style="font-size:15px;"> Personal learning
Knowing where your preferences lie is the first step. You can then use that knowledge as a basis to challenge yourself to extend your range of learning styles. The aim is to be balanced and well-adjusted so that you learn in ways that are less familiar to you and are not your preferred style. Seek opportunities to practise a different style.
Team development
If you work in a team, make sure that other members of the team have different learning styles so that you complement one another.
Presentations
If you are presenting information to others, you should be aware that people learn in different ways. Good presenters use a multi-sensory approach to include different styles of learning so that every member of the audience is able to take in the presentation effectively. This means that you should provide visual aids that illustrate your argument, give headings to support it, and provide opportunities for discussion and further expression through stories and role play.
If you work in a team, make sure that its members have different learning styles to complement one another.
The American inventor Thomas Edison said, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”. You develop your creativity by hard work…and also by allowing room to receive and harness inspiration, when it comes.
Here are five steps to help you develop your creative thinking.
1 Change your way of doing things. Read more widely; pick up a magazine on a subject that you don’t normally look at or read a novel by an author unfamiliar to you. Take up a new hobby – you don’t have to be the best in the world; just enjoy it. It’ll help you develop your personality.
case study The music market in around 2001 was in a mess: CDs were expensive and were difficult to transport; MP3 players were poor quality and short on memory; and it was difficult to get hold of MP3 files legally and easily. The creative combination of Apple’s iPod and iTunes solved all these problems and also gave the company 75% dominance of the digital music market in both hardware and software.
2 Be open to fresh ideas. A new thought or solution to a problem may suddenly occur to you, especially when you are not thinking directly about the problem. Evaluate the insight that has come to you, and test it to see if it is useful and worth pursuing. For more on thinking creatively, see Secret 3.4.
3 Prepare. If you are giving a presentation, there is no substitute for working hard on research to make sure you have all the relevant facts. Perhaps you don’t know where to start? A mind map may help you (see Secret 1.6).
4 Analyse the facts. Think them through and examine them from different angles. Challenge assumptions and distinguish between facts and opinions. Explore weaknesses and find gaps in an argument. Think through the reasons why something has developed as it has. Uncover the background causes of an event. Analyse all data critically.
5 Put the facts together (synthesize them). Evaluate different options. Think of new ways of putting things together. For example, you may think of developing better systems at work: a combination of logic and creativity will help you do this.
Give yourself space to be imaginative and come up with exciting new ideas.
A pattern diagram is a creative drawing that captures what you judge to be the main aspects of a central thought that you want to consider.
Many people find drawing a pattern diagram (also called a mind map, pattern notes or a spider diagram) helpful to see all the parts of a subject and how they fit together. It can be useful for taking notes, brainstorming a topic or researching a subject. Here’s how to prepare a pattern diagram in seven steps:
1 Take a blank sheet of A4 paper and place it on the table in a landscape format.
2 Write with a pencil your central subject (a word or a few words, not a whole sentence) in the middle of the paper.
case study In order to plan a course on Report Writing, I used a pattern diagram to write down all I knew about the audience: their needs, what they already knew and the level of proficiency I wanted them to achieve. I broke down the major points that I wanted them to learn into manageable chunks. During the seminar, it really helped to have a clear summary that I could refer to on one sheet of paper.
3 Write around that central word other key words that relate to it; let your imagination move you. Think of subdivisions of that subject, or facts that relate to the subject.
4 Keep branching out various other aspects of the subject that come into your mind. These other aspects can cover a variety of points, such as facts relating to the subject, your feelings about a subject, and the advantages or disadvantages of following different courses of action. If you get stuck at any point, stimulate your thinking by answering the question words: ‘who?’, ‘where?’, ‘when?’, ‘what?’, ‘how?’ and ‘why?’
5 At this stage, do not reject any thoughts. (Use an eraser only sparingly to delete what you have written.)
6 You could colour in different key words to show which ones are related. You could also use symbols, images or pictures if you find that helpful.
7 You could also number the different key words to give them a hierarchy of importance.
Let your imagination stimulate you, and you will be able to draw a pattern diagram that captures the different aspects of a subject.
It’s all too easy to think in the same way that we are used to – for our thoughts, feelings and habits to get stuck in a rut. This need not last, however: you can learn to think differently!
Ways to help you think differently:
• Try a new approach. Move on from the “we’ve-always-done-it-this-way” approach and rethink things, both logically and creatively.
• Think positively. If you tend to always raise objections about how and why something won’t work, stop yourself and try to view a situation constructively instead. If you combine your natural caution with a new optimism, you may be able to improve the plans.
• Reconsider yourself and your career. Look at your work situation from a fresh perspective. Is there room for improvement?
case
