Many of us are aware of the
three most commonly discussed learning styles: auditory, visual,
and kinaesthetic.
Auditory learners are most attuned to learning via listening, visual primarily from in-person examples or videos,
and kinaesthetic generally learn best from "doing" or actively engaging in an activity.
Most people use a blend of these
various learning styles to consume, comprehend, and contextually apply necessary information.
There is a fourth, lesser-discussed learning style that many also benefit the most from: read/write.
Many of us have experience
with this from re-writing notes and re-reading material when in school, or when they've had an important presentation to learn and made flash cards.
Some people rely nearly solely on this learning style. I am one of those people.
It wasn't that I wasn't intelligent - I took and performed well in mostly AP courses.
It's not that I never wanted to learn any of the other ways.
Life would've been much easier if I could just attend a class and instantly recall all the information, but I never could.
Even my Dean of Students acknowledged
it wasn't useful for me to be in a classroom setting and relieved me of that requirement.
Books on tape have never
been effective for me, and podcasts, though very entertaining, do not do a whole lot for me in the sense of practical application.
When presented with strictly video information, without closed captioning to transcribe, I can watch it 20 times and will only recall about 1/3 of what I would with captions.
In college, I studied history.
I would literally read an entire textbook, transcribe it, and retranscribe all my notes when it came time for finals.
A lot of this information stays with me to this day, but I can't remember a single thing that was taught to me in a lecture that I
didn't transcribe and repeatedly consume in this manner.
Because of my shortcomings in this area, I developed deep level of empathy for
my trainees that were giving their best effort, but couldn't get things to click.
I knew how it felt and wanted to be able to provide
them with the same opportunities everyone else had to reach their goals.
Because of this, I developed a playbook of best practices which ensured different types of learners were able to receive the help
they were seeking.
It begins with a discovery process, and ends with actionable ways to support your trainees.
For starters, the easiest way to get to the bottom of this, is to simply ask the person how they prefer to learn. I know - that
sounds like common-sense (because it is).
However, too many trainers don't ever ask.
They have their program for training and people are "either going to get it, or they won't and this won't be for them".
Well, of course it won't be for them if they never had a
real chance at being successful because you were so certain your technique was the best one.
A key challenge for trainers and trainees, is that the way we are informationally taught things in school settings doesn't always translate to real
world scenarios.
The workplace is typically one of them.
Many people do not know their most effective learning style, and that's OK.
As trainers, part of the job is figuring that out or providing different avenues for these people to learn on their own if our way of instructing isn't
useful to them.
Because people may not know, we must use a discovery process to uncover facts.
I set up training information that was all relatively similar in quantity
and difficulty to implement, then presented it in each of the four different learning styles.
I also kept a scorecard with me, to see how
well the trainees were able to apply these principles later.
Commonly, people were saying they were kinaesthetic learners to try to seem willing, able, and excited to get out there and sell.
Once we would get into the work, this frequently ended up not being their most effective way to learn.
They would often score higher in other areas when we were going through sales processes where the content had been presented in a visual or
auditory way, as an example.
After adopting these scorecards, my team tripled in size and became much more effective.
These scorecards helped guide not only how to present content to them, but which of the other trainers in our office should present content to
them based on that trainer's own strengths.
Downstream results on my team were also impacted positively after implementing these score cards.
It was arguably more useful for newer trainers, because it was one less thing to worry about.
They knew they had the best approach for that person.
I highly recommend doing something similar to any trainer or team leader out there.
It's tough for someone to be in their 20s or older and have to admit that they don't know how they are best able to learn.
It's not their fault. Many haven't ever had anyone ask them, or try to help them understand how they learn best.
You can be that influence in their life, if you choose to be.
Here are some tips I picked up from my experience, plus academia, to assist in reaching different styles of learners: