the ladder in another organization. She was excited to join her new company, and hoped to generate new and creative ideas to take the great work they were doing and make it better. But she encountered a problem almost immediately: nobody listened to her. They were polite and paid lip service to what she called her “creative ramblings,” but when it came to actually implementing her suggestions, nothing happened. She asked why, but received no answers.
But Aristotle's persuasion framework clarified her situation for her. She realized that she lacked logos because, although she made recommendations based on things she had seen work in other settings, these suggestions had no resonance for her new colleagues — to them she seemed to be trying to fix a problem that did not exist.
Second, she realized she had ethos in the eyes of the people who hired her, but not with her peers. She needed to prove herself to them. Finally, her efforts had failed to elicit pathos because she had not told a compelling story. She had not realized that was necessary. The framework, she was convinced, had revealed to her why she had failed to persuade her colleagues and how she should begin to gain the influence she lacked.
Conclusion
There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able (1) to reason logically, (2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and (3) to understand the emotions — that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.
—Aristotle (McKeon 2001: 1330)
We often view persuasive abilities as innate, but like most aspects of negotiation people can become more persuasive if they understand what truly moves the other negotiator. Some are swayed by logic, others by appeals to emotion, and still others are quick to defer to those who seem to possess authority and expertise. By exploiting all three inclinations, the negotiator increases the likelihood that he can persuade his counterparts — but only if the time is right.
Sadat used all these elements during his speech in Jerusalem, evoking logic, emotion, and stature at just the right time. “I have chosen to come to you with an open heart and an open mind,” he proclaimed. “… I have chosen to present to you, in your own home, the realities, devoid of any scheme or whim. Not to maneuver, or win a round, but for us to win together, the most dangerous of rounds embattled in modern history, the battle of permanent peace based on justice” (Sadat 1977: 4). While few of us are leaders seeking to make a historic peace, we all possess the ability to analyze a negotiation situation from these four vantage points and use this knowledge to improve our abilities as persuasive negotiators.
Notes
For a discussion of the impact of body language and nonverbal signals on the ability to influence and persuade, please see Cuddy (2012).
Quote found at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/timing.html.