What is Ethos andWhy is it Critical for Speakers?Is your audience listening even before you speak your first words?

Do they have high expectations?

Are they prepared to be convinced by what you have to say?

If not, you are suffering from poor ethos.

The first article in the Ethos, Pathos, and Logos series introduced these core concepts for

speakers.

In this article, we define ethos, we look at ways that an audience measures your ethos,

and we examine why it is so critical for a successful speech.

What is Ethos?Ethos was originally defined by Aristotle in On Rhetoric as being trustworthy. He stated

that we are more likely to believe people who have good character.

Aristotle later broadened this definition of ethos to add that we are more likely to be

persuaded by someone who is similar to us, whether by their intrinsic characteristics

(e.g. physical age) or the qualities they adapt (e.g. youthful language).

Aristotle does not include the concept of either a speaker’s authority (e.g. a

government leader) or reputation (e.g. an industry expert) in his definition of ethos, but

this reflects the rather narrow role for public speaking in his world. In our world, where

speaking takes so many forms and where we often know a great deal about the speaker,

we will include both of these elements in our definition of ethos. So, then, we

will measure the ethos of a speaker by four related characteristics:

1. Trustworthiness (as perceived by the audience)

2. Similarity (to the audience)

3. Authority (relative to the audience)

4. Reputation or Expertise (relative to the topic)

We will explore each of these characteristics below.

1. Ethos = Trustworthiness

An audience is more likely to be persuaded by someone who they trust, and this is

largely independent of the topic being presented. If the audience trusts you, then they

expect that what you are telling them is true.

“If the audience trusts you, then they expect that what you are telling them is

true.”

Your trustworthiness is enhanced if the audience believes you have a strong moral

character, as measured by concepts like:

Honest,

Ethical or moral,

Generous, or

Benevolent

Additionally, your audience tends to trust you if you are a member of a group with which

these qualities are often associated (e.g. a pastor; a firefighter).

2. Ethos = Similarity to the Audience

Your audience is more receptive to being persuaded by someone with whom they can

identify. Like trustworthiness, this aspect of ethos is largely independent of the topic.

If you share characteristics with your audience, great!

If you don’t, you can adapt your language, your mannerisms, your dress, your visuals,

and your overall style to match your audience. Consider this the chameleon effect. Keep

in mind that there are limitations to how much you can adapt your speech and delivery.

Beyond this limit, your audience will see you as lacking authenticity and that’s bad.

“If you are similar to your audience, then your audience will be more receptive

to your ideas in the same way that you are more likely to open a door at night

if you recognize the voice of the person on the other side.”

There are many characteristics which you might share with your audience:

Age, Gender, Race, Culture

Example: A youthful audience identifies with a youthful speaker, just as a mature

audience will identify more with a mature speaker.

Socio-economic status

Rich? Poor? Educated? Middle-class? Urban? Rural?

Citizenship

Where you are from, whether in a global sense (what country are you from?), or in a

local sense (are you urban, or rural?)

Career or Affiliation

Do you share a profession with your audience?

Are you a member of the same organization as your audience?

Personality

Analytical? Emotional? Reserved? Outgoing?

If you are similar to your audience, then your audience will be more receptive to your

ideas in the same way that you are more likely to open a door at night if you recognize

the voice of the person on the other side.

3. Ethos = Authority

The greater a person’s authority, whether formal (e.g. an elected official) or moral (e.g.

the Dalai Lama), the more likely an audience is inclined to listen and be persuaded.

Authority comes from the relationship between the speaker and the audience and is, in

most cases, fairly easy to recognize. Several types of authority include:

Organizational authority

e.g. CEO, manager, supervisor

Political authority

e.g. president, political leader

Religious authority

e.g. priest, pastor, nun

Educational authority

e.g. principal, teacher, professor

Elder authority

e.g. anyone who is older than us

In addition to these, every speaker has authority just from being the speaker. When

you speak, you are the one at the front of the room, often on an elevated platform,

sometimes with a microphone or spotlight. You control the moment and thus, have

temporary authority.

4. Ethos = Reputation (or Expertise)Expertise is what you know about your topic.

Reputation is what your audience knows about what you know about your topic.

Your ethos is influenced by your reputation. Of the four characteristics of ethos,

reputation is the one most connected to the topic of your presentation.

“Expertise is what you knowabout your topic.

Reputation is what your audience knows about what you know about your

topic.”

Your reputation is determined by several related factors:

Your experience in the field

How many years have you worked with or studied this topic?

Your proximity to the topic or concept

Are you the one who invented the concept? Were you involved at all? Or are you

more of a third-party?

