How do you learn best? The question never occurred to me as a student. I assumed learning happened in a classroom: the teacher spoke and the students took notes. I was just bad at it.
Many years later, I learned that different people learn differently. I don’t learn well from lectures. Instead, I learn best from books or being shown how to do things, as in YouTube videos.
Learning how you learn best is important for your own development. But it’s also critical when working with other people. If you know how your teammates learn best, you can adjust your interactions to help them.
It’s important for gaining traction, so I wanted to discuss it with Harry. I brought to episode 45 of Traction Heroes a short reading from Peter Drucker:
Schools everywhere are organized on the assumption that there is only one right way to learn and that it is the same way for everybody. But to be forced to learn the way a school teaches is sheer hell for students who learn differently. Indeed, there are probably half a dozen different ways to learn.
There are people, like Churchill, who learn by writing. Some people learn by taking copious notes. Beethoven, for example, left behind an enormous number of sketchbooks, yet he said he never actually looked at them when he composed. Asked why he kept them, he is reported to have replied, “If I don’t write it down immediately, I forget it right away. If I put it into a sketchbook, I never forget it and I never have to look it up again.” Some people learn by doing. Others learn by hearing themselves talk.
A chief executive I know who converted a small and mediocre family business into the leading company in its industry was one of those people who learn by talking. He was in the habit of calling his entire senior staff into his office once a week and then talking at them for two or three hours. He would raise policy issues and argue three different positions on each one. He rarely asked his associates for comments or questions; he simply needed an audience to hear himself talk. That’s how he learned.
And although he is a fairly extreme case, learning through talking is by no means an unusual method. Successful trial lawyers learn the same way, as do many medical diagnosticians (and so do I).
Of all the important pieces of self-knowledge, understanding how you learn is the easiest to acquire. When I ask people, “How do you learn?” most of them know the answer. But when I ask, “Do you act on this knowledge?” few answer yes. And yet, acting on this knowledge is the key to performance; or rather, not acting on this knowledge condemns one to nonperformance.
This is from a short work called Managing Oneself. It’s filled with helpful advice that echoes the oracle at Delphi: know thyself. As I mentioned on the show, I wish I’d read it sooner. Check it out - especially if reading is how you learn.