NeoQuimica Stadium Corinthians Sao-Paulo

Why is there a dark spot, in the immaculate Corinthians 49’082 white seats stadium?

In a recent football game of the Brazilian Championship, the team of Corinthians was welcoming one of its arch-rivals, Palmeiras. People who dare calling themselves “supporters”, hurled racist insults at the Palmeiras goaltender. When the hosts, as well as the local police, ran their inquiry, they were unable to identify the author of the criminal offence. Since the club refused to let go of this behaviour, which they labelled as totally against Corinthians value, the club chose to use Pathos, not to convince supporters (every supporter is aware of the potentially very negative consequences for the club they support, if targeting an opponent with racist abuse during a match) but they chose to engage their supporters through a powerful symbolic move: They spectacularly removed the seat, symbolically allocated to the criminal fan, for ever and left in its place a message saying: ““Racism has no place here. And it never will.”

Pathos you said? Logos, Ethos and Pathos are terms that were used by Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Ex-IMD Faculty, Chris Parker, and I, made them the cornerstone of our book, “Engaging Leadership”. Its key message is that convincing and ordering rarely engage people into change, whereas a blend of rationale (Logos), behavioural integrity (Ethos) and emotions (Pathos) will.

If Logos (intellectual & cognitive lever – the Clarity test) is rather straightforward for rational people and cultures (engineers, researchers and other bright minds such as lawyers, auditors or management consultants), if Ethos (behavioural & values lever – the Credibility test) is a matter of intellectual integrity and exemplarity, Pathos (emotions & passion lever – the Communion test) is more counter-intuitive. Many of the leaders we speak with, agree that Logos, Ethos and Pathos complement each other but struggle to understand how to concretely engage their people and organisation through Pathos.

The three “tools” here below allow leaders to connect directly with their people’s “emotional brain” without running the risk of remaining blocked at the “rational brain” level. The distinction between emotional and rational brain is based on the work of Professor and neurologist, Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, who demonstrated that human decisions are deeply anchored in our emotional system, even for those of us describing themselves as purely rational. 2002 Nobel Prize of Economics Laureate, Daniel Kahneman goes into a similar direction with his system 1 & system 2 framework. Those three tools are:

• Stories (story telling): storytelling is well documented as an emotional access gate. Researchers such as Paul Zak demonstrated that good narratives trigger oxytocin (love hormone), increasing empathy, connection and memory.
• Metaphors, which have been researched in cognitive linguistic by Lakoff & Johnson, (Metaphors We Live By) for whom they are far more than stylistic ornaments as they structure the way we perceive a situation
• Symbolic gestures and symbols are less formalised in scientific literature but are well known to anthropology, social psychology and organisational rituals. And the illustration which inspired me with this article, belongs to this latter category.

But what does it mean, to use the counter-intuitive lever of Pathos?

Back to our own business leadership challenge, when aiming at engaging our people through Aristotle’s “magic trio”:

• Logos: is about rationale, conviction and intellectual integrity
• Ethos: is about exemplarity and walking the talk of our values and stated “Leadership Model”
• Pathos: is about entering the field of passion and emotions. It is counter-intuitive and can be dangerous to manipulate, precisely if we fail to be authentic and use Pathos to… manipulate our people (as many political leaders are known to do or have been).

And that is exactly where leaders need to be clear about when using Pathos : Amazon & Co (Ford, Goldman Sachs, Google, Harley-Davidson, Meta, Nike, Walmart etc.) have adopted impactful and powerful policies, in a highly visible and public manner… just to back down, once the political winds blew strong against those values they might never have fully embraced. And that is what Corinthians chose not to do: Extirpating the “racist’s seat” in an irreversible and permanent manner, has been seen by all as authentic engagement.

Here below is the short Corinthians clip summarising their reaction…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKKI2tSnJ0Q

… as well as a short article in English, about the case

Enjoy your Leadership Journey