Learning Styles
Learning Styles is the umbrella idea that people absorb development differently, useful only once you pick a specific model (Kolb, Honey & Mumford, VARK) and actually redesign how you deliver, not just how you label people.
Reach for this when…
- Training keeps landing flat and nobody can say exactly why.
- A manager assumes everyone learns the way they do and designs everything around that assumption.
- You want a person to notice how they absorb new skills before you pick a development path together.
How to run it
- Identify which specific model fits the context (Kolb, Honey & Mumford, VARK).
- Have the person self-assess against it.
- Debrief what the profile implies for how they learn best.
- Redesign the actual learning experience around that, not just the label.
A worked example
Situation. Karim El-Sayed runs Nile Roasters, a coffee roastery that trains new baristas in Cairo, Egypt, and had built onboarding around a thick manual everyone was expected to read first.
Applied. Using the Honey & Mumford model, he had new hires self-assess and found most scored strongly as Activists, not Reflectors - they wanted to touch the beans, not read about them. He rebuilt week one around hands-on tasting and roasting, with the manual as reference material afterwards, not the starting point.
Result. Dropout during the probation month fell noticeably once the manual stopped being the first thing a new barista met.
The catch
The label sticks harder than the truth - people use their 'style' to avoid stretching into modes they're weak in, and the research evidence behind most of these instruments is considerably thinner than their popularity suggests. Treat the profile as a starting hypothesis, not a diagnosis.
A style is a preference under low effort, not a fixed limit under real motivation - don't let anyone use it as an excuse.
Origin: Various (Kolb; Honey & Mumford; Fleming)