The Art of Communication
This fun podcast series is for anyone who has to deliver a message, tell a story or speak to another human being. Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen cover all aspects of how you connect with everyone you meet - whether you're giving a speech, running a meeting or simply talking with friends. Our Communication Experts series includes experts in many different fields: TV and radio presenters, politicians, auctioneers, writers, professors, lawyers, film directors, actors, art dealers, photographers and designers etc. Everyone will be an expert in communicating with their audience in their particular medium. Robin Kermode, is an actor, best-selling author, leading Communication Coach, popular keynote speaker, body language expert and media commentator. For more information visit: www.robinkermode.com
The Art of Communication
The Importance of Memory in Communication
The Importance of Memory in Communication.
Why can you vividly remember some pitches and presentations while others fade away? We look at the role memory plays in effective communication. Is it better to memorize your speeches fully or rely on notes? And do specific memories help your storytelling to be more engaging and authentic?
Join Robin Kermode and Sian Hansen for another fun podcast episode as they discuss some of the secrets to boosting your memory and unlocking the power of memory in your communication.
Hello and welcome to the Art of Communication podcast with me, robin Kermode. Have you ever wished you could become a confident speaker or presenter? Then why not join my online masterclass Speak so your Audience Will Listen. In 10 easy-to-follow modules, you can become a confident and authentic speaker. For more information, visit robincomercom.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to the Art of Communication podcast with me, sian Hansen and Robin Comer. Hello, we're going to talk about memory, memorizing, how you use your memory in communication. And, robin, I know memory gives us a sort of framework or sense of the past and present. It can make sense of what's going on in your life. But what is memory in relation to communication?
Speaker 1:When we're talking to other people and we've had previous conversations, they hope we will remember what we've said in the past. So we have to try to remember accurately what we've done in the past. If we have to try to remember accurately what we've done in the past, if you're, for example, talking to your team, maybe you're doing a town hall with your team and you can't remember what you told them last time. It doesn't work very well because there's an ongoing dialogue.
Speaker 1:So we have to remember what we've told them before. I mean, I think you and I have both been in audiences where speakers have told the same joke twice because they've forgotten they've told it. So, that's part of the memory.
Speaker 2:It's about remembering accurately what we have previously told people and avoiding miscommunication and, in a more basic sense, memory helps you with lots of other things, like how many times, robin, have we had to follow directions and not remember them?
Speaker 1:You stop and somebody at the side of the road says, okay, you go here. You go past the pub. Stop and somebody at the side of the road says, okay, you go here. You go past the pub, you go left at the bridge over the thing and if you get to the traffic lights you've gone too far. By this point we're lost.
Speaker 2:Or there's that famous one you get to the T-junction and you go straight on.
Speaker 1:Exactly Now. Of course, I give talks at conferences and things and I'm trying to give people information they can use and take away in action. I want to tell it in a memorable way and help them remember it, make it easy for them to remember.
Speaker 1:So, that's another thing that I think we want to do. We can also look today, of course, at how we learn lines. Should we learn our lines? Should we learn our script presentation, our speech, our pitch? People feel sometimes they have to turn up with the PowerPoint deck. But maybe they don't. Maybe they can remember it all in their head, but some people find that a huge pressure.
Speaker 2:What do you think about memory as it relates to imagination? Because imagination is a lot about communication, so I imagine memories help develop imagination, like referring back to past experiences helps you imagine what might happen.
Speaker 1:Yes, and also I think they can be specific, so it's easier to imagine something that is specific. So, if you talk about a particular smell or a particular sound, that lifts it off the page. And I think that one of the things we've talked about in other podcasts is we tell stories partly because they make it more memorable for the audience, but we don't have to learn it ourselves, because we know the memory, you know the story, we know the story because it actually happened to us. So I think when we tell stories, that's a great way of getting over having to learn something.
Speaker 2:I remember in some of my roles that I remember how things turned out. So I think the past is going to repeat itself. In other words, I have a memory about, you know, some issue that's come out and I have a memory of how it's going to turn out Good or bad, good or bad. That's called experience, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Well, that's experience and that's the fight or flight response as well. We go down a dark alleyway and there's somebody there that doesn't look very safe. We have a response to that and the response is based on previous experience, previous memories, movies. We've seen all sorts of triggers.
Speaker 2:Now let's dive into that whole thing about committing to memory or not. So do your clients ask you about this? Do they ask you about whether they should commit their speech, or whatever it is, to memory?
Speaker 1:Yes, Well, that's the first thing we should talk about is is it necessary and is it better?
Speaker 2:Well, wouldn't you be more convincing if you did memorize it?
