How to deal with different learning styles and anxieties
A single person can fit multiple combinations, or oscillate between profiles depending on circumstances; each point is a model that helps the team around the learner to help them move forward. The model explains how certain learning strategies that work well for a particular profile can be actively counter-productive or even harmful for another.
Chaotic learners
These are folk who do not know what they don’t know yet, and also do not have a meta-model for their learning best practices. Needs the team to deploy a diverse set of teaching strategies upfront to see “what sticks”.
- Needs frequent and explicit push to reflect about what they’ve learned and how.
- Might experience anxiety at proposals to share their learnings with their team
Anxieties about personal validation, dignity, respect
Benefits from “fireside chats” where other team members share their experience of learning, and how their unique traits helped them
- Being seen and respected outside of work assignments: casual interactions (e.g. meals, walks, events)
- Anxiety when receiving feedback in any form: may relate self-worth to performance at work
- May need to learn/understand that “performance” means something different for each team member
Different ways to teach a newcomer can interfere with their anxieties in non-constructive ways
These are the “pitfalls” of onboarding, and I found it useful to keep them in mind to navigate around them.
- Learning style
- Unbalanced learner
- Needs the team to spell out work responsibilities explicitly and upfront
- Benefits from clear, direct, matter-of-fact language use, especially during feedback
- Benefits from mentoring to help reflect on interactions with the org and attribution for behaviors
- Commonly at risk of attribution bias during interactions
If the learning strategy is not compatible with the beginner’s expectation, that may cause anxiety and distress
Benefits from “fireside chats” where other team members explain how they learn, i.e. exposure to other learning styles besides their own to open their mind
- Can/should be coached to share their learnings with their team
- Might benefit from receiving mentoring as to how to better reflect on learnings and develop new learning strategies
Anxieties
Most other sources of anxiety are best handled outside of the workplace, with support from friends and family and sometimes a trusted professional.