Got PS?

Episode 7 - How do you learn?

• Deanna Stanley & Kara Burgan • Season 1 • Episode 7

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We all learn in different ways, and often inn multiple ways. Sometime it's hard to help someone new because they learn differently that you. Join Kara and Deanna ask they talk about one learning style model and how they learn.

For more reading:
https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/learning-styles-preferences/
https://www.mindtools.com/addwv9h/learning-styles
https://bau.edu/blog/types-of-learning-styles/

Deanna:

Hi, this is Deanna,

Kara:

and this is Kara

Deanna:

and this is the Got PS podcast, the podcast that's all about psychological safety. Kara, it's been two weeks since we met last, and in that time, it's been both Mother's Day and your birthday. I just want to give you a round of applause and let you know that you are appreciated and loved.

Kara:

Thank

Deanna:

you

Kara:

very much. My kids sort of skedaddled and I got a happy birthday hug. Not too much else, but sometimes the gift of Silence is the best when you're a mother. I was kind of happy to have a little bit of time to myself. I did get some time to walk our dog Ty and listen to some books and chill out. It was a fairly good birthday. I did go to see Daniel Sloss last night, so.

Deanna:

How was that?

Kara:

It was great. He's a very good person in terms of discussing very, very serious topics and then poking fun at it, which I consider to be my life mantra, take everything seriously and nothing seriously. He is a comedian after my own heart. Love him for that. And the funny thing is, is that friends of mine who I hadn't seen in a while who literally live down the street from me were one row back from us. So I hadn't seen him on the street, but yeah, I saw them.

Deanna:

We end up meeting up with people in the strangest of circumstances. I have a set of neighbors, anytime the Book of Mormon's in town, they go and see it. Mostly so they can watch the audience as they freak out when they realize it was not the wholesome play they thought they were going to.

Kara:

I love these people. Have I met these neighbors? Probably not, but they watch my dog when I'm gone. I love them already because that would be something I would do too. Totally.

Deanna:

All right. Let's move on with the subject matter of the podcast. We're talking about full stack psychological safety, which has five components to it. Starting with culture, which is really about how your company supports psychological safety or not. And then into four stages for the teams, including community, conversation, contribution, and engagement. Today, we're talking about conversation safety.

Kara:

Specifically, we're going to be talking about one aspect to bolster it up. But what does it mean in the first place? It means creating a space for open communication, a space where everybody's opinion and contributions Are a worthwhile investment. When you bring somebody on board usually they're new to the project at hand and you have to invest in them, which means helping them get up to speed, what's the, Customer that you're working with. What are the customer trying to accomplish? You're trying, to get your new person fully up to speed on all of that in order for them to be able to then, contribute effectively to the team. We're talking about spending some time with your folks in ways that get them up to speed. The way we're going to talk about that today, Deanna is,

Deanna:

Learning styles. we're going to be talking about the different ways people learn. A lot of people talk

Kara:

wait a minute, Deanna, I have a question.

Deanna:

Okay, sure.

Kara:

What's 10 plus 11?

Deanna:

Huh? It's 21.

Kara:

Okay. All right. Cool. Thanks.

Deanna:

Alright, that was weird. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. We're going to be talking about learning styles today because people

Kara:

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I got another question.

Deanna:

Okay?

Kara:

What's 11 plus 10?

Deanna:

Didn't I just answer this? Did you not understand the answer I gave you?

Kara:

Well, I need a little help, please.

Deanna:

Okay, let's get a little bit more detailed. you're going to put the two numbers under each other, and then add the rightmost together, which gets you a 1. And then you add the leftmost together, and that gets you a 2. Together, that's a 21.

Kara:

Oh, okay. Cool. No, I get that. All right. Go ahead.

Deanna:

Alright, awesome. Back to where we were going. We're talking about learning styles, which you may have heard of. People learn in different ways, and we're going to be talking about some of the ways that people learn.

Kara:

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Can I ask another question?

Deanna:

Another one? Sure.

Kara:

Okay. So if I have two numbers, maybe like 10 and 11, and I need to get their sum, how would I go about doing that?

Deanna:

But I've already answered this twice. Why aren't you understanding?

Kara:

me with my question, please?

Deanna:

let's see. Maybe it's just you need to do this yourself. Let's start from the basics. What's 1 plus 0?

