What kind of business learner are you?

Understanding how we tend to learn is important for each of us if we want to become more productive. If I gain a deeper insight into how my "learning mind" is wired, I can try to emphasize those ways that get me there faster, such as choose between a lecture and a book, a hands-on workshop versus a user's guide, this teacher against that one, etc.

As marketers and business people in general, or as info products producers, understanding how others tend to learn (read: absorb our information) makes us more efficient AND effective in our own teaching. After all, marketing, managing, promoting, and training are all forms of teaching. Making sure that we don't exclude an important segment in our marketplace translates into securing the possibility of revenue from that group. If we don't communicate with (teach to) most prospects in a way that suits their own modality, it's less likely we'll be able to persuade them to act in our favor (such as buy from us, recommend us, etc.).

There isn't one "ultimate" model of learning. In fact, there are several out there that I find quite relevant. For example, David Kolb's model I mentioned in a previous post is quite popular these days, and for good reasons: it is helpful in structuring our marketing and training copy. In other words, making sure that what we say and/or write strikes a chord with both the Why-people, the What-people, the How-people and the WhatIf-people gives us a method of assessing how impactful our copy is.

I recently came across another model I found quite intriguing, and potentially useful. It's called The Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles (or ILS). While developed mainly in and for the academic world, I found it particularly interesting also because it comes with a practical tool for assessing one's own "learning styles."

Like many others, the Felder-Silverman model talks about four dimensions (there must be a great attraction to the number FOUR among learning theoreticians!):

1. ACTIVE ← … → REFLECTIVE learners
2. SENSING ← … → INTUITIVE learners
3. VISUAL ← … → VERBAL learners
4. SEQUENTIAL ← … → GLOBAL learners

Before I summarize for you what all of this means, I'd like to conduct a non-scientific, but potentially interesting experiment: I'd like you to test yourself, and find out where YOU are across these four dimensions.

Aside from just doing all the other readers of this article a slight service, why would you want to know what YOUR learning style is, according to Felder-Silverman? There are many reasons, but let me focus on one in particular that I care a lot about: Knowing how I tend to learn helps me avoid the subconscious assumption that everybody else learns the same way. In other words, just because something I say or see or write or hear is particularly clear to or easy for me doesn't mean that it is automatically easy for others.

Am I successful in compensating for my own biases? Of course I am not, or at least as much as I would like to be. But now I have something concrete and well-articulated to work on.

You can take the test (there is no cost) at:

www.SergiuRecommends.com/FelderSilvermanTest

Once you get the results, you can share them with us either by entering a comment on my blog entry or by sending me an email at SSS@Clepsydra.net.

NOTE: If you're reading this article some place other than at SergiuSimmel.com, here is the link to this blog post where you can enter you comment:

www.SergiuSimmel.com/blog/LearningStyles1

Can you also tell us not just the results, but also how surprised you were (or were not) by the results.

Let me take the lead and share mine:

1. Active 3 (low)
2. Intuitive 5 (medium)
3. Visual 5 (medium)
4. Global 5 (medium)

You will understand more about what these mean once you get your own results: they come with some explanation. I will also post a summary of the model in a little while, but don't want to bias you too much now.

Go have fun, and report back! Thank you!