Speaker 1:If you can, yes, but we shouldn't put pressure on ourselves if we can't. If I sit in the audience and I see somebody holding note cards, I think, great, they've prepared. It's probably not going to be waffle that suits some people and it's absolutely fine. It's probably not going to be waffle. That suits some people and it's absolutely fine. The next level up is you have no notes at all. But if you're the kind of person that struggles to learn, then don't put the pressure on yourself. Much better to have the notes there. Have them in a way that you can lift them off the page. We can look at that in a minute. But in terms of learning, I find it easy to learn lines, because that's what actors do.
Speaker 1:The most common question people say to actors is how do you learn your lines? It must be so difficult. How can you learn three hours of Shakespeare? How can you do that? Well, the answer is that's the easy bit. The challenge is to make them not sound like lines. In other words, how do you make it sound spontaneous. And that's actually the clue as to how you learn them.
Speaker 1:You learn why you're saying the line, not just the line itself, your intention. So when you say a line, you have to know why you're saying the line. And if you learn why you're saying the line, the line is not difficult to learn. So, for example, if you go to see a school play and you watch a young person do a school play and they maybe have a line like I'm going to get a cup of coffee. Now what they do is they learn the line and they'll say it, but they won't know why they're saying it and that's why it often sounds like a school kid doing it. So they'll go I'm going to get a cup of coffee, and then they walk off but you don't know why they're saying that or why they even want the coffee. But if the person learning the speech learns why they're saying the sentence, it becomes much easier.
Speaker 1:Example there are many ways why you might say that line I'm going to get a cup of coffee, maybe. Sian, I think we're having a conversation and you're going to bring up a subject I don't want to talk about. So I want to escape. So I'm saying that to escape, not because I actually want a coffee, but I'm saying it because I don't want to be here. So I might say to you I'm just going to get myself a cup of coffee, and the audience know that actually it's not really about the coffee, it's about escaping. So my intention is to escape and therefore it's easy for me to remember the line.
Speaker 2:But I suppose when you're learning lines for a play or for TV or film or something, I imagine quite a lot of help comes from knowing that you're in a dialogue with somebody.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and so I've done this since I was a young actor, since I was 21. I've always learned my lines this way I record the whole film, the whole play, whatever it might be, and I leave a gap for my own lines so I get a chance to listen to everything coming at me, and in the gap I then say my lines out loud, and eventually I get so used to hearing lines, the prompt, the prompt essentially.
Speaker 1:And actually they always say about acting, really, it's just about responding. Somebody says something to you and you respond. That's actually what acting is. It's just responding, really, because that's what we do in life is we respond? Now, the challenge in learning a speech is that it's a one-way dialogue often, so the way that actors learn a long monologue is very different from how you learn a dialogue, but generally, when we're making speech, we are essentially giving a monologue. So the way we learned that is about learning. The section changes.
Speaker 1:Yes, and you've spoken about that before and how you use your body to denote the change in emphasis yes, and you can help, your, because there's also a motor memory in the physical change In the physical change and also maybe you can color code your speech and things like that.
Speaker 2:But let's say you're talking to a client. They're going to make a speech to thousands of people or just to a small group in a meeting room or just at a family event. How would you help them? Because they want to commit it to memory. They feel they can do it. How would you help them do that?
Speaker 1:I do it physically and I was doing this with a client last week actually, and we were moving up and down her office. Now what I do is I say, okay, what is the main point of your speech and what is the first sentence you're going to say? That gives us a lot of comfort. We make it short and simple. It's not too difficult to remember. And then you're off to the races.
Speaker 1:And then we're off to the races because we feel good, we haven't messed up the first sentence. Then I physically get them to move and then, as they move, they say the next little section. And we just repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it.
Speaker 1:So, I said OK, go back, we do the opening sentence, then you're going to move and you're going to say the next bit, and gradually we try it without them looking at the page, and then they learn that that move is associated with those words. A move to the left is associated with a different set of words, and it's just practice. It's just practice. It's just practice, just a lot of practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, when I learn a speech which is very rare for me and they're usually very short I use mind mapping. I find that I can visualize a mind map in my head, like do little diagrams and bubbles and arrows, and so I can see the map in my head.
Speaker 1:Oh, you visualize it as you're saying it in your head yes, yeah, with colors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have colors and diagrams and keywords and things like that, but I never learn word for word. Would you suggest that for a client?
Speaker 1:No, I wouldn't go word for word. It becomes a memory test, and if you see somebody standing there trying to remember, you can spot it a mile off. The other problem, of course, if you try to learn it word for word, is that most people, if they write a speech down, will use written sentences, and written sentences are longer than spoken sentences.