Kara:

Three?

Deanna:

I give up. I can't take this anymore.

Kara:

Wait a minute, is there a video I could watch, maybe go off on my own, pick it up,

Deanna:

Why don't you understand? Ah, and this is why we're going to be talking about learning styles. True story, I've had almost this exact same interaction only on a technical subject.

Kara:

And clarification, I know what 10 plus 11 is. But this does really highlight, you can talk to five different people in your team and they each have a different way that they need to, ingest the information in order to get what you're trying to get at.

Deanna:

There's been a lot of studying on how people learn. In fact, there's more than 70 different learning style models out there, which is overwhelming. We're going to pick a simple and well known model to talk about. Yes, there may be a model that's more detailed. Yes, there may be a model that better suits your situation. But when there's the 70 different freaking models, you've got to pick one and stick with it. And I would prefer something that's simple and easy to remember.

Kara:

What is this model, Deanna?

Deanna:

It's got an acronym, and I can't remember it. See what I said about complex models? But anyway, deals with four different types of learning. Some people learn by reading, some people learn by listening, some people learn by watching, and some people learn by doing.

Kara:

If you go to your kid's elementary school and they talk about, kinesthetic learners and audio learners and visual learners. It sounds like the bread and butter of learning styles that are employed in the American education system. This is trackin I get it.

Deanna:

Simple, relatively easy to remember, and yes, there's an acronym out there. Remember that people don't learn with just one style. Depending on the material, they may choose one style more than the other. Or it may be that they start with one type of learning and then as they get more comfortable, they move to a different type of learning. I think you've experienced that recently, haven't you Kara?

Kara:

interestingly enough both of my kids are on an exploratory path of figuring out their best learning styles. They're not young by any stretch of the imagination. I have a 15 year old and an almost 20 year old My 20 year old just found out that she probably has autism. She knows that she's had a little bit of issues she can't do online classes for squat. She just will totally tune out The only way she can stand it is if she has a fidget tool in her hands she'll be fidgeting and listening at the same time and it helps it solidify into her brain a little bit more But she would prefer not to do online learning at all and she's also just trying to explore some other things that tend to help the subject matter stick with her, which is a big deal because when you're in college, you're more left to your own devices. The professor just dishes out the information and you better know the best way to ingest it so it stays in your brain because they're not going to be helping you with that. But we're trying to be a little bit nicer. You're going to try to help people a little bit make sure that, get information in a way that they can, ingest it.

Deanna:

It is something we have to remember. Not everybody learns the way you do, and even though you're explaining something and it makes complete and total sense to you, it may not make sense to the person who's trying to learn from you. For instance, every year I would go to my father and ask for help in my math class. He'd sit down, he'd very patiently explain to me how to do whatever my problem was. And I wouldn't get it. He'd very patiently explain it in a different way and I wouldn't get it. He'd try a third time and I wouldn't get it. He'd blow up and start yelling at me because I couldn't figure it out. I'd run to my bedroom and swear I'd do perfect in math so I wouldn't have to ask any more questions. It worked.

Kara:

that's actually a happy ending. I remember roles reverse. My dad went to community college and he was asking me for help in physics class.

Deanna:

Oh wow.

Kara:

I was trying to help him and we both pissed each other off and he ended up dropping the class and he never finished his two year degree. So, so your story is much more uplifting.

Deanna:

Remember, everyone learns differently, and unfortunately we tend to get impatient when people aren't learning as fast as we want or in the way we expect them to learn. it's not that they're an idiot. Okay, it probably isn't that they're an idiot.

Kara:

Or they're not motivated.

Deanna:

It's more likely that they need to learn in a different way than what you're trying to explain to them. It can be really hard to communicate information if someone's learning style is different from yours. Especially in a workplace where we simply expect everyone to understand if you throw some documents at them and give them a slide presentation. The fact that some people don't learn that way ends up damaging them in the workplace. We really need to think a little bit more about how we can accommodate them.

