Individual centred training

Leading on from the previous post, I have over the last year evolved my methods of training and mentoring. I have changed the way I support individuals and develop materials since I read the book by Temple Grandin, on “Thinking in Pictures”. I was lucky enough to go to a conference on Autism in May in the UK and hear Temple Grandin speak. Although I am very interested in her work on animal welfare and understanding how animals think, it is her thoughts on how humans learn and communicate that have had the most effect on me. She was talking at the conference specifically about suiting individual jobs and organisational roles to a person’s abilities, strengths and weaknesses.

We each have our own methods of thought processing, and we may use either visual, or verbal thought processes. Often we will have associational thoughts and wonder how we began thinking about ice-cream and ended up thinking about the neighbour’s car. We then realise it is because everything we thought about was the colour red and the colour was the factor our brain used to make sense of the range of information. This is an example of visual thinking. Visual thinkers are great at computer programming, photography and design, or solving engineering problems.

I am a verbal, language based thinker. I love using words to express what I think and would naturally produce a paragraph of text to say what could easily be demonstrated by a picture or photograph. I just feel more comfortable using that medium. I am not the least bit practical. I have no spatial awareness so if I had to assemble a piece of furniture I would have to follow the instructions word by word and if they were wrong I would struggle to overcome them to finish assembling the piece correctly. I must take this into account if I am required to undertake a practical project and make sure that I have visual thinkers with me in the team, to create balance and be able to be effective in completing the project.

So when I design training courses I also have to recognise that it must meet the needs of both verbal and visual thinkers. I also have to remember that what might be easy for me to understand as a language based thinker is quite the opposite for a visual thinker. It has made me change my training aids and the way I work with people quite radically. So next time you plan a presentation or a training module, think about the thinkers, otherwise many people may just not understand the message you are trying to convey.