Your production in the field

Books or academic papers written. Blogs authored. Commercial products developed.

Your demonstrated skill

If you are talking about money management, are you a successful money manager?

Your achievements, or recognition from others in the field

Awards won. Testimonials earned. Records achieved. Milestones reached.

How do these characteristics combine?

Ethos cannot be assessed with a checkbox (“yes, you have ethos” or “no, you don’t.”)

like you can with, say, pregnancy. It’s more like beauty in the sense that there’s a whole

range of beauty and many ways to obtain it. (And, it’s in the eye of the beholder… your

audience!)

This is easy to see if you examine how the four characteristics of ethos combine in

various ways. Consider the following examples:

A CEO speaking to her employees

As the CEO, she has organizational authority, and this is usually accompanied by

a reputation built on years of success within the company. However, she may not be

very similar to most of the employees (older than most; richer than most; perhaps

more reserved and analytical). Nonetheless, her trustworthiness is solid based on

past history of honest communication with employees.

The U.S. President giving the State of the Union address

The President has more authority than most people on the planet based on his job

title.  His reputation and trustworthiness probably depend a fair bit on your political

beliefs. As for similarity to his audience, it’s a mixed bag — He’s American, and he’s

not too old nor too young. But, he’s a politician and in a socio-economic class which

puts him apart from most citizens.

A Teacher speaking to his students

He probably has a record of trustworthiness, as long as he truthfully announces

when assignments are due and exams are scheduled.  He hasauthority over the 16-

year-olds, both by way of position and by age. He has taught in the school for 10

years (expertise), including many of his students’ older siblings (reputation).

Unfortunately, he’s not really similarto his students in terms of age, wealth, career,

or choice of music.

All of them have significant ethos as they score high on several measures. In

particular, authority and reputation often are closely related. (The things you did to earn

the reputation often earn authority as well.)

On the other hand, none have perfect ethos. Indeed, this is very hard to obtain as some

measures conflict. For example, your authority relative to your audience often weakens

your similarity with them.

Why is Ethos Critical for Speakers?“If you have high ethos, your audience is listening and attentive from your first

word.”

If you have high ethos, your audience is listening and attentive from your first word.

They expect that you have something valuable to say, and they are eager to hear it.

They are likely to be persuaded by you, provided that your speech is compelling. A bad

speech will still sink you, but you’ll have more leeway.

If you have low ethos, your audience may not be listening or paying attention. (In fact,

they may not even show up! Poor ethos doesn’t attract a crowd.) Expectations are low,

and a poor opening will kill you. Your audience can be persuaded, but your speech needs

to be much better to do it.

Unlike pathos and logos (about which we will learn in future articles), your ethos as a

speaker is primarily established before you speak your first words. For example, either

you have expertise about your topic, or you don’t. Either you are the CEO of the

company, or you aren’t.

Having said that, there are many ways to establish ethos and to boost your ethos

throughout your speech. We examine this in the next article of the series: 15 Tactics to

Establish Ethos: Examples for Persuasive Speaking.

Caution: Ethos is not an exact measureConsider the difference between your weight and your overall health.

Weight is precise. Yesterday, you weighted 121 pounds. Today, you weigh 120.5

pounds. If you burn 3500 calories through exercise, you’ll drop one pound in weight.

Last week, you weighed three pounds less than your sister.

Health, on the other hand, is not precise. Your health cannot be described by a

single number. Still, you can make some assertions. You can be pretty sure that one

person is healthier than another. Further, you can be confident thatcertain actions

will improve your health (e.g. exercising more; eating spinach) and other

actions will damage your health (e.g. smoking;  eating cake).

Ethos is not like weight. You can’t say “Oh, my ethos score with this audience is 165

today. Yippee!” (Well, you can say it, but it would be meaningless.)

Instead, ethos is like your physical health. You probably have less ethos than Steve Jobs

at a technology convention. Having come to this epiphany, you should also realize that

there are certain actions which improve your ethos, and certain actions that damage

your ethos. Examples of these actions will be the focus of the remainder of this article.

“You probably have less ethos than Steve Jobs at a technology convention.”

How to Improve Ethos – Long Before Your SpeechEthos is about your audience’s perception of you, and this perception can be formed over

many months or years, or perhaps over many past speeches. So, we’ll first examine

things you can do in the long run to improve your ethos.

#1: Be a Good Person (Trustworthiness)

Let’s start with an easy one. Be a good person, do good things, and think good thoughts.

There are far more important reasons to follow this mantra than to gain speaking ethos.