Kara:

I do have another child that's also struggling with learning and ingesting information. But for different reasons, they've been going through a lot of high anxiety and it's really disrupted their freshman year of high school. I was talking to them a little bit last night about, can We salvage some of the classes this year, they're going to be going to a dedicated more hands on school that is in the school district. But, they're going to have to ship off into a different town to be able to go to this more smaller, special school No matter what your learning style is, if you have anxiety, And in the workplace, it could be translated into not getting enough time to ramp up, not having it recognized that this is a new type of technology, a new customer, new project, and all those things you're going to have to let this new person ramp up on. If you're not giving them enough time. Space to do that. Anxiety is going to kick in because of course they still want to be impactful in the project. They want to be seen as a valuable person, but if their anxiety kicks off, it's scrambling your brains. You will not ingest and keep information the way you expect to. That's what's going on with my youngest as the school year is whittling down and they feel more and more behind. They're like, I can't, I can't, I'm not retaining anything. I'm having a hard time. That kind of anxiety can happen in work as well. My youngest is not unusual.

Deanna:

People struggle. Sometimes they're not able to explain why they don't understand the information you're giving them. Be aware of that. Also think about what physical issues may be affecting their learning. For instance, if you're trying to give somebody a presentation and they're partially deaf, they're probably not going to get what you're telling them as well as you'd expect.

Kara:

That just happened recently. One of customers on one of the projects that I work on. He's like, can everybody get on camera? Because I am deaf in one ear and I struggle to hear even with headphones and being on a team's meeting and trying to turn the volume way up and I supplement with, being able to read people's lips. He, requested everybody be online because he knew if he missed any part of the conversation, he was going to be lost. He was going to become frustrated. He was not going to be a part of the conversation. He wasn't going to be picking up any kind of information we were sharing with him. It just wasn't going to work out that well.

Deanna:

Closed captioning for the win. Everyone should try and do that.

Kara:

I Netflix.

Deanna:

I do it on everything if I can.

Kara:

I do as well. I got into habit when the kids were younger. They can hear the words and read them at the same time. And it helps them pick up language. But for me, I want to make sure I'm getting absolutely everything I can out of the conversation. Sometimes that does mean closed captioning.

Deanna:

I've heard that's really good if you're learning a foreign language. Go watch the Spanish language station with closed captioning on. You just absorb it better.

Kara:

Exactly. So Deanna, out of the four ways, which is your preferred way, reading, listening, watching, or doing?

Deanna:

I will learn a very, very shallow amount of information and then I will plunge into whatever the topic is figuring. I will muddle through it. Remember how I said people have different learning styles, and they may combine them. I combine them really quick. I start out by listening or reading. And that'll last me a very brief period of time before I'm going to jump in and just cause havoc

Kara:

ah, see, and I'm definitely, a reader or an audio booker or whatever. I start kind of high level and then I'm looking for deeper and more detailed resources as I go. Then I dive way down so that in the end I have the ability to uplevel again.

Deanna:

Oh, that's interesting. you mentioned two different learning techniques here, reading and listening. What do you prefer to learn via reading and what do you prefer to learn via listening?

Kara:

Say I have a customer and they put out a RFP and I need to support them in that. RFPs are pretty boring. I probably have to read that because not anybody's putting together an audiobook of RFPs and if they are, I'm sorry for your career choices, but.

Deanna:

that could make a really good sleep book.

Kara:

Oh, that's right. I have been having a little bit of trouble sleeping. I blame menopause, but I'll take any kind of solution to that that I can get. Usually I'm underscoring and highlighting because what I'm trying to do is pull little bits of Important things out of all the fluff that's usually around it. When it comes to leadership books or books where I'm trying to, grapple with big principles and their stories I like an audio book. How about you, Deanna?

Deanna:

I will read as long as it's short and relatively interesting. If it's more than two or three pages, I am not going to read it. In fact, if you send me more than a paragraph in email, I'm not going to read it. I am horrible about that. I really prefer to learn by listening. Whether it's an audio book or going to a class. I really do enjoy sitting there in a class, listening, taking notes, and focusing.

Kara:

What you said stirred something in my brain. I am infamous for writing very long emails, which Deanna berates me about. What's funny though, is that I will receive long emails and I'll be pissed that I got a long email and Deanna and I will be texting each other back and forth going, what in the world did they think we're going to read this thing? However, The internet has risen, the amount of information has risen, the number of technologies that are available that you can learn about and specialize in has, exponentially risen. Do you feel your desire to not read comes from just the onslaught? Of stuff that we get today information and everything else going on in the technology field that it's just so much information that you just can't read one more thing.

