Understand your learning styles to engage your audiences

An understanding of our preferred learning styles helps us be a better presenter. We tend to teach in the same styles in which we learn. This means we can fail to engage some of the people in our audiences. Traditionally educators referred to three basic types of learning styles or modal preferences: visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Most of us tend to use one of our senses more than the others to process information─and to use different learning styles for different tasks.

Howard Gardner took this further and developed a theory of Multiple Intelligences. He identified or defined seven intelligences:
• Linguistic/verbal
• Visual/spatial
• Auditory/musical
• Logical/mathematical
• Kinesthetic/hands on
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal

You can take a quick, self-scoring self-assessment and discover your preferred intelligences or learning styles. Gardner has since added two more intelligences: Naturalist and Existentialist.

You'll find slightly different terminology─and the addition of the Naturalist─in another assessment.

Self-awareness is important in the world of work and the world of life. The more we know, the more effectively we can adapt our style to positively influence others. And, as a presenter, engage them. Once engaged, they learn, they buy, they buy your ideas!