Thursday 24 May 2012

My favourite coaching tools: Free online Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic - VAK - learning styles assessment

Caveats:
Some people really just don't get this. And, VAK confusingly can be applied to preferred learning style, as well as to natural communication style. This tool is for preferred LEARNING style. (for VAK communication style assessment see my other post: Free Online VAK Communication Style Preference Assessment)

Again, this is a scaling assessment, and there are several around that you can download for free as well. I liked this for an online free tool as it is consistent with my previous more detailed ones in a proper psychometric test centre. Some tests actually highlight how strongly preferred the style is as compared to the others - this is useful to know as well, but I have not found it very useful for coaching purposes.

For this test you do have to give an email and some personal data which I do not like doing, and I got away with giving fictional.

Required:
Internet access
Quiet space
5-10 minutes

Step 1:
Give this link to the coachee: http://www.vak.solida.net/. Again I think the best time to do the assessment is in the morning, before work really starts.

Step 2:
When the assessment is complete, you will have the 3 styles - Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic in the coachee's preferred sequence.

You now have material you can use to support the coaching goals and plans where learning is required. You also have the approach you need when explaining concepts to the coachee - a real time saver and much more enjoyable experience for you and the coachee as compared to approaching from the worst angle. And even more enjoyable if you're going to have to explain in your non-usual communication style. Personally, once I realised what my preferred/natural learning approach was, I realised why I was bored out of my skull and kept falling asleep in school and university lectures. Really useful stuff!

1 comment:

Rob Brown said...

Also worth checking out my younger post about the Kolb 4 learning styles preference for extra insights into "self".

A smarter SMART for even better collaborative Objectives (including OKRs)

My favourite coaching tools: SMART Acronym Another Update