“It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.” — Tony Robbins

Have you ever made so many decisions in a day that just one more decision, like what’s for dinner, breaks you?   Our decision making throughout the day adds up, leading to decision fatigue.  If you’re a leader, you probably especially feel the burden.

According to Wikipedia, decision fatigue can lead to a reduced ability to make trade-offs, decision paralysis, impulse purchasing, and impaired self-regulation.  I was reading Motley Fool Stock Advisor, by David and Tom Gardner, and they had this to say about decision fatigue: “It turns out that making decisions is actually very stressful.  As we make hundreds of decisions each day on matters big and small, the cumulative stress adds up.  It’s called decision fatigue, and it can often lead us to shut down and do nothing.”

We probably feel decision fatigue now more than ever with instant communication and information overload.  You know it’s bad when deciding whether to “like” something, hurts your brain.

Luckily, we can defeat or mitigate decision fatigue with proven practices.  We can learn from business executives, air force fighter pilots, fire-fighters, doctors, and intense knowledge work, like software development.

10 Ways to Reduce or Defeat Decision Fatigue

Here are 10 ways to reduce or defeat decision fatigue:

1. Use checklists for common routines.    This is a lesson we learn from pilots.  Having checklists as reminders can help you spend less mental energy on little things throughout your day.   Even if it’s something you know how to do, the checklist can help take some of the burden off.    I use checklists to help me remember key things during my projects.  I also write down procedures in the form of little steps.  This way, I can just follow the steps, and not have to think too hard.    See The Power of Checklists.
2. Set time limits.   Timebox or put a time budget on how long you have to make a decision.  If you find yourself getting stuck or mired in decisions, start setting time limits.  Give yourself five minutes to think it through and then decide.  If five minutes gives you too much time to wallow, then shorten it further.
3. Limit your choices.    Throw out bad choices quickly and narrow down to the ones you think are best bets.  The fast you narrow down your choices, the less time you need to spend shuffling over unnecessary information.
4. Satisfice to find a good enough fit for now.    This is a lesson we learn from fire fighters, police offices, and doctors who have to make many split-second decisions under the gun.  Rather than explore all possible options and get bogged down, they look for the first solution that fits the situation.  See Satisficing to Get Things Done.
5. Just decide.  Don’t dwell on it.  It’s easy to fall into the habit of over-thinking ti or over-engineering your decisions.   This is especially true if you have a need for accuracy or feel a need to do all your homework.    You can start to build momentum by making faster decisions, and acting on them.  You’ll find that many of your decisions may not be as important as you thought they were, or that you learn more from actually taking action and testing your decisions.  If you build a habit of responding to new information, then you can make decisions faster and more freely, while learning and adapting as you go.
6. Right-size your decision making effort.  Don’t spend $20 on a $5 problem.   If you keep this strategy in mind, then it will be a lot easier to speed up your decision making, or help you spend less energy on decisions that don’t matter as much.  Instead of making mountains out of molehills, learn to make molehills out of mountains.
7. Take a time out to recharge.   Your working memory burns out as you process information.   Take more breaks or take a time out.   You can quickly recharge, if you really give yourself a break.  It doesn’t need to be long.   Ten minute breaks can work wonders.  Sometimes, you just need to think about something else to do the trick.
8. Delegate more often and more frequently.  Push decisions out to the leaves.  If this were a tree, stop worrying about all the branches and leaves.  Start pushing decisions out to the leaves and branches where you can empower the people closest to the problems to do something about them.
9. Make it a group thing.   Pair up on decisions or share the decision-making process with a group.   This can help share the load, as well as add new perspective.
10. Let things solve themselves.  This is a lesson we learn from executives.  You don’t need to take on every decision.   Sometimes things really are better off left alone.  Be sure to ask, what’s the downside if you do nothing.  If you let it go, then really let it go.  If you can’t let it go, then admit it, then decide and move on.

If you can reduce your decision fatigue, then you can save more energy for more important decisions, and put your best thinking where it counts.   Find a few ways from above that you can use today, and put them into practice.  Test them out.  The beauty is you can get better at reducing your decision fatigue with practice over time.

You Might Also Like

• Avoid Mental Burnout
• How To Avoid Task Saturation
• Shutdown, Compartmentalize, or Channelize
• The Power of Checklists

“The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.” — Flora Whittemore

Groups don’t always make better decisions, and two-heads aren’t necessarily better than one.  Group decisions can be “herd mentality” in action.

