How does training cater for different learning styles?

Every individual has his or her own unique learning style and it is our responsibility as a training provider to discover these learning styles and utilise training methods that are effective for every participant at the session.

One way in which people learn differently is the speed at which they consume new information. Some people pick up new ideas and concepts very quickly, while others prefer to move at a slower pace. We handle this by taking a flexible approach, where we aim to cover fundamentals before detailed advanced techniques. This provides the opportunity for those who prefer to learn at a faster pace to move onto new techniques, while others are reinforcing the lessons learned in earlier stages.

We also work with different levels of self-confidence by using role-play in our trainings. We start with very simple, non-challenging situations and gradually increase the level of challenge over the duration of the training event, increasing confidence at the same time.

Some people learn best by visual means, while others are verbal learners who retain information more effectively when they are hearing or talking about new concepts. Others are ‘hands on’ or kinaesthetic learners, who learn best through physical actions.

To cater for all these different styles of learning we incorporate a mixture of techniques in our training. Traditional presentations and question and answer sessions work well for verbal learners; flip chart diagramming and visual aids improve the comprehension of visual learners; and role-play is very effective for kinaesthetic learners.

Before starting training, we ask all participants to take a strengths test to assess where their strengths lie. Strength-based training tailors the training session to include opportunities for participants to use their strengths to understand or use the information they are given. This information also helps us to divide people into groups where they have the opportunity to leverage complementary strengths.

By making the most of the individual strengths of your team members, we believe that you can achieve a higher return on training investment by enabling people to do their best by using their natural skills.

After identifying the key strengths of each of your members of staff, not only are we able to customise the learning experience to suit your team but we can also recommend ways for working with your team members to develop their skills and improve performance at work.