Rhetoric

From the chapter's own abstract

Implementing change successfully requires persuasion. Consistent with the idea of leadership-as-narrative, this chapter gives an account of leadership as something created in the course of persuasive communication instead of something existing prior to or independent of it. The chapter begins with a discussion of aphorisms in leadership discourse, it then builds on this to introduce the classical foundations of rhetoric in Aristotle's work, and particularly his concepts of enthymeme (an argument with hidden assumptions), ethos, pathos, and logos. It then combines this classical rhetorical analysis with more contemporary insights from literary criticism that come from a school known as Formalism. Their ideas help us understand a distinction between the events in a story (fabula) and how those events are put together (sjuzhet). It also brings in Sterne's use of digression in Tristram Shandy. To ground these theoretical ideas, which will be unfamiliar to most readers, they are applied in combination to empirical analysis of leadership discourse in NHS policy, the evidence-based management movement, and Steve Jobs’s launch of the iPhone. Rhetoric is sometimes understood as a layer or wrapper added to decorate leadership. From the perspective of leadership-as-narrative, this chapter shows how rhetoric makes leadership into something real and shared.

1. What premises is this argument relying on the audience to supply?
2. Would the claim survive having every premise stated?
3. What has become so familiar here that nobody can see it any more?
4. Does our change story have a plot, or only characters and ambitions?
5. Whose account of what counts as evidence is being treated as settled?

• Rhetorical formats
• Aphorism
• Enthymeme
• Ethos, pathos, logos
• Defamiliarisation
• Fabula and sjuzhet
• Emplotment
• Digression
• Rhetorical ethics
• Sophistry

• Steve Jobs and the 2007 iPhone launch
• The Darzi Review
• Evidence-based management

Related lens: Rhetoric

Related tools: Enthymeme Analyser

Status: abstract quoted directly from the manuscript · questions and concepts are site-written · author review required