Speaker 2:And don't sound normal.
Speaker 1:And they don't sound normal. And if you remember, when I wrote my book on how to make speeches, I dictated the whole book to the computer. I wanted it to sound like I was speaking to the reader. It made it much easier, when I did the audiobook, to lift it off the page because it was written in my spoken language. But most people when they write a speech, they write it in written sentences which will never come off.
Speaker 2:So if you memorize it, you sound disingenuous, it will sound formal, it will sound formal, it will always sound formal. Actually, we just went to a festival this weekend, didn't we? And it was a festival of various speeches.
Speaker 1:Some really good ones.
Speaker 2:And some amazing ones. But the amazing ones were people who really knew their subject Exactly, who weren't actually delivering a memorized speech. They were delivering a passionate pracey of what they knew and understood, making very creative argument. But you know what these things can be very small, it can be just. You want to make sure that you get your points across in a difficult conversation. You might want to just have a few bullet points to make sure that you haven't forgotten something. I've done that a million times. When you think, right, I need to tell somebody something and it's really bothering me, and then you sit down with them and you finish and you go.
Speaker 1:Oh, and you think there are three or four things I should have said, I should have said, and you go into the meeting thinking. These are the arguments I want to give to persuade somebody in a particular way. Now I tend to use mnemonics for that, where you take the first letter of the letters you're using and you turn it into another sentence.
Speaker 1:So, for example, if in the speech I wanted to talk about I don't know, logistics sales, return and profit, for example, so we've got logistics sales, return, profit, l-s-r-p. I want to try to remember that in my head and I want to have a mnemonic to help me, I would think L-S-R-P. Okay, I think that that might be. I love cian's roast potatoes, for example. How it's, I can stand there in front of everyone's camera. I love cian's roast potatoes. L. Logistics s sales r, return p profit really robin.
Speaker 2:It's a serious question. How do you remember the detail under each topic?
Speaker 1:that's what I find difficult yeah, so you're saying we can remember the top line? Yeah, but how do you remember the three or four arguments underneath?
Speaker 2:yeah, the three or four bullet points underneath. That's where I use a mind map, or I'll use color in order to remember the three extra points that I want to make under each one, but you might have a better way of doing it.
Speaker 1:I think I keep coming back to what actors do, which is you learn why, if we want to talk about logistics and the challenges around logistics specifically, if I understand my subject, I will know what the challenges are and I just have to be in that moment.
Speaker 2:In the zone, in the zone, yeah.
Speaker 1:And, to be honest, how much of a speech does an audience remember? The answer is probably less than 50%. Probably about 35% actually, right? So if you happen to miss one bit out, it's not a disaster, and it might be better to do it apparently from memory, with a mind map in your head or whatever, or mnemonics the benefits from that, even if you miss one thing out might outweigh the rather formal stayed presentation that you might give if you read it all out.
Speaker 2:And then you think, well, I've covered all the points and they've all taken home my message and in fact, maybe they haven't. Okay, so you mentioned stories earlier and I know that we've done a whole podcast on the power of storytelling, but I think this is something to re-emphasize here, isn't it that stories can always be in your back pocket? You can always tell a story, can't you? Because you know it.
Speaker 1:When I give speeches, I have probably maybe five or six stories that I often start with. It would depend on the context and the situation. But if somebody said to me impromptu, Robin, can you stand up and make a speech now? The first thing I'll do is right, what's the quick, appropriate story that I can pull out of my mental knapsack and start with a story, Because if you start with a story, it's not going to feel like a speech.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you remember? One of our friend's fathers said to us I always have a little speech in my top pocket and he said that he could adapt it to a certain occasion, but he would have something that was two or three minutes long, just in case somebody asked him to make a little speech. And he was a man of note. You know, he'd been successful in life, and so people did ask him to do that. Do you have a poem or a Shakespeare sonnet committed to memory? Is that something you?
Speaker 1:use. Well, actually I do. I have several, but I make it a point to learn new things all the time, just for the sake of keeping my brain alive.
Speaker 2:So would you say that other people should do that?
Speaker 1:It's a really good muscle to practice. I mean, find some poem you did at school, I don't know, Just try and see if you can remember it. I try to learn the wonderful shipping forecast which is all the areas going around the UK Viking, North of Tyre, South of Tyre, Fortis, Cromarty, Forth.
Speaker 2:Why did you choose that one?
Speaker 1:Well, there's a wonderful rhythm in that and it's something just, it's just such a UK thing to learn the areas of the sea around the UK do a spelling bee.