Deanna:

I think it's just that I'm impatient. Reading is not the best way to ingest for me. I love to read for entertainment, but don't expect me to get too much out of it

Kara:

i, get in those days where I've hit my peak of words and I just, can't read anymore.

Deanna:

I'm the queen of skimming. Give me a technical article. I will skim it and have it done in about 30 seconds. Because I don't actually want to read it. Even if it's an interesting subject! I don't want to read it.

Kara:

If you're giving materials to somebody who's onboarding, you should probably realize they can only take so much at a time. New information in a day is limited, because you're sitting there stewing on it. You're trying to acclimate it into your brain. You get tired after learning a bunch of stuff. You gotta be realistic with onboarding time.

Deanna:

That's why you should assign anyone who's joining your team a mentor, someone they can just ask questions of. One of the things that came about on a project you and I were both on Kara, is every so often they would have a customer 101 session. There would be a presentation explaining how this all fits together and Why you're in the muck. That was really useful because you didn't have to sit there and read. You got to listen. You got to watch the presentation. It really helped people who learn in ways other than reading to absorb this kind of information.

Kara:

Plus, I get frustrated if I can't get a question answered right away when I'm reading new material. When you come onto a project, you don't know a lot of things But the first thing you don't know that makes it difficult to adjust some of the learning materials is the basic lexicon around that project. There's always terminology that's inherent to, that particular project. And if you don't know that, and you start reading some of these things, you're probably not going to absorb very much of it. A recent project there was a an everyday word, but it was used differently in this particular project. It had an intrinsic meaning to it, and every time I was, reading about, say, signals. I have an EE background, so when I hear signal, I think oscilloscopes and all these kinds of things and the signal meant, something from like one aircraft to another, and I'm totally making this up, but it had an intrinsic meaning that made no sense in my brain. It's so nice to talk to somebody and say, okay, you're using words that, I don't know that I understand them. You could get that clarified right away.

Deanna:

True story. I once had a good 20 30 minute design discussion with someone. Deep, intense, talking about interfaces and everything. And only at the end of the conversation did we realize we were talking about two different things with the same acronym.

Kara:

Oh, geez. Who was right and who was wrong and how screwed up was the wrong person's brain after you were done talking?

Deanna:

The weird thing was, the design discussion worked for both of us. Both walked away having gotten things, even though we were talking about two different things. Unfortunately, the part that we were trying to talk about, which was the interface between our two systems we had to start over. And,

Kara:

to show you, your idea of having that 101, that's an easy way to, get lexicon issues out of the way, the acronym issues, all those kinds of things. So that, your new person is starting with that base language so they can ingest, learning materials. How about videos? Do you like videos? Yeah. I know you hate videos.

Deanna:

really. I

Kara:

I was setting you up.

Deanna:

It's weird.

Kara:

It's funny because I'm doing these onboarding videos to get a PIV card for a customer. The way that the person is speaking is so slow and I cannot speed it up. I'm ingesting every other word because if somebody's speaking slow, I'm thinking about five different things. I'm done.

Deanna:

When I have to do training videos with a test at the end, it just plays. I'm not listening to it. And when I'm answering the test questions, if I'm not sure, I'm Googling the answers. I have totally not paid attention to the video.

Kara:

Getting through these onboarding videos that I have to do for this PIVC. Oh, it's been torture.

Deanna:

I will say that watching can be effective if it's done in person, because then it feels more interactive. You can ask questions. It tends to be a little less likely to tune out, because you're not sitting in front of your computer with the internet. in another window with all those cat pictures in whatever else you're interested in. Just screaming, pay attention to me. Don't pay attention to the video. Pay attention to me.

Kara:

It's Pug Pictures for me. Because I have a Puggle. I'm into Pugs these days.

Deanna:

We all have to have something.

Kara:

Or we'd all go bananas. What about doing? When do you use doing, Deanna?

