The only way training can be used back on the job is if it's remembered. Knowing memory tools as a trainer is valuable as it can help you know how to design your program to help improve your learners' retention.
As you may have already surmised from learning Bible verses or the names of the United States, rhythm, rhyme and repetition as well as music make great tools for moving information into long-term memory. Color, exaggeration and associating an action with something also helps. A simple acronym to remember these is CREAM: color, rhythm, exaggeration, action, music.
CREAM is why we may change marker colors between topics when writing on flip charts or use rhyme to emphasize that, as trainers, we are the guides on the side, not the sage on the stage.
In addition to these five characteristics, there are also techniques that can be used to help improve memory—memory tricks, if you will.
Loci, the Greek word for place, is one such method. When practiced, this method works well for most people. Here's the scenario:
Your partner calls as you leave work. "Can you pick up a few items from the grocery store on your way home?" Of course, you acquiesce, having no idea that the "few" items is actually a list of 10 random items. Since you have no pen or paper handy, you just have to remember the list. So take the grocery items and visualize them in a place you are very familiar with such as your office or home. Here's one way it might go.
You see a carton of eggs falling out of your hands and breaking on the walkway leading up to your house. As you walk on the porch, you hear a crunching sound as you walk across cereal spilled all over. As you open the front door, a carton of milk spills all over the front entry. The living room floor is all white as there is flour spilled on it. As you walk into the hallway, you smell bacon frying. The kitchen is full of rabbits eating carrots. In the laundry room are several packages of wiener buns on the dryer. Before you can use the bathroom, you have to move a package of graham crackers off the stool. As you open the closet door, several rolls of paper towels tumble out on the floor. As you walk into the TV room, you hear the musical ad, "Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Meyer wiener."
If you actually visualized this, you can now probably remember most if not all of these 10 items even though they aren't really on your shopping list! This process can help your learners visualize and remember steps of a process, names of key contacts, or top selling points of a new product.
This was adapted from Rich Meiss' Making Training Memorable class.