Speaker 2:I always thought memory was particularly tested when we did spelling at school. You know when you had to stand up and you had to spell words oh, we never had to do that oh no, those were amazing fun, and then you would always find your limit. I mean, some kids, of course, went further and were really good at it, but quite often, as you know, english words are not spelt the same way they're pronounced, and then you really had to dig into your memory about how a word was spelt.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting. So was that because you learned it before and you were memorizing? You're bringing it back from memory rather than using rules?
Speaker 2:Well, no, you can sometimes use rules, of course, in an English word, can't you? The root of a word, particularly, would help you. But then there's often in certain words in the English language. They're definitely not pronounced as they're written down.
Speaker 1:No, and you can have words with lots of different meanings, like saw, meaning I was able to see somebody in the past, or saw, as in I cut a piece of wood.
Speaker 2:There are lots of words that have exactly the same words or certain nationalities will come to England and they'll say I went to Cambridge today. Oh, you mean Cambridge, what is it? Beauchamp Place? No, it's Beecham Place.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When we go to Canada, there are plenty of place names that I can't pronounce. I pronounce them phonetically, but actually that's not how.
Speaker 2:That's not how the Canadians do it, but actually we've made an important point here is that you are accepted or known to be part of the community and or country or city if you know how to pronounce the words properly, even if they're not written that way. In other words, that's about memory, it's about learning and memory, and you're more accepted if you communicate using the right language.
Speaker 1:Well, you know the way that pop stars often, if they have a big audience in front of them, they often go hello London, you know, hello Melbourne, or whatever it might be. And it's quite embarrassing when they can't remember where they are Occasionally. You see them, they go hello. There's an extra beat. You think, which city are we in?
Speaker 2:But you expect that of rock and roll, don't you? It's because they're travelling. They're travelling so far they're travelling so much.
Speaker 1:I do remember one politician. Once I watched him give a speech and he said there are three things that I want to talk about today.
Speaker 1:Firstly, secondly and they're both very, very important and you thought you'd forgotten the third, haven't you? Yeah, so I never say to an audience there are three or four or five or six things I want to talk about, because if I do that I can snooker myself, I can get myself in a corner. So I always say there are several things we should look at here. Again, all these things are small ways of not failing, if our memory does let us down.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fair enough. Actually, I have to say, if anybody stands up and says I've got four points to make, I'm counting. If the speech isn't going very well, I'm thinking oh we've got two more points to go because they've told me how many. So no, it's much better.
Speaker 1:You're right, just say I have a few, yes, have a few, and also Sat. I'm sure you have an audience where people say I have three things to say firstly, secondly and thirdly, and there's also something else, and you sit there in the audience going.
Speaker 2:No, it was four actually.
Speaker 1:Maybe not everybody does that, but we do.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's just me doing that. Yeah, we're getting to the point where I think it's about experiences that hold meaning and those are the things that we remember. It's the same thing that you're saying, which is you have to find the meaning and the why in what you're saying, because that is where memory is most important. It's informing us and our experiences.
Speaker 2:Yes, Robin, just flipping it around a bit. I wonder do we ourselves want to be memorable? Do we want to be remembered as a speaker and I'm only saying that because there might be some of us and I'm sort of including myself in this where I don't necessarily want to stand out in a crowd, or say something outrageous or say something outrageous, but I do want to be memorable in some circumstances. So what would you do to be memorable but not come across as overbearing?
Speaker 1:Well, the simple thing is to be relevant. We connect with people if we have some shared experience or if we make what we say relevant to them or useful to them. So if you said to an audience I'm going to tell you how you can make more money really easily, If that's something that interests them, they will listen and they will remember that because it's something that interests them.
Speaker 2:I do think humor is really helpful. I think Right, so if you tell a funny story or a joke, they'll remember you.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think a mixture, I mean if I go for an interview with a new client, I would consciously tell a funny story, tell a serious story and tell maybe an emotional story so they get a sense of the whole me rather than just a bit of me. But I consciously do that, right. But then of course it has to look effortless. It can't look like I'm trying to wedge these stories. No, exactly, it has to be relevant to the conversation, so you have to get the conversation around and then be able to drop them in. But I think if we can make things relevant for an audience, that's the best way.
Speaker 2:That's the best way. So we've really talked around this subject. I mean, it seems to be that the essence of memory in relation to communication is all about making sure that people hear what you have to say rather than misremembering, so that you're really clear that you yourself are memorable, that you're using all your past experiences to make sense of the present and the future and communicating that and you're learning from each other, and memory is like a really amazing bit of that, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it is, but it's a muscle which which you can exercise which we have to exercise, we have to practice.