Nonetheless, your ethos will grow. The positive effect you have on those around you will

spread, and will become known to your audience.

Example: How much ethos does Tiger Woods have (in the wake of the fidelity scandal) in

terms of trustworthiness?

#2: Develop Deep Expertise in Topics You Speak About (Reputation)“Your expertise will often differentiate you from competing speakers.”

People are busy. (There’s a news flash!) There are many things competing for their

attention, and there are often many other speakers competing for their attention. Why

will they choose to listen to you speak? Your expertise will often differentiate you from

competing speakers.

Example: Suppose an audience has two options for concurrent sessions at a conference:

1. Speaker A has very interesting ideas, but only 2 years of work in a related field.

2. Speaker B has written two best-selling books in the field, and is a sought after

consultant with 15 years of experience.

Who is the audience going to choose?

There’s a corollary for this rule too. Stick to speaking about topics for which you have

deep expertise.

#3: Market Yourself (Reputation)Developing the expertise doesn’t earn you any ethos if you don’t market yourself and let

the world know about it. You’ve got to take charge of your personal brandand make sure

that it’s a brand that emphasizes the qualities you want to emphasize.

#4: Analyze Your Audience (Similarity)

Thorough audience analysis is critical for improving your ethos. (It’s critical for improving

your pathos and logos too… but that’s a topic for another article. Stay tuned.)

Audience analysis will reveal valuable clues that you can use to adapt yourself to your

audience. Seek to find common traits that you share and highlight them. For other traits,

find ways to adapt your language, your mannerisms, your dress, your PowerPoint visuals,

or your stories to match the audience.

Example: You’ve been invited to speak to a company that is new to you. You don’t know

whether their corporate atmosphere is formal or relaxed. Through audience analysis, you

discover that nobody in the company wears a suit to work. So, you choose a less formal

outfit to adapt to your audience.

How to Improve Ethos — Before Your Speech

“Showing up early demonstrates your dedication to serve the audience.”

The day of your presentation is too late to develop deep expertise about your topic.

However, there’s much you can do before you say your first words:

#5: Show up Early to Welcome the Audience (Trustworthiness)Showing up with minutes to spare gives the impression that you almost had somewhere

more important to be. Showing up early demonstrates your dedication to serve the

audience. This, in turn, builds trust.

#6: Share Event Experience with Audience (Similarity)If your presentation is part of a larger event, try to attend as much of it as you can. Every

minute you spend with your audience as an audience member builds your level of

affiliation with them. The event becomes a shared experience. The audience sees you

as one of them.

#7: Highlight Ethos in Marketing Materials (All)Depending on the event, you may have an opportunity to provide an author’s bio to

complement your speech title. Seize this opportunity. Make it clear to your potential

audience why they should spend their time (and their money) to listen toyou. This is

particularly critical if you are at an event with concurrent sessions. Don’t assume that

people make their decisions on topic alone.

Example: Suppose you will be speaking at the Arizona Teachers Association Annual

Conference. Positive testimonials from past presentations to teacher associations would

be effective to establish your reputation.

#8: Highlight Ethos in Introduction (All)Your introduction is probably the single best opportunity for you to establish your ethos

with this audience on this day. For this reason, you should always write your own

introduction. Don’t let an event organizer wing it. Highlight the essential facts that

establish your trustworthiness, similarity, authority, and reputation. As in the example

above, pick the material specific to this audience and topic.

Beware that you don’t overdo it. Long introductions are boring. Long introductions filled

with every accomplishment you’ve had since age 21 are boring and pompous.

“You should always write your own introduction. Don’t let an event organizer

wing it.”

Example: Suppose you are delivering user training for employees to introduce the new

corporate financial system. Key items to highlight in your brief introduction might be:

1. You were the project manager for implementing the new system (Reputation)

2. You have implemented similar systems twice before in your career (Reputation)

Note: Much more on effective evaluations can be found in the article:  How to Introduce a

Speaker: 16 Essential Tips for Success.

How to Improve Ethos — During Your SpeechIf you’ve done well so far, your audience is listening from your first word. Don’t get

complacent. Continue building your ethos through your presentation:

#9: Tell stories or anecdotes which show you are consistent with your message (Trustworthiness)

Don’t be a hypocrite. Nobody will act on your advice if you don’t.

Example: Suppose you are trying to persuade your audience to support Habitat for

Humanity, an international organization that builds homes to eliminate poverty. You can

raise your ethos by crafting stories or anecdotes which demonstrate that you are active

in the local Habitat chapter.

