There is an anecdote from 2007, when the famous first iPhone was launched by Apple. By that time Nokia had held the number one position in mobile telephone sales for years and had introduced the first phone cameras some years earlier. This had made them, for a while, the world’s biggest seller of digital cameras too. They were on the peak of their game and nothing seemed to go wrong for them.

But then, someone brought the new iPhone to a Nokia board meeting and expressed concern that here could be a serious rival for Nokia.

- They call it ‘smartphone’.

The guys in grey suits in the board looked at the iPhone and asked,

- So if that phone is so smart, what can it do?

They were given a list of things the iPhone was able to do. Take pictures, play games, surf the internet, make phone calls (duh!), send text messages, send photo messages and so on.

The board was not at all concerned. Nokia phones could do every single thing that the iPhone could do. And this had just one button – what was that about? And they had only that one model! Nokia had dozens. No contest, right? Wrong!

Nokia board had not considered a very powerful thing that Apple had realized when developing their new gadget. How does it make you feel when you use it. The user experience. The UX.

Nokia had concentrated on technical excellence and being good at what they do. They were producing good quality phones that worked really well. In rhetorics, this is logos – delivering something that is correct and accurate. Nokia also relied on their worldwide brand as the world’s number one manufacturer of handsets. This was the ethos part. They were very credible and believable in the marketplace. Everyone just knew that Nokia’s phones were great.

But what they were missing on the emotional side of the product. What feelings does it generate, is it nice or fun or easy to use? Nokia’s phones did their job, but did you enjoy using them?

The rhetoric appeal Nokia skipped and what we are talking about is called Pathos. It is the passion, the enthusiasm, the soul that the speaker has in their performance. It is the feelings and the emotions it generates in the audience. Pathos is the fire that lights up the message.

Now, emotions are important in learning context, because they are hugely efficient in creating associations. In most basic terms this means that you remember things from the way those things made you feel. Think about your first kiss, or when your child was born or where you were when 9/11 happened. I bet you can remember those things very vividly, because they were emotional moments.

Pathos is the thing that makes a difference in an instructor performance. It is the little something that can make someone a great instructor. You can be the most knowledgeable person of the topic, and the most credible expert there is, but if your presentation lacks pathos, it is just plain dull and forgettable. Your students could just as well read the manual.

The best instructors can convey their passion so that it engages the audience. The listeners can get sucked in the lesson because it is so exciting. It can make you laugh, it might make you wonder, it can make you a bit scared. In fact it can be so enjoyable, that you are disappointed when it is over.

But who can perform like this? Doesn’t it require acting skills? Not really. Enthusiasm is contagious. If you love your subject – the love shows in your work. The audience gets to feel what you feel. In better and for worse I might add. The lack of interest also spreads. How can a student ever get excited about a subject if its teacher does not give a rats ass about it?

Apple had understood the power of user experience (UX) in its products. Great instructors understand the power of learner experience (LX) in their performance. Again, it is obvious, that as instructors we need to do everything with the learner and their benefit in mind. Learner centered trainer has pathos and concentrates on the LX.

The premise of this series of articles about rhetorics was that this ancient art is a safety tool in air traffic management context. Our job as educators is to convey to our students the needed knowledge and skills and attitudes so that they can perform adequately in the future job. The better the student learns, the better (and safer) they will perform in their work. Better learning, safer air traffic.

Understanding the rhetoric appeals can help you realise what you can do as an instructor, to help your student become a black belt professional. You need, logos, ethos and pathos to do this. You need to know what you are talking about, you need to be a credible person to talk about it and as a cherry on top, you also need to be able to appeal to the students emotions to really make the learning stick.

Samuli Suokas