The main issues with groups and “groupthink” are that groups can lead to polarization and more dogmatic positions. Groups can amplify or re-enforce beliefs, and peer pressure can override rational decision making.  The keys to rational decision making include probability and logic.

In the book, 59 Seconds: Think a Little, Change a Lot, Richard Wiseman shares research and findings that help us better understand the downside of group decision making.

Extremely Risky or Extremely Conservative Decisions

Groups make it easier to adopt extreme beliefs.  Wiseman writes:

“In short, being in a group exaggerates people’s opinions, causing them to make a more extreme decision than they would on their own.  Depending on the initial inclinations of individuals in the group, the final decision can be extremely risky or extremely conservative.”

Wiseman says the rational behind this phenomenon is that when you’re in a group, you find more people that share your extreme beliefs, so it’s easier to re-enforce or amplify your beliefs.

More Dogmatic Decisions

Groups make it easier to take on dogmatic positions and justify irrational actions.  Wiseman writes:

“Polarization is not the only phenomenon of ‘groupthink’ that can influence the hearts and minds of individuals when they get together.  Other studies have shown that compared to individuals, groups tend to be more dogmatic, better able to justify irrational actions, more likely to see their actions as highly moral, and more apt to form stereotypical views of outsiders.  In addition, when strong-willed people lead group discussions, they can pressure others into conforming, can encourage self-censorship, and can create an illusion of unanimity.”

If you know the issues that happen with groups, you can better defend yourself from falling into the trap of bad thinking, or making bad choices to go along with the herd.   Stand out from the crowd.

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Paul Enfield on how you have to take risks, to get the rewards. I’ve worked with Paul for many years at Microsoft, and he was one of my early mentors. I’ve learned a lot of life wisdom from him, and I thought this particular nugget was especially useful. It’s about taking a leap of faith.

The big idea is that for so many things in life, there is no way to be 100% certain before we act. We have to take risks. We can spend all our time trying to make things certain, know the unknowables, and wait for the perfect conditions, or we can dive in a little more.  We can do more big things and act on more windows of opportunity.  This is the heart of bold action.

Without further ado, here’s Paul on the leap of faith …

Some life decisions we face can seem colossal. Some seem so large that we can get stuck attempting to reach our decision and fail to ever act. I found myself in one of these situations when I came upon a revelation that empowered me make my decision.

Quite a while back, I was faced with a decision on whether or not to propose to my wife. While pondering the decision, I realized that no matter how much I thought about it, I would never be 100% sure that I was making the right choice. It was at that time that I also realized this correlated to a concept I had learned in college Statistics class called “degree of certainty.”

In a simplistic form, degree of certainty indicates how likely it is that the decision is the correct one. You can be fairly sure of your choice, and therefore have a high degree of certainty.

I also realized that different people will need to achieve different degrees of certainty before they will act upon their decisions. However, the commonality would always be that you can never achieve 100% certainty on your decision. Therefore we are always faced with a “gap” we must jump to reach 100% certainty. I chose to name this gap the “leap of faith.”

I was 90% sure I should make this decision to propose, but was forced to realize that I must make this leap of faith if I were ever to make my decision.

Being armed with this truth is empowering. Once you realize you must be willing to take a chance no matter what your decision, you can move forward and evaluate other factors.  Other factors might include what is the opportunity cost for not making the choice. IOTW, what will I lose if I fail to act?  Also, what is the benefit I can obtain by making the choice?

Empower yourself to make tough decisions. Recognize your personal needs to support your decision and when you reach your threshold, jump. Make your decision and take your leap of faith.

Photo by Hunterrrr.

“Never try to solve all the problems at once — make them line up for you one-by-one.” — Richard Sloma

How well can you solve your problems?  Solving problems is one of the most fundamental skills in life, and it’s something we get to practice every day.

I learned early on that wishing away problems didn’t work and that it was more effective to embrace challenges as a part of life, as a chance to grow and expand myself.  One of my favorite sayings is, “Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.”

Unfortunately, we don’t always get taught the best ways to solve our problems.  Some of the less effective ways include anger, blame, avoidance, curling up into a little ball, etc.  The good news is, you can improve your problem solving skills by using problem solving techniques.

One of the most effective problem solving techniques to add to your problem solving skills cache is the Osborne-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, or CPS for short.  It’s strength lies in casting a wide net over the problem, and testing multiple paths and possibilities before locking in on a particular solution.

