Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

experience

Comprehension Reliance on conceptual interpretation and symbolic

representation

Dialectic:
Transforming Experience

Intention

Internal reflection about

Attributes of Interviewed Executives

and ideas
Extension Active manipulation of external world
Learning Styles
Style Definition Greatest Strength

Convergent

Dominant learning abilities

of abstract

conceptualization and active

experimentation.

Problem solving, decision

making, practical

application of ideas

Divergent

Concrete experience and

reflective observation, generating alternative ideas

and implications.

Imaginative ability and

awareness of meaning and values.

Assimilation

Abstract conceptualization

and reflective observation.

Important that theory be

logically sound and precise.

Inductive reasoning and

ability to create theoretical

models, assimilating

disparate observations into

integrated explanation.

Accommodative

Concrete experience and

active experimentation;

opportunity seeking, risk taking, and action.

Doing things, carrying out

plans and tasks and getting

involved in new experiences.

Note: Adapted fromDevelopment by D.A. Kolb, pp. 41, 68, 69, 77, 78. Copyright 1984 by Prentice Hall Experiential Learning: Experience as the Source of Learning and.

Illeris. In his 2007 book How We Learn, Illeris expanded the Kolb (1984)
perspective of experiential learning. Specifically:
The concepts ‘experience’ and ‘experiential learning’ [go] beyond distinguishing
between the immediate perception and the elaborated comprehension; it implies
also that the process does not relate only to cognitive learning (as is, for example,
the case in Kolb’s work), but covers all three dimensions [i.e., cognitive,
incentive, and interactive] dimensions of learning. (p. 125)