I have to be candid in my answer and say, folks, we’re in 2024 and everybody has their own little thought bubbles around learning styles, which is fine. But it still makes me wonder why we are still, in a group delivery environment, I guess it really makes me ponder: are we really thinking that in a room we’ve only got one learning style and everybody is that learning style, so we’re going to cater all of our delivery to that one learning style? Or if we’re dealing one-on-one with individuals, we’re just going to go to their predominant learning style?

You see, for me, what I’ve discovered through the NLP stuff, the VAK questionnaire and all of that, is that we need to appreciate that fundamentally learning styles exist and everybody has their own learning style. But everybody has a mix of the visual, the auditory, and the kinaesthetic, and maybe there’s more auditory, more kinaesthetic, more visual. For me, here’s the shocking statement: it doesn’t matter. What I mean by that is all of your delivery should be touching on all three of those anyway.

I’ll just share an experience I had maybe about five years ago now. I actually went over to the USA for a seminar and it was with someone I very much respected. He was a millionaire and he was doing some amazing things. This gentleman said he would be running the seminar. I was travelling from Australia over to America for a two-day seminar, so I saved my money, two days over to America and then coming straight back. I had some high expectations. Now, myself personally, I’m much more of a kinaesthetic and auditory learner, and last of all visual. I got over to the event, sat there, and what did this gentleman do for two days? All he did was show PowerPoints and speak at us.

I came out of that event and I called him up and said, “Excuse me, I would like a refund.” The reason I said that was because I walked away and thought I haven’t learned anything at all. He said, “Well, what do you mean?” I said, “Well, you said we were going to do role plays. We never did role plays. You said we were actually going to engage with the information, but we never actively used the information. I’m more of an experiential learner.” And he said, “Oh, okay, but I thought everybody…” and then the whole conversation went a little bit interesting.

Really, from that moment onwards, talking to so many different people and training over so many years, I’ve also had experiences where I’ve been more kinaesthetically and auditorily leaning, and then visual people have said, “Oh, could you give us something to read?” or “Could you write that up?” And I’ve thought, “Oh, but don’t you just learn like me?” I’ve had to have the learning experiences of realising that yes, we talk about learning styles, but how about we talk about balanced delivery?

I would say that if, as a default, you are delivering in ways that include discussion, practical activities, visuals, group activities, and all of these things, then the whole learning styles thing sort of goes out the window. It’s no longer a concern, because everybody’s needs are being taken care of. They kind of feel like, “Oh yeah, I had a moment to discuss. I’m cool. I feel fulfilled as the learner.” Or kinaesthetic people feel like, “I did an activity. Tick that box.” Visual people go home and have got something to look at. “I can tick that box. I feel like I’ve learned something.”

So the whole learning styles debate, I would really come back to just say that balanced delivery is always going to hit that mark, so to speak.