Page 14 - IMPACT BOOKLET

THE “RULE OF THREE”

TO STRUCTURE YOUR SPEECH

Would you follow somebody who didn’t seem to know
where he was going ?

Written communication and oral communication have one essential difference:

- Written material you can always refer back to if you didn’t get the point
- Oral communication is in real time and if you didn’t get it,
then you’ll never get it

▪ Define your “Force Idea”

You have to identify and state clearly and often enough the “heart” of the message
(core message), the “essence” of what you want to say, your “force-idea”
This is a major weapon to fight against entropy and to help people retain the
message.

Then the structure of oral communication becomes self-evident. You have to work
with people’s memories and create a simple enough structure so that most people
will be able to follow. This brings us to the rule of three.

▪ The “Rule of Three”, identify your three main assets

Why three?

Simply because most human memories can retain three items.
And repetition helps the memory function.

They have to hear the message three times
and the message should have not more than three parts.

• I tell them what I’m going to tell them

• I tell them

• I tell them what I told them

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