Accelerating Business Learning
Identify Individual Styles to Achieve Results

By Lou Russell

In today’s world, rarely a day goes by that there isn’t something new to learn. With rapid market change, political unrest and disruptive technology, businesses reinvent themselves frequently. To be resilient, companies have to grow their ability to learn, and learn fast. Learning is truly a market differentiator.

Though most of us were taught in school in similar ways, we each prefer to learn in a unique manner. If a person is able to learn in his or her preferred way, the learning is faster, easier and more easily transferable to the job. As an added benefit, effective learning can lower stress and reduce conflicts in companies through improved individual and team communication. Finally, if you enjoyed learning it the first time, you’ll be open to learning more.

In contrast, frustration with learning can increase stress, cause resistance and challenge feelings of self-worth. If a person is not learning in his or her preferred way, the learning is less likely to transfer and the person is more likely to be frustrated. A negative learning experience creates a communication block into the future.

This article will help you understand your unique learning style. Leaders can also use this with their staff to understand more completely how to help their teams learn.

Intake styles
Studies on how people prefer to get new information into their brains have been conducted for years (Neuro Linguistic Programming), represented by three categories:

• Visual – intake by seeing
• Auditory – intake by hearing
• Kinesthetic – intake by doing, touching

Each individual has a combination of these three preferences. To get an idea of your own preference, take a look at the coffee cups below. Choose the coffee cup that you like best – the Van Gogh, the music or the Puddle Jumper.

There are certain physical characteristics that tend to track with these preferences. The table below illustrates some of these differences. To begin to see what your intake preference is, circle any behavior that seems like you:

Where did you have the least things circled? This preference likely belongs to the people that you find most difficult to communicate with. Notice how their intake preferences are different to help you adapt to them so that communication does occur.

Multiple Intelligences
Dr. Howard Gardner, from Harvard University, developed a concept called Multiple Intelligences in the early 1980s. You just learned that intake styles are how you prefer to receive new information. Multiple Intelligence is how you process the information you just received to, for example, solve problems or brainstorm. In “Frames of the Mind,” Gardner describes his initial list of intelligences, which includes:

Intelligence Aptitude for…

Different people will have different combinations of strength in these intelligences. For example, online learning may not be good for people with lower spatial/visual aptitudes. People with strong bodily/kinesthetic aptitudes will need to move around while they are learning. Pick the three to four aptitudes that seem the most like you from the list above. Figure out ways to use these aptitude strengths to learn more quickly.

Triune Brain
The Triune Brain, a functional model of the brain, is composed of three areas: the neocortex, the limbic system and the reptilian. If learning is successful, the newly learned item is stored in the neocortex. The limbic system attaches emotion to a new memory. Think of how hearing a certain piece of music takes you to an old memory and a specific emotion.

When you are threatened, emotionally or physically, the reptilian brain will protect the brain, closing off any new learning. This is commonly known as fight or flight. When a learner is under a great deal of stress, they cannot learn.

This primitive response influences learning in business today. Multi-tasking, constant change, validation and assessment have become the norm, increasing the pressure on individuals.

• In terms of your own learning, what environment do you need to learn?
• What triggers your reptilian brain?
• What triggers the reptilian brain of your team members?
• What kind of environment is your team operating in?

By simply accepting that we all learn differently, we can begin to get ourselves what we need to learn. As leaders, we can observe and talk to staff to determine what their unique learning needs are. To accelerate learning means helping each individual learn in a way that is best for them.

Author: Lou Russell is president and CEO of Russell Martin & Associates, a 20-year-old consulting and training company headquartered in Indianapolis. She is the author of “The Accelerated Learning Fieldbook,” “Project Management for Trainers,” “Training Triage,” “IT Leadership Alchemy,” “Leadership Training” and “The 10 Steps to Successful Project Management” (due out in May 2007). Contact Russell at (317) 475-9311 or www.russellmartin.com

[Back to Your Web Exclusives]