In the book, Creatively Ever After: A Path to Innovation , Alicia Arnold writes about how you can use the Creative Problem Solving Process to tackle your challenges in work and in life.  It’s about getting science and structure on your side, while unleashing your creative powers to solve the tough stuff.

The Creative Problem Solving Process
According to Alicia, you can think of the Creative Problem Solving Process in six main steps:

• Step 1. Identify the Goal, Wish, or Challenge.
• Step 2. Gather Data.
• Step 3. Clarify the Problem.
• Step 4. Generate Ideas.
• Step 5. Develop Solutions.
• Step 6. Plan for Action.

While the process may look simple and obvious, the key is to compare it to your current approach:

• Do you know your goal?  (Can you state it in one line?)
• Have you gathered any data and sorted facts, opinions, and fiction?
• Do you have true clarity of the problem you are solving?  (Can you state the problem as a simple question, such as, “How to ….”?)
• Do you generate multiple ideas or just run with the first thing that pops in your head?  Do you look across the ways other people have solved this problem before, and find the patterns?
• Do sketch out solutions and possibilities and test for fit or do you dive into the details?
• Do you turn your ideas and solutions into actionable steps?  Do you break the steps down into mini-goals that you can test and get feedback?

While a lot of problems can be solved by jumping to conclusions and drawing from experience, many of the problems we face cannot.  Whether you’re solving a health problem or changing the game at work, a process like the Creative Problem Solving Process can help you tap into your creative potential.  Better yet, with a process like the Creative Problem Solving Process, you can harness and leverage the collective brain power of multiple people in a coordinated way.

My Related Posts

• Solving Problems with Skill
• 4 Types of Problems
• What’s the Challenge?

Photo by Alaskan Dude.

There is something amazingly powerful about taking decisive action.  It’s like flipping a switch and deciding it will be so.  It’s a completely different experience than waffling or wading through the jungle of indecision.

I was talking through the power of decisive action with one of my mentors, when they shared a quote with me.  The quote expresses the power of bold decisions in an articulate way.  It goes like this:

“Until one is committed, there is a hesitancy, the chance to draw back; always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man would have dreamed would come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.’”

The quote is from W.H. Murray, in The Scottish Himalayan Expedition, 1951.

What bold decision might invent new possibilities in your life?

Photo by Nina Matthews Photography.

“Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in.”– Napoleon Bonaparte

If you have five minutes to think about something, you actually have a lot.  You don’t have to spend a lot of time thinking to make a lot of progress.  You can spend five minutes on a problem and actually cover a lot of ground more effectively.  That is, if you have a framework.

At Microsoft, I end up with a lot of short blocks of time, whether it’s in between meetings or in between tasks.  It’s easy to fall in the trap of, “I don’t have enough time to think about that.”  Well, the reality is, it’s actually very effective to use short time blocks to both train your thinking while solving your problems, rather than let them pile up.

The key is to use Five-Minute Thinks.  Five-Minute thinks are an effective time-management technique for your mind.  A Five-Minute Think is simply a structured approach to thinking that focuses your thinking and helps you identify the goal, explore options, narrow down, and then conclude.  Using a Five-Minute Think helps you avoid locking onto one idea too quickly, falling into analysis-paralysis, and over-engineering.  By casting a wide net, exploring a topic, and then narrowing down potential paths, you can naturally use your thinking skills very effectively.  You can also “chip away at the stone” of larger problems with these little time blocks.

In the book De Bono’s Thinking Course, Revised Edition , Edward De Bono shares the idea and approach of Five-Minute Thinks.

The Five-Minute Think
The framework for the Five-Minute Think is simple.  According to De Bono, to do a Five-Minute Think:

1. One minute: Target and Task
2. Two minutes: Expand and Explore
3. Three minutes: Contract and Conclude

That’s it!

Don’t spend more than five minutes or you’re defeating the purpose.  What you might do is use another Five-Minute Think on another aspect of the problem, but don’t turn Five-Minute Thinks into 10, 20, or 30 minute thinks.  By limiting your time, you’re telling your mind to focus and fully engage for a short-burst.  You’ll improve with practice.

One Minute — Target and Task
The outcome of your one-minute should be the target and the goal defined precisely, such as “Identify ways to improve my blogging speed.”  In other words,  — what do you want to accomplish with your Five-Minute Think?

At this step, you define the target and the task precisely.  The target is your focus of the thinking.  The target can be as general or as tight as you want.  The task is setting the goal – it’s the thinking task you’ll do.  For example, you might set the goal of reviewing something to improve it.  You might set the goal of finding problems.  You might make the task a creative exercise, such as “How else could I …” or “How could xyz be made more useful?”

Two Minutes – Expand and Explore
I think of it as elaborating on the problem, making a mental map, and exploring options and ideas.

In this part of the phase, you open up.  Don’t be critical or judging.  Just start flowing what you know and any ideas that come to mind.   You can scan your experience, analyze the situation, or look for familiar patterns.

Keep it positive and free-flowing.  According to De Bono, you’re “opening up the field, filling in the map, exploring the territory.”

Three Minutes – Contract and Conclude
This is where you spiral down on the problem.   Try to make sense of what you’ve got and get to a definite conclusion.  According to De Bono, this might be a “solution, creative idea, additional alternative, or an opinion.”

The next time you have five minutes to think about something, test your ability to define, expand, explore, and contract on the problem.  Simply directing your thinking will improve it over time.

Photo by BTO Educational.

How to decide among a lot of options? … You can improve your decision making by adding criteria and weight.  This helps you prioritize effectively.  The key is making the criteria explicit.

This is effective for personal decision making, and it’s especially effective for group decision making.   It works well for personal decision making because it forces you to get clarity on your own criteria.  It works well for group decision making because you create a shared set of criteria.  When people know what’s valued, it’s easier to understand and weigh in on the decisions.

It’s also a good way to find out mismatches on expectations.  For example, if one person thinks the color of the room is the most important, but another thinks the size of the room is more important, you can have a conversation around the usage scenarios and trade-offs and share perspectives.  The other beauty of using criteria and weight is that it helps make the issue less subjective, so you can have a less defensive, and more objective evaluation of the options.

To make this easier to follow, I walk through an example to illustrate the approach.

Summary of Steps
If you need to make an important decision, the following steps can help:

• Step 1.   Identify the criteria
• Step 2.   Rate the criteria.
• Step 3.   Rate your options against the criteria and multiply by the weightings

Step 1. Identify the Criteria
In this step, identify the key factors that matter.  For example, when I was giving input on hiring our new leader, I identified the following criteria:

• Microsoft Experience
• patterns & practices Experience
• Attract the right talent
• Execution
• Customer-connection
• Engineering Competence
• Business Competence
• Political Competence

I knew ultimately it was not a linear decision, and that it’s about satisfying the various skills for the job (the business perspective, the technical perspective, the political perspective, the customer perspective … etc), but I thought that if I shared the frame for how I was thinking of the new leader, it might help make a better decision, avoid simple pitfalls and create a more objective frame for discussion, dialogue, or debate.
Step 2. Rate the Criteria
The next step is to identify the weighting of each criteria.  This is where you start to get clarity on what really matters.  I find that that sticking to a scale of 1-3 helps keep it simple.  In this case, 1 is less important and 3 is more important, since we will multiply by these numbers in the next step.

Step 3. Rate Your Options Against the Criteria and Multiply by the Weightings
In this step, you rate your options against the criteria, and then multiply by the weightings:

When you score against your criteria, you can have an objective discussion around the criteria.  This helps especially when everybody may be on different pages.  For example, in my experience, political competence varies by situation.
The 5 rating for political competence I gave across the board is actually interesting.  It’s far easier to get a 1 for political competence than anything past a 5  given the mix of “task-focus” and “people-focus” among our melting pot of disciplines, cultures, engineering focus, product mentality, and company maturity level.  Really, political competence is a matter of situation and networks — where some networks are better than others.  The good news is that most political competence challenges can be addressed with grooming and tuning (I see it every day.)  Other people certainly have different views and experience on political competence, so this was a good backdrop for the conversation.

Multiply by the Weightings
Here is the result of multiplying the candidate scores against the weightings.

For example, Candidate A is gets an 18 in Microsoft Experience (9 x 2, where 9 is the candidate’s score and 2 is the weighting of the criteria).  As you can see, the numbers helped highlight some key differences between the candidates.   It’s not so much that you can your decisions into numbers, since it’s rarely that black and white, instead, it’s really that you expose your thinking, get clarity on your values, and have more meaningful dialogues.

