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98                                            Power Up Your Mind

                                  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.


                                    Eyes or visual            Activist
                                   Ears or auditory  +       Reflector      = Learning style
                                      Body or                 Theorist
                                 kinesthetic/physical        Pragmatist


                                  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
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