Speaker 1:So when people say I just can't learn something, I said yeah, but you have to put the time in. The problem is in business. People say I don't have the time to learn everything because it's just another speech, it's another town hall, it's another meeting, the big ones, of course you can. So maybe you have a big family event or even an annual meeting and you think I'm going to really learn this five minutes and that makes sense. But learning a speech or learning anything does take a bit of time and it's just repetition. It's a motor memory. You have to say it out loud. It's what your tongue does. Your tongue will learn the movements. You can physically move on different sections. You can help yourself by learning something every day. Sian, here's a question for you Learning people's names. Are you better at names?
Speaker 2:or are you better at faces? Oh, you know what I'm a mixture. What I like doing is, as soon as I meet somebody and they introduce themselves to me, they say hello, you know, I'm Anna. Then I'll immediately say nice to meet you, anna.
Speaker 1:So you'll repeat it.
Speaker 2:I'll repeat the name back, and then I have some chance of remembering the name.
Speaker 1:What I try and do on that one is I say, oh, thank you very much, Anna. And as soon as I can, I introduce Anna to someone else. I go this is Anna. So I have another chance, Another chance of saying it out loud.
Speaker 2:And then what I tend to do is, if I'm in my mind I mean there's a conversation going on I'll repeat the name in my mind back again.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And I'll link it to a famous person or someone I know really well.
Speaker 1:Yes, I do that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I'll link it to another Anna I know and then I might be able to remember their name in half an hour.
Speaker 1:Yes, a movie star that has Anna or something.
Speaker 2:But I think I'm really good at faces. I can remember a face, in fact. Sometimes people say that's really weird. Oh, the other day it just happened where somebody came up to me and said you're Sian. We were at university together 40 years ago. I mean, I don't look anything like I did when I was at university, but he remembered me. I thought that was remarkable.
Speaker 1:Yes, I remember years ago I went into a shop and the man said oh. He said it's very nice to see you again. And I thought I haven't been here before. He said, no, no, I've met you before and in those days I was on television. And I said well, you might have seen me on television. He said no, no, no. Two years ago I was working in another shop and you came in and bought a pair of shoes. Oh well, there you go. He remembers the face.
Speaker 2:Well, that means that he's a good person to be in retail because he remembers his customers.
Speaker 1:Exactly when people say nice to see you again. How good does that make you feel.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Oh, remembering a customer is just everything, everything. But you're the person who really likes it if you walk into a coffee shop and they remember your order I love it. You do love it, your usual robin yeah, oh, I don't like it at all, because? No, because I don't have a usual like oh, I see yeah, you see, and I don't want them to say, oh, it's a latte, and then you start making a latte when I don't want it well, maybe my decaf black americano is too boring.
Speaker 2:Maybe I should mix it up you should mix it up a bit and throw in a bit of hazelnut syrup or something. One day.
Speaker 1:And the other thing I do is obviously I meet lots of people and after a conversation with somebody I'll actually write down my notes on the conversation because maybe if I don't speak to them again for another two months I need to remember what we've talked about. But I also try to put down some personal things in there because it shows that I've been listening and people love it if you've been listening, particularly to personal things. So if I'm able to say now you said you had two children, 11 and 12, people love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but this sounds, if I may say, a little cynical. You're different than that. You really care?
Speaker 1:No, I really care, yeah but on the other hand, I can't remember everything two or three months later, no, but the point is, I care enough to write it down Exactly and then to read it before. It's about caring enough to bother to do it Exactly.
Speaker 2:It's about remembering something, like they just got a puppy and it's now three months later you can say how did it go. Or remembering that their kid got a prize in a competition and how did that go?
Speaker 1:Again, it shows that you've been listening. Yes, you might remember it, but if you don't think you can remember it, maybe six months down the line?
Speaker 2:then have some way of noting it down. So is this like literally a CRM database. You actually type this in, do you? I do After every call, I do Every meeting.
Speaker 1:I do Because it's not out of cynicism or anything like that. I want people to know that I care and I genuinely care, but I write it down because I know I can't possibly remember it all. So a lot of the things we've talked about today are about helping us help our own memory.
Speaker 2:Oh, of course, that's exactly what it is. It's about helping us to remember, because that builds relationships.
Speaker 1:Because people love it when we do remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that goes back to what you always say it's about being human.
Speaker 1:People want to be noticed, they want to be heard, they want to be remembered, and if we can show and demonstrate, we've done that. It makes them feel good, and if we can make people feel good, why not? Have you ever wished you could become a confident speaker or presenter? Then why not join my online masterclass Speak so your Audience Will Listen. In 10 easy-to-follow modules, you can become a confident and authentic speaker. For more information, visit robincomercom.