By demonstrating that you follow your own advice, your audience is more likely to

believe you on other points which cannot be so easily verified (for example, statistics

about Habitat for Humanity).

“Don’t be a hypocrite. Nobody will act on your advice if you don’t.”

#10: Use language familiar to your audience (Similarity)

Using language familiar to your audience is good for two reasons:

1. It aids in their understanding (which, indirectly, makes you more persuasive).

2. It helps the audience identify with you which boosts your ethos.

By “familiar language”, I mean more than English versus Dutch. As well, I mean more

than using words which are understood by the audience.

To really get your audience to identify with you, you must use the terms that they would

use to describe the concepts.

Example: A few examples might make this clearer:

1. Many people would understand that property agent is the same thing as areal estate

agent. However, depending where you speak, one of these terms will be more

common. Use it!

2. Acronyms are dangerous if you are using ones that your audience doesn’t know.

Conversely, if everyone in your audience uses the term P.M. on a daily basis, you

should use that term rather than project manager.

#11: Use visuals/examples which resonate with your audience (Similarity)

For any given message, you have a multitude of options for stories, anecdotes, visuals,

or other techniques to convey your speech. From this multitude, try selecting the ones

which have the biggest impact with this audience. Not only will you get the big impact,

but the audience will also start thinking that you are just like them. That’s good for you!

Example: Suppose you are speaking to company management on the topic of goal-

setting. Through audience analysis, you discovered that the company sponsored

employees to run the local marathon. Although there are many metaphors and visuals

you could use to talk about goal-setting, you choose to draw parallels between corporate

goal-setting and the goals one sets when tackling a challenging race. You feature several

vivid photographs of marathon races to complement your arguments.

#12: Choose quotations and statistics from the right sources (All)Quotations and statistics are common speech tools which, on the surface, may contribute

more to your logos (logical argument) than ethos. Nonetheless, if you choose

the right sources, you can boost your ethos too.

“When you reference a reputable source, you boost your ethos by

association.”

Example: When researching a speech about cancer research, you discover two statistics

that will help you make your argument.

1. The source of the first statistic is some unknown author on Wikipedia.

2. The source of the second statistic is the Mayo Clinic.

Which statistic is your audience more likely to believe? If you guessed the Mayo Clinic,

you’re right. When you reference a reputable source, you boost your ethos by

association.

So, the general guideline is to use quotations and statistics from sources which have high

ethos to your audience, whether by trustworthiness, similarity, authority, or reputation.

#13: Reference people in the audience, or events earlier in the day (Similarity)

Earlier, we mentioned that, if possible, you should try to share the event experience with

your audience. When you do, you can increase your ethos by incorporating something

from that shared experience (or someone in the audience) into your speech. Your

audience sees you as “one of them”, and a silent bond forms.

Example: In the presentation preceding yours, the speaker repeated a memorable

phrase “It’s never too late.” If you can do it in a meaningful way, try to weave this phrase

into your material.

How to Improve Ethos — After Your SpeechYour talk is done, but your effectiveness as a speaker is not yet written in stone. Here’s a

few things you can do to continue to build up your ethos with this audience, or with your

next audience.

#14: Make yourself available to your audience (Similarity)Whenever possible, stick around after your presentation is over. Mingle with the

audience and continue to share in the event experience. Not only will you have the

opportunity for productive follow-up conversations, but your audience will see you as

accessible, and accessible is good.

In short, your ethos will rise.

#15: Follow through on promises made during your presentation (Trustworthiness)

One technique for managing a short Q&A session is to defer thorny or complex questions

to a later time.

Example: If someone asks a question as part of a 10-minute Q&A session that would

take you 20 minutes to answer, it’s okay to defer the question saying: “I’d like to give the

complete answer, but we don’t have time today. I’ll send it out to the group on email.”

It’s okay to do that, but only if you do follow up! If you fail to do so, your audience will

judge you as being untrustworthy. Even if your presentation was great, your influence on

their future actions is diminished.

Ethos in the short term versus the long termIn the above examples, you may have noticed that trustworthiness and similarity were

mentioned much more often than authority or reputation. This is not an accident.

You can significantly influence your audience’s on-the-spot assessment of your

trustworthiness and similarity by following the advice above. While your audience

may have preconceptions about you in these dimensions, you may be able to

change their mind.

It is much harder to change your audience’s on-the-spot assessment of your

authority and reputation. Your audience’s perception of you along these dimensions

is mostly fixed before your speech starts. Either you are an expert in the field, or

you are not. Either you have formal authority over your audience, or you don’t. Not

much that you say in a one hour speech will change either of these.