How do you learn best?
In the coming weeks, perhaps months, face to face meetings are on hold. People are racing to online platforms to engage and connect. The CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, has graciously offered his platforms for free to classrooms from K-12. And schools are preparing to teach all their classes online for the rest of their Spring term.
What will this shift to online platforms mean for the millions of adults in the corporate sector who are being thrown headlong into a new way of interacting? It means for a great many people, the learning curve just got really steep.
Damon Brown, Entrepreneur, and author of, “The Bite-Sized Entrepreneur” synthesized the five styles of learning beautifully in the following statement: “There are five established learning styles: Visual (learning best through visual depictions, graphics, charts, diagrams, and body language.) Auditory (you learn best by listening and discussing.) Written (you learn best by reading and taking notes,) Kinesthetic learners have to do something to get it, and Multimodal learners shift between different techniques.”
Knowing how you learn is an incredibly helpful way to approach this curve. As a leader, knowing how your individual team members learn will also be a tremendous boon.
As a coach, this is one of the most effective tools I have. Not only do I ask people how they learn, but I also encourage them to tell me how they feel when I have them shift into the multimodal state, or into a mode of learning that’s new for them.
Anxiety is already high with the ever-shifting landscape of health and the economy. Being not merely asked, but required, to shift how they learn is going to place yet another, and a perhaps unknown stressor on people. I’ll certainly be doing more online work, and being a highly kinesthetic learner, I much prefer face to face interactions and having space where I am free to move and express myself. Being limited to a small frame, and having to quickly shift from the screen to typing in a chatbox, and continuously having to be present while sitting is definitely going to challenge me.
As a leader in your organization, or as a facilitator or instructor, I encourage you to take some time to answer and explore how you learn. Then, when you jump into this brave new world of online learning and engaging, share how you feel about it it. Is it exhilarating? Exciting? Scary as hell or frustrating? This is an excellent way, as a leader, to practice your Emotional Intelligence.
In addition to sharing how you are doing, actively encourage your team to explore and articulate how they learn best too. As your team is learning, check-in with, and ask about their experience within this new environment. Give them space to absorb information in a way that they may have never tried before. Reassure them it’s OK to be frustrated with a new process. If they look frustrated–chances are, they are, so as a leader, encourage them to name it and claim it. Learning is a whole lot easier when you have someone to guide you through it, someone who honors your style and approach.
Now is the time to step into authentic leadership. Model good behaviors. Take empathy to a whole new level so that it transcends across the computer screen into the homes and hearts of your remote workers.