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Listening is a critical life skill — in our personal relationships, in school, and at work. Yet, it’s one that many of us have yet to master. Listening well is incredibly hard to do, especially in the face of all the distractions of the 21st century. In fact, Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson discuss what they call a listening plateau in their 2013 book “The Plateau Effect: Getting from Stuck to Success.”
“While listening is the core of most of our communications — the average adult listens nearly twice as much as he or she talks — most people stink at it,” they assert in this excerpt from the book, which also shares the details of a few studies.
So, how do those speaking overcome this massive hurdle? Whether you’re presenting your research at a professional conference, running a team meeting, interviewing for a job, or teaching a lesson to your students, what strategies help listeners focus on — and remember — what you’re saying?
The Rule of Three
If you haven’t heard of the rule of three, the idea is essentially that our brains better process and recall information when it’s presented in threes. It’s a concept that has been around for quite some time and you can see it in famous stories (The Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks and the Three Bears), in three-word slogans (McDonald’s “I’m loving it”), and in speeches (Abraham Lincoln’s “of the people, by the people, for the people”), etc. Even the sales industries have adopted this to create engaging, memorable content (think Rice Krispies’ mascots: Snap, Crackle, and Pop).
This is the most common interpretation of the rule of three, but “[it] can be interpreted in a variety of ways,” Gareth Barkin, dean of operations and technology and distinguished professor of anthropology and Asian studies at the University of Puget Sound, reminds us.
“Using three examples of what you’re describing is probably the most common, but it can also be interpreted as meaning you should never have more than three main points in your talk or three bullets on any given PowerPoint slide,” he says. “I think it’s a good way to discourage information dumping, and it elevates the importance of getting the audience to connect with your ideas, not just to hear them.”
Barkin’s approach to the rule is a bit different — it has more to do with structuring your presentation.
“Dale Carnegie advised speakers to first tell the audience what they were going to say, then to say it, and then to tell them what they’d said,” he explains. “It’s a ‘rule of three’ system that’s less focused on the number of examples than it is on the best way to connect with an audience and have them retain your message. In this case, the examples would likely fit in the second stage, where you’re ‘saying it,’ and in that space you could still embed three examples, if you can get through them efficiently and if they build on one another.”
How to Make it Work for You
So, now you have the idea that three is the magic number, but how do you put it into practice? Here are a few ways you can use the rule to your benefit:
- Three reasons to hire you: Almost any interview you go into, you’ll be asked some variation of the question “Why should we hire you?” Your answer needs to be compelling and memorable. So, try an answer with three of your best traits or contributions, or experiment with Barkin’s system adopted from Dale Carnegie.
- Three words to brand your institution: During my undergrad time at Juniata College, a memorable part of the institution’s brand was the slogan “Think, Evolve, Act.” It has stuck with me all these years. Your institution can stand out to prospective students, families, and alumni by employing the rule of three in marketing and branding efforts.
- Three key messages in your presentation: If three is the magic number, consider how you can break your presentation into three key points and even how you might keep your slides to three bullet points each. Anything more might be overwhelming to your audience and hard to recall. Try to stick to the most important parts.
Remember
Whether the audience is students, colleagues, or a search committee, speakers all want their messages to be remembered. While the rule of three is, by no means, a silver bullet, it’s one strategy you can experiment with to encourage and enhance listening, especially in an age when distractions run rampant.
Barkin advises not to be too rigid about following the rule of three, but he says we can learn some important principles from it.
“First, structure your presentation around a beginning, middle, and end that make sense for your topic,” he says. “Second, avoid information dumping while also providing adequate support to make a convincing argument; and finally, circle back and leave the audience with a clear sense of what your core message was. And I promise, it’s just a coincidence that this list had three elements!”
