• Colour
  

Handouts, flip chart pens, overhead projector slides or any other way that you present information is made more attractive, more stimulating and more memorable by the use of colour. You can also colour-code information, adding an extra dimension to the content. Remember that about 8% of men and 5% of women are red-green colour blind.

• Visual imagery

Whilst some people prefer information presented in words (written or spoken), others find visual images have more impact and are more memorable. So, illustrating your content, showing pictures, using videos and expressing ideas in diagrammatic form should be used in conjunction with words.

• Music

Music can change mood. So, music as a greeting at the start of training, to "wake people up" after lunch or at the end of a session and to signal transition from one topic or activity to another are useful. The tempo of the music you choose can also affect the speed at which people work, so you can hurry people up when they are doing a group task or slow them down if you want to encourage reflection. In addition, music played at the tempo of Baroque music is said to stimulate brain activity and enhance the ability of individuals to learn. Always check that the music you are using isn't distressing (the song that was played at someone's funeral, for instance) or annoying and doesn't interfere with hearing.

• Rhymes and mnemonics

Rhymes have been used for centuries to aid memory. People on training courses could be asked to create their own "poems" to help them remember key facts or you can create one for them to learn.

Other mnemonics use capital letters to form other, more memorable, words or sentences, e.g. "My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas"; the first letter of each word gives you the first letter of the planets, in order: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto.)

• Metaphors

A metaphor is a way of speaking in which one thing is described in terms of another, thus throwing new light on the character of what is being described. A more general term is analogy, this covers metaphor and similar concepts such as comparison, simile, allegory and parable.

An example would be " No man is an island" (John Donne), i.e. we know about islands so the metaphor tells us something new about man.

In NLP, this process is referred to as ‘pacing and leading’; making statements about the current ‘reality’ for an individual or group before directing their attention somewhere else, to something new.

Pacing statements are "verifiably true", leading statements are "maybe true". What you do as you make the pacing statements is to set up a response pattern of ‘that’s true’ in the other person’s mind. Human beings are creatures of habit - we like what’s familiar. The human brain seeks pattern and, having established a pattern, likes it to continue. When the brain has said ‘that’s true’, say, three times, it’s likely to say it the fourth time.

When pacing and leading is done elegantly, it is possible to move from saying mostly things which are ‘verifiably true’ to saying mostly things which are ‘made up’ without the listener(s) noticing the transition.

An example might be, "We're here to learn about X ("true"), we've had an early start to get here ("true") and we don't yet know each other very well ("true"). But I hope you'll feel free to join in and ask plenty of questions as we go on ("true?")".

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