The early Greeks had a magnificent philosophy, which is
embodied in three sequentially arranged words: ethos, pathos,
and logos. I suggest these three words contain the essence of seeking
first to understand and making effective presentations. Ethos is
your personal credibility, the faith people have in your integrity
and competency. It’s the trust that you inspire, your Emotional
Bank Account. Pathos is the emphatic side – it’s the feeling.
It means that you are in alignment with the emotional thrust
of another person’s communication. Logos is the logic, the
reasoning part of the presentation. Notice the sequence: ethos,
pathos, logos – your character, and your relationships, and
then the logic of your presentation. This represents another major
paradigm shift. Most people, in making presentations, go straight
to the logos, the left-brain logic, of their ideas. They try to
convince other people of the validity of that logic without first
taking ethos and pathos into consideration.^16
“The difference in a good organization and a bad organization
is structure. There must be structure. But the difference in a good
organization and a great organization is motivation.” (Fred
Smith) 17
The key to motivation is motive. It’s the why. It’s the deeper
“yes!” burning inside that makes it easier to say “no” to the less
important.^18
... management thinker Peter Drucker...“You can’t motivate
people; you can only thwart their motivation because people
motivate themselves.”...even though you can’t motivate people
as a leader, you must identify and remove the barriers to self-
motivation...High self-motivation...is not a characteristic
that everyone possesses. This is why I consider it a critical
quality for a leader because without it, and without being
able to recognize it in other people, one cannot lead anybody
anywhere...^19
“I have yet to find the man, however exalted his station, who
did not do better work and put forth greater effort under a
