Narrative Ecology – Blog of Ron Donaldson – fACILITATOR, TRAINER AND COACH

Hat tip to Hilari Weinstein and her wonderfully titled Public speaking for Geeks blog for reminding me of this quote from Maya Angelou

“People will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”

This is why Knowledge Management is such a complex beast, memories are less concerned about facts and figures and much more about feelings and the wash of hormones present at the time. It always surprises me after I have given a talk that someone will say “I can relate to what you said about such n such” where the ‘such n such’ is invariably the point where I strayed from my prepared talk and ad-libbed something that sprung to mind. The genuineness of how I say it must come through creating empathy, whereas the more repeated, prepared material is becoming a bit of a mantra and subconciously everyone reads it so, in the way I tell it.