I am taking dancing lessons in preparation for my daughter’s wedding next month, and one of the things I’ve noticed is that when the instructor shows me a new step, it looks simple. But when I try it, I can’t get it until I step through it a few times.
According to training lore, I guess that makes me a kinesthetic learner. But if you consider the corollary to that statement, I suppose an auditory learner would be able to pick up the steps simply by listening to the following instructions: “move your left foot about twelve inches to the side, then bring your right foot to meet it; next, advance your left foot forward a bit. But be sure to make the first two steps quick, and the third step slow…”
I had an opportunity recently to sit through a facilitation skills class put on by a major training company, and I was astonished to find that they still teach the idea that facilitators should tailor their techniques to the styles of their learners. One would think that they would have buried this myth long ago, since there is no scientific evidence to support it. Learning theorist Richard Mayer illustrated the weakness of the idea with one experiment that I’ve written about, and another famous example in the literature is described in John Medina’s book, Brain Rules. He describes a study in which expert wine tasters—about as kinesthetic as you can get—were completely fooled into describing white wines with the language reserved to reds, merely through the addition of food coloring. Maybe they were closet visual learners, but I doubt it.
Even if it were true, I can’t see how the instructor would actually change anything—they’d have to first, figure out how to quickly identify the style of each individual, and second, say or show everything three different ways to make sure everyone gets it.
But there actually is one way the idea applies, and dancing lessons offer a clue. It depends on the subject matter and the task. One can understand complicated verbal directions for navigating in a strange town, but a map is much more efficient. It’s possible to learn how to dance by watching others on YouTube, but trying the steps is much more efficient. You can memorize the words to a song by reading them on paper, but hearing them is much more efficient.
Why should this be important to you? Because if you believe the myth, it just becomes another useful excuse for why you didn’t learn something. The world is not going to accommodate itself to your imagined strengths and weaknesses.
You hear what I’m saying? Do you get the picture? Can you feel me?
There’s a cure for this
The bad news for anyone delivering a presentation is that, despite all your hard work and careful choice of content to include in your presentation, most of it will go in one ear and out the other.
Researchers once ran a test to measure how much of a presenter’s message sticks in the minds of their audience. They found that immediately after a 10-minute presentation, listeners only remembered 50% of what was said. By the next day that had dropped to 25%, and a week later it was 10%.
Why is that important? In a typical strategic sales presentation, your audience members will not make a decision right after you’ve spoken. It might be a week or even longer after your presentation. By that time, they may no longer remember specific details but various audience members may each have their own “headline” in their mind that they retained from the presentation will retain an impression of your message. Or, they may have forgotten the impression but may retain an interesting story or intriguing statistic you gave them.
Since very little of your message will stick, you must be absolutely clear in your mind which 10% you want them to remember, and then design your presentation to make sure that happens. The first step is to choose a clear and compelling theme, as described in last week’s article. In effect, you first write the headline and then craft your content to reinforce, repeat and dramatize it.
If you want to be sure it’s saved in their memory, here are five tools under the acronym SAVER:[1]
STORIES: Stories stick. Humans have passed on learning for millennia, and our brains are exquisitely attuned to hearing them, getting drawn in to their reality, and remembering them. But make your stories have a purpose beyond mere entertainment: because they’re so memorable, it’s important that any story you tell supports your theme or one of your main points.
ANALOGIES: Familiar things are more easily remembered, and analogies make things familiar. If you’re presenting an idea that is a big change from the status quo, analogies can make it seem safer by its familiarity. If it’s a sales presentation, some of the best analogies are drawn from the way your customer does business. If you can show them how your solution fits with something they already do, you get the double benefit of familiarity and credibility.
VISUALS: Forget the myth about auditory, visual and kinesthetic. We’re all visual learners; pictures stay in our minds far more commonly than abstract concepts and words. John Medina tells us in his book Brain Rules
EXAMPLES: Examples make abstract things real. You see it every night on the evening news: if they run a story about the unemployment rate, they will profile a family struggling to make ends meet. Chip and Dan Heath call it the Mother Teresa effect, because she said, “If I see one, I will act.”
REPETITION: Churchill said, “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time—a tremendous whack.” This is excellent advice, but pay attention to the subtlety: Churchill repeated it slightly differently each time, so that it doesn’t sound repetitious.
When you craft your presentation, first make sure you get your facts straight, but then go back and use SAVER as a checklist to make sure they pack maximum impact.
[1] Actually, acronyms also work well, but I didn’t include them because I couldn’t think of an acronym for the extra “A”.
