The Social (Interpersonal) Learning Style
If you have a strong social style, you communicate well with people, both
verbally and non-verbally. People listen to you or come to you for advice,
and you are sensitive to their motivations, feelings or moods. You listen
well and understand other's views. You may enjoy mentoring or counseling
others.
You typically prefer learning in groups or classes, or you like to spend
much one-on-one time with a teacher or an instructor. You heighten your
learning by bouncing your thoughts off other people and listening to how
they respond. You prefer to work through issues, ideas and problems with a
group. You thoroughly enjoy working with a 'clicking' or synergistic group
of people.
You prefer to stay around after class and talk with others. You prefer
social activities, rather than doing your own thing. You typically like
games that involve other people, such as card games and board games. The
same applies to team sports such as football or soccer, basketball,
baseball, volleyball, baseball and hockey.
Common pursuits and phrases
Some examples of pursuits that people with a strong social style may
follow include counseling, teaching, training and coaching, sales, politics,
human resources, and others.
As with people with the logical style, you are more likely to use
phrases that reflect your dominant style out of physical, aural and visual
styles. Here are some other phrases you may also use:
- Let's work together on this.
- We can work it out.
- Tell me what you are thinking.
- Help me understand this.
- Let's pull some people together to discuss.
- Let's explore our options.
Learning and techniques
- If you are a social learner, aim to work with others as much as possible.
Try to study with a class. If this is not available then consider forming
your own study group with others at a similar level. They don't have to be
from the same school or class. If you like, introduce them to some of the
techniques from this book. It may be easier for you to try some of the
Memletic Techniques in a social setting, and work with the feedback from
others.
- Role-playing is a technique that works well with others, whether its one
on one or with a group of people. For example, in aviation training,
role-play the aerodrome area. Have people walking around in 'circuits'
making the right radio calls with the tower co-ordinating everyone. Another
example might be to role-play with one person being the instructor and the
other being the student.
- Work on some of your associations and visualizations with other people.
Make sure they understand the principles of what you are doing though,
otherwise you may get some interesting responses! Others often have
different perspectives and creative styles, and so the group may come up
with more varied and imaginative associations compared to the ones you might
create yourself.
- Rather than reciting assertions to yourself, try sharing your key
assertions with others. By doing so, you are almost signing a social
contract that your assertion is what you do. This strengthens your
assertions.
- Share your reviews, review checklists and 'perfect performance' scripts
with those in your group as well. By listening to how others solve their
issues, you may get further ideas on how to solve your own issues. Try
sharing the work of creating a 'perfect performance' script. Each person
writes the script for the areas they want to work on the most, and then the
group brings all the scripts together.
- Mind maps and systems diagrams are great to work on in class. Have one
person be the appointed drawer, while the rest of the class works through
material and suggests ideas. The group may have varied views on how to
represent some ideas, however this is a positive part of learning in groups.
If you can't agree on something, just take a copy of what the group has
worked on and add your own thoughts. Often there is no right answer for
everyone, so agree to disagree!
- Working in groups to practice behaviors or procedures help you understand
how to deal with variations. Seeing the mistakes or errors that others make
can help you avoid them later. As well, the errors you make are helpful to
others! Whether it's via role-playing, a simulator or other technique
doesn't matter too much. Be imaginative. Two chairs in the middle of a
classroom to simulate an aircraft cockpit can be just as good as computer
simulation and the real activity.
- Lastly, if you are working in groups it may help to have everyone do the
learning styles questionnaire. This may help everyone understand why each
person has different viewpoints. It can also help with assigning activities
to people. Individuals may volunteer for activities based on either the
styles they currently have, or the styles they want to learn. Remember the
classroom is a risk-free environment. It's often safer to experiment, try
out new techniques and make mistakes in the classroom than in the real
activity.