Deanna:

I use doing almost as soon as I start a project, I tend to just jump in and figure I know 10 percent that I can muddle through the rest. I am firmly of the belief that you can fake it until you make it. And it always strikes me as amazing when I deal with people who don't do that. It's like, what? It's obvious. Just click this button. Oh, I was afraid to click this button. I didn't know what it was going to do. It's like, come on, just click the button. What's the worst that can

Kara:

my kids feel that way with any new app. I'm like, how do I do this? And my daughter swipes the phone from me and starts hammering And she's done. I'm hoping my kids will not have my hesitation issues. I'm not as bad as your 80 year old grandmother that won't even touch a single button. But there are times if it's not totally intuitive, I just get really frustrated and I don't want to go hunting and pecking for how to get something done, I give it to my daughter. I let her do it. they earn their keep that way.

Deanna:

I mostly learn by doing. I want to get my hands dirty and figure things out. For me, I retain it a lot better if I've actually done it, than read about it or taken notes on it. Sometimes I really wish I would take notes, but I also know I'm never going to.

Kara:

It's always good to know thyself. I'm not usually using technologies these days, I'm usually providing consulting services, guidance, to the projects that I'm on. My doing is usually writing summary notes. Which I know you don't like, but that's the way that I get it stuck in my brain. I may never look at those notes again, but it's the way I get it stuck in my brain.

Deanna:

People who learn by reading tend to be really, really good at writing summarization notes. If you can figure out what someone's strengths are, you may be able to use them in ways.

Kara:

That's very true.

Deanna:

write summarizations.

Kara:

If you know you're going to have a project, and there's somebody who prefers reading and is good at taking summary notes, it may be you stick them in charge of your confluence page, and

Deanna:

As long as it's not always the women you're sticking on the writing the summaries.

Kara:

Women often are asked to do the glue type work and the secretarial type work. We're always telling women do it occasionally, especially if it helps you on board with a project and, helps you learn and grow yourself on the project. Don't do it all the time because they will let it fall on you.

Deanna:

I take really crappy notes, so they learn to never ask me to do that.

Kara:

When you write though, you write very crisply. I tend to embellish a lot in my writing. You tend to just be very straightforward and explain it in the simplest of terms. So,

Deanna:

get it done.

Kara:

There's different writing styles for different ingestion styles, Even if something technical, I need to make it a flowing story. I do try to make it a little bit more flowery. You're much more like for those that just want, the cliff notes, how to do it, where to go, what to do. You're very good at that.

Deanna:

If I can't do it in a PowerPoint slide or two, then it isn't worth doing. A couple of things to think about before we finish this up. I want to say that people who learn by listening tend to talk to themselves while they're learning. They repeat things back. If you've got someone in your team who always seems to be mumbling, that's probably a learning technique for them. Don't get upset or offended. Maybe put them somewhere quiet where they're not going to frustrate everybody else. Watching people, they really like to see the relationship between things. And that's really what pictures does really well, is explains how things are related to each other. While people who read may want verbal descriptions on how things are related to each other, people who like to watch are all about a cool diagram.

Kara:

I would say this is your forte because you like PowerPoint and you tend to like to keep things brief than having a very powerful picture tends to be your forte.

Deanna:

People who like to do, sometimes you'll see them When they're talking through something, using their hands in ways that make no sense to you, but they're actually sort of walking through what they've done in the past kinesthetically. They feel like they're actually doing the work as they're explaining it to you.

Kara:

I have a funny offside is when I used to work 25 years ago, I used to talk so much with my hands that people started to notice every time I said certain things, I did the same hand motion over and over again. They started coming up with Kara sign language. KSL, and there were certain things that became a thing everybody on the team did.

Deanna:

That is awesome. Be aware that people are going to be learning differently and they're going to have their own weird little quirks. It might be worth, especially if you're starting up with a new team, talking about how do people feel best communicating? How do they learn? So that when you bring in somebody new, you can pair them up with somebody who actually learns the same way and who can help them through the material.

Kara:

Make sure you're making some space for somebody to have the time to onboard and to, get all the information. that they need and ingest it before they have to, contribute and, make that be a significant enough time so that they don't get anxious about it.

Deanna:

Remember, if you start getting frustrated because somebody doesn't understand what you say, that's a good time to say you have to go to the bathroom.

Kara:

This was a great episode. I had a lot of fun talking about it. Deanna, thank you for doing all the research on it.

Deanna:

Thank you, this was a good time. And to all of you listening, we'll talk to you later.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Deanna Stanley

Host
Head Shot

Kara Burgan

Co-host

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