The three most common types of learning styles are visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. I’ve mentioned before some of the sales training that I’ve had that talks about communicating with people based on their interest level. The “Negative Reverse Selling” If their interest level is a 3 out of 10, your interest level should be a 2 so that you can push them toward where you think they should go.
However, something I hadn’t even thought of, and unfortunately, probably many teachers don’t either, is your communication style based on how people learn best. Someone who is a visual learner is often the kind of person who will do well if you talk with your hands (and often will use hand gestures themselves). Auditory learners will probably be annoyed or become bored quickly if they are talking to people who speak in a very monotone voice. Kinesthetic learners may need something really laid out for them slowly to be able to fully comprehend what it is.
Every one of these learning styles has pros and cons. Something I’ve realized, being by far an auditory learner, is that the transition from in-person to everything on Zoom for what I do has not maybe been as hard for me as it has been, for example, a kinesthetic learner. Don’t get me wrong, the extroverted side of me hates it, but I think for learning purposes, it actually hardly has effected me at all.
When you communicate with someone, especially for the first time, you’re not always going to know what kind of a learner they are, but if you pay attention, you can usually figure it out. Often times the way they communicate is going to give it away. Pay attention to how they speak, how they formulate their speech, what their body language is.
If you can learn how to read people’s learning styles and cater to it as you talk to them, you’re going to find out very quickly how much people appreciate learning or working with you.