Was Aristotle, the father of persuasion, a DIVA speaker???
This is an AI generated transcript so please forgive any errors and spelling mistakes.
Hello. Today I want to ask and answer the question was Aristotle, the father of public speaking? A DIVA? And when I say was he a diva? I don’t mean, was he a difficult bitchy woman? But was he a DIVA, a public speaking all around?
Well, I’m going to answer that question for you in just a moment. But first of all, I want to introduce myself because my name is Shola Kaye. I’m a public speaking coach, based in London. But today I’m recording this video in India in Hyderabad. So if you hear a few horns honking and things, it’s because there’s a bit of traffic outside my hotel, and I’m here to run a workshop in a few days time. But I thought I take this opportunity to record some videos on here. So here I am in my hotel room.
I’d like to talk about Aristotle, who is the so-called father of public speaking, and Aristotle passed down framework that we still use today. He showed us the ideal of what every speaker needs to include in their presentation, for them to be persuasive. Aristotle said that to be persuasive, it needs three aspects to these three elements. Those three elements are the following.
Public speaking – Aristotle’s three pillars of rhetoric
First of all, it needs ethos. Ethos is really about the credibility of the speaker, and it’s about them standing up there and seeming like they’re somebody who is worth believing in, and somebody who seems to make sense, and seems to be a person who is worthy of respect.
Then we have the second features, we’ve got ethos, we’ve got something called logos, which is about the logic, the argument, the point that the speaker is trying to make. And he, Aristotle, felt that if you don’t have that logos, if you don’t have a decent argument and decent points to make in your presentation, then you won’t be persuasive.
And the third point that he said that all good speakers and all good presentations should contain is something called pathos. And particles is about that human emotional element, which typically we can link into, by including stories, stories that will capture the imagination, stories that will move people and inspire them, or make them feel some kind of emotion, whether it’s happiness, sadness, love, but that we need those stories in order to move humans to feel something different. And then to do something different.
So we’ve said ethos, your credibility as a speaker, logos, which is your argument and the points you have to make, and pathos, which is all about appealing to the human side of things to the emotions.
Now, my first question was, was Aristotle the full DIVA. So what has he got to do with DIVA? The DIVA is my own little framework that I came up with, in my book: How to be a DIVA at public speaking. And I think that DIVA is a framework that helps you check the boxes in your speaking.
Public speaking – the D.I.V.A framework
You may have come across this from me before but just to recap the game: D stands for being a dynamic speaker, so lively, energetic might be the way that you use the language. There’s all sorts of ways to be dynamic, but some way to actually inject some energy into the room and to bring a bit of your personality. I is all about being inspiring, which to my mind is about storytelling. Then you’ve got the V which is being a valuable speaker. So having a great speech structure and good content, so that your audience come away feeling like they’ve been enriched by hearing you, you present and finally A which is about your authenticity as a speaker.
Public speaking – pathos and inspiring
I think that Aristotle was a bit of a DIVA, because I feel that his points about ethos, logos and pathos relate directly to DIVA, they relate to a part of the DIVA framework. So if we look at DIVA, and if we take I it’s about storytelling, it’s about being inspiring. And I believe that relates directly to Aristotle’s pathos, because again pathos is about the emotion and inspiring people is all about getting their emotions going so that they want to take action. So I believe that pathos and being inspiring are pretty similar.
Public speaking – logos and valuable
Next, we have being valuable. And I think that relates very tightly to logos, which is about your logic, your great content. And being valuable the same things about having good logic in your speech structure. It’s about things making sense, rather than having this higgledy piggledy load of information that’s been thrown together, and actually puts the audience off track rather than helps them to see something new or to understand something better. So logos will relate directly to being a valuable speaker.
Public speaking – ethos and authenticity
And then finally, Aristotle had ethos, which is your credibility as a speaker. And I believe that relates quite highly with a your authenticity as a speaker, because quite often will see somebody up on stage speaking. And for some reason, we just don’t really believe in them. It’s sometimes hard to put our finger on why. But it’s often around the fact that they’re not being themselves, or they’re trying to be somebody that they’re not, or they’re trying to hide something about themselves. And people are more transparent than you may think. And so what is better to do is to find that your best aspects and to enhance those, rather than try and paper over the cracks or pretend to be some different person, do that work, figure out who you all figured out what’s the best part of you and figure out who and how you want to be on stage, and then do the inner work, rather than the pretending work being like an actor, do the inner work on yourself. So that shines through when you’re speaking.
I believe that your ethos, your credibility as a human being is directly related to your authenticity, as a speaker, and you do that work on yourself and your ethos, your credibility will shoot sky high, because your no one will be able to touch you in terms of finding a chink in your armor, or a hole in who you are. Because you’ve done the work, you know who you are, no one can knock you off your track or knock you off your out of your position. Because you’re rock solid, in terms of who you are, you’ve done that work.
Public speaking – the D.I.V.A. bonus: dynamic
So we said that pathos relates to being inspiring, logos relates to being valuable and ethos relates to being authentic. So the only bit there that Aristotle didn’t cover with his ethos, logos and pathos, which is in my DIVA framework is a which is about being dynamic. And that’s really about, as I said, bringing energy to the table. And it might be about your language might be about your energy as a speaker, it might be about using humor, or music or whatever it is, in a way to just shake people up and get them to pay attention.
So that’s an extra little piece that I’ve added on to Mr. Aristotle’s theory there. I hope he’s not turning in his grave thinking Who does she think she is. But just a little bit of a fun video today and a little bit of some history of speaking, and then a little bit of my framework around being a DIVA. I hope that was helpful to you.
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And if you are interested in anything more around being a DIVA that I do talk about in my book: How to be a DIVA at public speaking. Also my course online course six weeks of speaking success, my group coaching calls, which is called get clients with speaking, and also my workshops. I always talk about how to be a DIVA when I do my public speaking workshops.
So if you’re interested in getting any more detail on that, and really going deep into how you can be a DIVA in your own way and develop your own unique personality for being on stage. Then check any of those out and you’ll find out some more or just reach out to me and get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.
That’s it from me now, and also from Mr. Aristotle. And we’ll both see you later.
Take care, bye bye.
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