My Related Posts

• What is the Relevant Decision Making Criteria?
• Consult-and-Decide and Build-Consensus for Making Decisions
• 5 Elements of an Effective Decision Making Process
• 4 Decision Making Methods
• Boundary Conditions for Effective Decisions

Photo by purplbutrfly.

“Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.” – Tony Robbins

You can make more effective decisions when you know what the key elements are.  When you make important decisions, there are a few key factors to keep in mind.

For example, you should rationalize and understand the problem itself.  You need to know the problem you’re solving.  You should also set boundary conditions for the solution.  Success is often a spectrum so you should set boundaries so that you don’t limit yourself to something that’s impractical or something that’s impossible.

Your decisions should be action-oriented.  If you can’t act on your decisions, then it’s a waste of time.  You should also be able to respond to feedback once you implement your decision.  What looks good on paper or sounds good, may not work when you actually test it.

In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management (Collins Business Essentials) , Peter Drucker outlines 5 elements of an effective decision making process.

5 Elements of an Effective Decision Making Process
According to Drucker these are the 5 elements of an effective decision making process:

• Element 1. Problem rationalization.
• Element 2. Boundary conditions.
• Element 3. The right thing to do.
• Element 4. Action.
• Element 5. Feedback.

Here’s a quick explanation of the 5 elements of effective decision making:

• Element 1.  Problem rationalization.  The clear rationalization that the problem was generic and could only be solved through a decision that establishes a rule or a principle.  Know the problem your solving.  See Opinions Over Facts for Effective Decision Making,  4 Types of Problems, and What is Relevant Decision Making Criteria.
• Element 2. Boundary conditions.  The definition of the specifications that the answer to the problem has to satisfy, that is, of the “boundary conditions.”  Know your range of options that will still count as success.  See Boundary Conditions for Effective Decisions and
• Element 3. The Right Thing to Do.  Before you decide what’s feasible, first figure out what the right thing to do is.  See First Figure Out What the Right Thing to Do Is.
• Element 4. Action.  Turn decisions into action.  See Action Commitments.
• Eelement 5. Feedback.  Get feedback on what’s working and what’s not.  See Test Your Decisions Against Reality.

I found an interesting article about contextual decision making.  It’s “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making,” by David J. Snowden and Mary E.. Boone, an article in Harvard Business Review.  The idea is about tailoring your decision making approach based on the context.  You can use the Cynefin Framework to figure out which context you’re operating in, so you can choose the most effective response.  The five contexts are simple, complicated, complex, chaotic, and disorder.  The key is to determine whether to categorize, analyze, probe or act.

Context’s Characteristics
Based on Snowden and Boone, the following table summarizes the five context types in the Cynefin Framework:

Fact-based Management
According to Snowden and Boone, simple and complicated are part of the ordered world.  How to respond as a leader in simple and complicated scenarios:

• Simple - (The Domain of Best Practices) – Sense, categorize, respond; Ensure proper processes are in place; Delegate; Use best practices; Communicate in clear, direct ways; Understand that extensive interactive communication may not be necessary.
• Complicated - (The Domain of Experts)  – Sense, analyze, respond; Create panels of experts; Listen to conflicting advice.

Pattern-based Leadership
According to Snowden and Boone, complex and chaotic are part of the unordered world.  How to respond as a leader in complex and chaotic scenarios:

• Complex - (The Domain of Emergence) – Probe, sense, respond;  Create environments and experiments that allow patterns to emerge.  Increase levels of interaction and communication.  Use methods that can help generate ideas; Open up discussion: set barriers; stimulate attractors; encourage dissent and diversity; and manage starting conditions and monitor for emergence.
• Chaotic - (The Domain of Rapid Response) – Act, sense, respond;  Look for what works instead of seeking right answers; Take immediate action to reestablish order (command and control); Provide clear, direct communication.

My Related Posts

• Situational Leadership II
• 5 Practices and 10 Commitments for Leadership
• Management is Doing Things Right, Leadership is Doing the Right Things
• The Top 10 Leadership Lessons

If you need to be persuasive, you need to know this secret.  It’s how people who influence without authority improve their effectiveness.  The secret is … character trumps emotion trumps logic.  If you win the heart, the mind follows.  On the other hand, if you win the mind, the heart doesn’t always follow.  For an example of character, think about the impact of the right people in the room asking the right questions. 

