I have been enjoying reading Alan Alda’s new book If I
Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face (My Adventures in the Art
and Science of Relating and Communicating). I got it from my friendly local
public library. In Chapter 11 he discusses tips and rules of three. Watch the
5-minute YouTube video from Big Think titled 3 Ways to express your thoughts so
that everyone will understand you. Here is his text from pages 98 and 99:
“TIPS
Even though I don’t much like them, I have to admit that
tips can sometimes be useful. Here are a few that have been good to me.
The Three Rules
of Three
1] When I talk to an audience, I try to make no more than three
points. (They can’t remember more than three, and neither can I.) In fact,
restricting myself to one big point is even better. But three is the limit.
2] I try to explain difficult ideas three different ways. Some
people can’t understand something the first couple of ways I say it, but can if I say it another way. This lets
them triangulate their way to understanding.
3] I try to find a subtle way to make an important point three
times. It sticks a little better.
But even though I’ve discovered a few tips that have helped,
for my money, tips tend to be anemic when they don’t come fortified with experience,
or with a vivid story that lets you enjoy a vicarious experience.
I was once asked to write a list of tips on how to
communicate well, and I resisted. I finally hammered out three, but they were
so snarky I never sent them in:
1} Beware of tips. Tips are intellectual and often
mechanical. They don’t transform you. An experience transforms you. There’s a
stretch of road I’ve driven down many times where I used to ignore the speed
limit sign. One afternoon, I got a speeding ticket and I never ignored the
speed limit again. The sign was a tip. The ticket was the experience.
2} Make a personal connection with your audience. Look
them in the eye and speak to them as if they’re a close friend and not a
multitude. This is, of course, impossible to do just by reading this tip,
Experience is what transforms you. (See Tip 1.)
3} If you can, experience improvisation. It will focus
you on the other person. Improv games allow most of the tips about public
speaking to become second nature, rather than forced and mechanical. A common
tip advises you to vary the pace of your talk. Improv puts you so in touch with
the audience that varying your pace happens automatically. You do it without
thinking, which is the only way it will be effective. Trying to follow tips,
rather than letting behavior emerge from the experience of improvisation, can actually
make a talk more wooden. You see it in the pauses speakers make when they try
to apply the tip to pause every few sentences. During these mechanical pauses,
the air is dead. But when an improviser takes a pause, something meaningful is
happening. She pauses because she’s watching the audience to see if they
understand her, and she’s actually thinking of what she ought to say next. The pause
is filled with something that’s happening between her and the audience. She’s
alive.”
Three other videos based on the book are:
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