The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what you are saying, and they can't know what you're saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

So stated Bill Bernach in Luke Sullivans 1998 book, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Bernach was offering advice to advertisers, but he might as well have been talking to us trainers. If trainees don't pay attention to you, they can't hear what you say, and they won't pay attention to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting unless you present your information in an imaginative, original and fresh fashion.

Advertisers methodically use entertainment techniques to meet the demands Bernach spells out. From comedic bits, to magical illusions, to popular music, commercials entertain as they capture and maintain interest. Advertisers use entertainment for legitimate reasons. Trainers should too!

Novelty attracts attention

People are stimulated by novelty. Studies demonstrate that people seek out new experiences and behaviors. Entertainers have known this for years. The most successful acts are those who offer something different from the norm. They have the greatest chance of being noticed.

Training programs, presentations and other learning events that are perceived as boring and mediocre also will have difficulty maintaining participant attention. If on the other hand the same program is filled with novel, engaging learning connected stimuli, it will, one the other hand, capture and maintain attention.

People expect to be entertained

We have become a service, rather than an industrial, society. The assembly-line style orderliness of past generations has been supplanted by a focus on individual needs and emotions. People today expect to be catered to and will spend more to patronize organizations that provide an enjoyable experience. In response, many organizations have entertainmentized their products.

The result is a culture where the lines between entertainment and non- entertainment are evaporating. Entertainment is becoming the norm. Shakespeare was right. The world IS a stage and speakers, presenters, educators and trainers are not immune.

Entertainment engages more of the brain

Great entertainments routinely establish one perspective, and then, once the audience has fully embraced it, reveal that perspective to be false. The surprises of comedy, magic, and drama are all achieved by in this manner. Using these entertainment techniques, learners can explore the multiple perspectives of any subject.

Seminar leaders already have facts and figures at their disposal for the logical, analytical portions of the brain. Entertainment appeals to the emotive portions of the brain. When both the logical and emotive regions of the brain are simultaneously engaged, more neurons fire, more brainpower works, and greater illumination of the subject can be achieved. Rather than a one-dimensional view of the subject, the learners experience multi-layered insights.

Entertainment overpowers negative emotion

Negative emotion rarely sleeps: especially in the learning environment. Learners uncomfortable in a classroom, fearful of their own learning disabilities, or suspicious of facilitator motives can become so wrapped up in emotion that learning is blocked. Given that emotion cannot be stopped, smart trainers find ways to harmonize with and harness that emotional energy.

Studies have demonstrated that the right hemisphere tends to process the negatives aspects of emotion that block learning while the left hemisphere processes the positive aspects of emotion that open a trainee up to learning. Entertainment relaxes the fears the limbic system urgently relays to the right hemisphere. In effect, entertainment style activities baby-sit the right hemisphere, keeping it busy with things it likes; cartoons, music, games, activities, visuals. Once the right hemisphere is playfully engaged, learning can commence without the blocking negative emotion brings forth.

Entertain Em

Entertainment is not a substitute for solid instruction. It is only a vehicle for presenting your message in an imaginative, original and fresh fashion. Entertain 'em and you will be more interesting; your learners will listen to you; they will know what you are saying; they will believe you; and what you say will become their truth. If you keep 'em awake, the learning will take.