Power Up Your Mind: Learn faster, work smarter

strongly developed preference for taking in information visually or

auditorily.

To keep it simple, I suggest that a combination of two words,

one from each of the following groups, will give you a more com-

plete description of yourself as a learner.

Thus, there are 12 different possible combinations: visual/reflector,

auditory/pragmatist, etc. Once you recognize these simple descrip-

tions of different styles, work will never be the same again. You will

suddenly be much better equipped to predict the ways in which

your colleagues will react to certain situations and act accordingly.

When you are consciously aware of your preferred learning

style, you can take steps to develop those areas that you do not

instinctively prefer. You also become more aware of how and where

you would ideally like to take in and process information. If you are

facilitating a session or giving a presentation, you can make sure you

don’t stick rigidly to your own preferred learning style and run the risk

of failing to hit most of your audience! If you are really interested,

then you can also work out your Hermann Brain Dominance™ and

Myers-Briggs™ profiles to give you additional information.

Learning styles and meetings

One moment where people’s learning styles are particularly appar-

ent is during meetings, as the two contrasting meetings in Annie’s

day in Chapter 1 made clear. Using the Honey and Mumford learn-

ing styles, you can see how the different types might react:

 Activists are the last to settle down at the start of a meeting. They

want to brainstorm everything and are always reluctant to read any

papers that have been tabled, preferring to talk about the practical

98 Power Up Your Mind

Eyes or visual

Ears or auditory

Body or

kinesthetic/physical

Activist

Reflector

Theorist

Pragmatist

• = Learning style