The Different Ways in Which We Learn

Guest Blog by EDI Coach and Consultant María Quevedo .

In the blogpost?Communicating with Intent ?we shared tips and ideas to build support for EDI change in your organisation, focusing on how a leader can best communicate to drive diversity and unlock their team’s full potential.

What also helps create impactful, memorable messages is to understand that team members are likely to have diverse learning styles. These learning styles show up as a preference for how we absorb and process information most effectively, and many different learning styles are present in our teams. Below we share the most commonly recognised learning styles and examples of how they might show up.

• Visual or spatial learners?have a strong preference for images, pictures and maps. They enjoy training that presents information using slideshows with more images than text and will find it easier to understand processes if you present them via diagrams and mind maps. They will choose videos over podcasts and will respond better to information shared in visually appealing formats. For planning, they would find visual timelines more useful than a list of milestones with deadlines. Approximately 65% of the population prefers learning in this manner.

• Aural or auditory learners?prefer listening and speaking when learning something new. They get a lot out of training discussion and interaction to process new concepts and articulate their understanding. They will naturally enjoy podcasts and audio books, and you may sometimes hear them reading documents aloud to take in information. When receiving written instructions, these learners will often play back what they read to check their understanding. Approximately 30% of the population prefer this style.

• Physical or kinaesthetic learners?need to physically experience what they are learning. They benefit immensely from practical and interactive activities during a training workshop and may be the first ones to volunteer for a test simulation or role-playing exercise. Tactile experiences are especially important for kinaesthetic learners, so something as simple as organising information written on post-it notes can be impactful. If possible, provide them with real-life opportunities to try-out new behaviours, perhaps with the support of a mentor or a buddy to give them feedback.? About 5% of the population prefer this learning style.

In addition to the three sensory learning styles above, there are two more you’re likely to notice in your team:

• Read/write or linguistic learners?rely on words and language to learn, and reading, writing and verbal communication works best for them. After training sessions, they’ll benefit hugely from handouts and reading materials to make the learning stick. They enjoy reading books, articles or manuals, and may take copious notes during a workshop or meeting to absorb what’s being said. They will enjoy writing summaries and reports to reinforce their learning, and they may instinctively translate diagrams into bullet points to understand the content better.

• Logical or mathematical learners?rely on logic and reasoning to learn something new, so presenting information in a logical way that illustrates how concepts connect with each other will engage them best. They will enjoy training that includes challenges to be solved, like a case study that requires analysis and problem solving to answer a specific question. They engage well with data and theoretical models, so try to incorporate both to back up the information you’re sharing.

While we provide approximate percentages of preferences for sensory learning styles across the population, we recommend you find out the preferred learning style of your team by observing and asking colleagues. There are tools like?VARK ?that provide?a score for visual, aural, read/write and kinaesthetic learning styles. This is useful to build awareness about what the general preference is, but it’s worth noting that while everybody would have a preference for a particular style, what works well in one context might not work as well in another, as we all have more than one preferred learning style, and which one we need to rely on will depend on what it is we’re learning.

Inclusive teams create environments where all learning styles are supported, providing information in different ways to support all learning styles. Our training sessions take this into account, but afterwards, it’s good to invite participants to revisit the content in ways that align with their preferred learning style, remembering that this may be a combination of more than one style. For example, mainly visual learners will go through their copy of the slides, aural learners will listen to our podcasts, linguistic learners will meet with colleagues to discuss what resonated, physical learners will try to put things into action and logical learners will be digging straight into the data!

This blog was first published on the Voice At The Table website ?

Sign up to our weekly newsletter here ?

If you liked this blog, you can read more here ?