When you know this secret, it all makes sense.  You didn’t need more data to make your point.  You needed a moving story.  When you walk into the room, it’s not what you say or how you say it … people will go with whatever Frodo says, so you better have him on your side.  In Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion , Jay Heinrichs writes about arguments by logos, ethos, and pathos. I’ve highlighted some relevant points from Thank You for Arguing.

Key Take Aways
Here’s my key take aways:

• Character trumps emotion trumps logic.  Don’t just go for the logical win, build rapport.  Remember the golden rule of “rapport before influence.”        
• Win the heart, the mind follows.   If their hearts not in it, that’s a problem.  Something is telling them that something is off.  You need to know the concerns.  It could be anything from fear to a lack of trust.   One thing that helps is simply to ask, “what’s the concern.”
• Read the situation.  This is crucial and there’s two parts.  First, know the culture and what’s valued.  You could be in a situation where logic is the highest value.  This is more common in engineering organizations.  You might be in a situation where emotions have a higher value.  Second, know who needs to be on board.  Social proof and character are powerful.
• Have the right people on your side.   if you win the pillars first, it’s a domino effect.
• Win the brain, gut and heart.  It’s the full-meal deal.  It’s hard for somebody to really follow when they aren’t fully bought in.  Their mind says one thing, but their heart says another.  They want to believe you but they have this funny feeling inside that says something’s off.  Congruence is a key to effectiveness.  A good test is how well they tell your story without you.
• Know the emotional triggers.   How does your audience feel about the topic?  Throwing data at them won’t help if you don’t leverage your empathic listening skills and feel their pain or feel their fears.  Build a bridge.
• Leverage metaphors.   The right picture can make all the difference.   Is it a bear of a problem or blue skies ahead? 
• Know their convincer strategy.  Do you know what your audience responds to?  Some people like facts and figures.  Some need to hear something multiple times.  Some people believe it when they see it.  The more you know their convincer strategy, the more effective you will be.

Logos, Ethos, Pathos
According to Heinrichs, Aristotle had a Big Three:

• Logos – argument by logic
• Ethos – argument by character
• Pathos – argument by emotion

Argument by Logic (Logos)
Logos is argument by logic.  Heinrichs writes:

Logos is argument by logic.  If arguments were children, logos would be the brainy one, the big sister who gets top grades in high school. It doesn’t just follow the logical rules; instead, its techniques use what the audience itself is thinking.

Argument by Character (Ethos)
Ethos is argument by character.  Heinrichs writes:

Ethos, or argument by character, employ’s the persuader’s personality, reputation, and ability to look trustworthy.  (While logos sweats over its GPA, ethos gets elected class president.)  In rhetoric, a sterling reputation is more than just good; it’s persuasive.  I taught my children that lying isn’t just wrong, it’s unpersuasive.  An audience is more likely to believe a trustworthy persuader, and to accept his argument.  “A person’s life persuades better than his word,” said one of Artistotle’s contemporaries.  This remains true today.  Rhetoric shows how to shine a flattering light on your life.

Argument by Emotion (Pathos)
Pathos is argument by emotion.  Heinrichs writes:

Then you have pathos, or argument by emotion, the sibling of the others disrespect, but who gets away with everything.  Logicians and language snobs hate pathos, but Aristotle himself – the man who invented logic – recognized its usefulness.  You can persuade someone logically, but as we saw in the last chapter, getting him out of his chair to act on it takes something more combustible.

Brain, Gut, and Heart
What’s your gut say?  What’s your heart say?  What’s your mind telling you?  Heinrichs writes:

Logos, ethos, and pathos appeal to the brain, gut, and heart of your audience.  While our brain tries to sort the facts, our gut tells us whether we can trust the other person, and our heart makes us want to do something about it.  They form the essence of effective persuasion.

Your Opponent’s Logic and Your Audience’s Emotion
You can play off logic, but remember to keep the emotional connection and trust.  Heinrichs writes:

Logos, pathos, and ethos usually work together to win an argument, debates with argumentative seven-year-olds excepted.  By using your opponent’s logic and your audience’s emotion, you can win over your audience with greater ease.  You make them happy to let you control the argument.

Questions for Comments

• What are the keys to character that makes somebody influential?
• How can you use your mind, body, and heart to make more effective decisions?

My Related Posts

• Framing Compelling Arguments
• 7 Meta-Programs for Understanding People
• Cooperative Controversy Over Competitive Controversy
• Refuse the Sucker’s Choice