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Learning styles (Honey and Mumford)

Peter Honey and Alan Mumford introduced a self-administered learning-styles questionnaire which enables a student to understand their own individual approach to learning [Swinton]. The questionnaire determines your preferred learning style with the analysis considering four basic techniques:

• Activitists (doers)
• Immerse themselves fully in new experiences
• Enjoy here and now
• Open minded, enthusiastic, flexible
• Act first, consider consequences later
• Seek to centre activity around themselves
• Reflectors (reviewers)
• Stand back and observe
• Cautious, take a back seat
• Collect and analyze data about experience and events, slow to reach conclusions
• Use information from past, present and immediate observations to maintain a big picture perspective.
• Theorists (concluders)
• Think through problems in a logical manner, value rationality and objectivity
• Assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories
• Disciplined, aiming to fit things into rational order
• Keen on basic assumptions, principles, theories, models and systems thinking
• Pragmatists (planners)
• Keen to put ideas, theories and techniques into practice
• Search new ideas and experiment
• Act quickly and confidently on ideas, gets straight to the point
• Are impatient with endless discussion

Knowledge of your learning style can accelerate your learning as you undertake activities that best fit your preferred style. Knowing your learning style can also help avoid repeating mistakes by undertaking activities that strengthen other styles.

Reference: Lyndsay Swinton, Honey & Mumford – Learning Style Questionnaire, http://www.mftrou.com/honey-mumford.html, accessed 24 July 2014.
 

Team rôles (Belbin).

Meredith Belbin and his researchers at Henley Management College studied the behaviour of managers from all over the world. Their individual core personality traits, intellectual styles and behaviours were assessed and classified into clusters of behaviour according to the success of the teams:

Reference: Belbin^® Home > Team Roles > History and Research, http://www.belbin.com/rte.asp?id=3, accessed 24 july 2014.

The Culture of Organisations

Trompenaars [1] considered how cultural (national) differences affected the process of doing business with international organisations.  The book attempts to do three things:

• dispel the notion that there is "one best way" of managing and organising,
• give readers a better understanding of their own culture and cultural differences in general, and
• provide some cultural insights into the "global" versus "local" dilemma facing organisations.

He suggests that "every culture distinguishes itself from others by the specific solutions it chooses to certain problems" and groups these issues under three headings;

• relationships with people,
• attitudes to time, and
• attitudes to the environment.

People within a culture do not have identical basic assumptions (implicit), norms and values (tribal attributes) or artefacts and products (explicit).  The variation in each of these may have a wide spread and could be perceived as a statistical distribution.  The assumption of a single common characteristic for any culture leads to stereotyping.  In relationships with other people, Trompenaars identifies five dimensions (value orientations) which greatly influence business, management and moral responses:

• universalism vs particularism (rules vs relationships),
• collectivism vs individualism (the group vs individuals),
• neutral vs emotional (the range of feelings expressed),
• diffuse vs specific (the range of involvement), and
• achievement vs ascription (how status is accorded).

While cultures can generally be described in terms of the above paired options, Trompenaars divides organisations into four groups as in the quadrants of the Figure below, and [his Figure 11.5] ascribes national patterns of corporate culture to each of the four categories.  Wherever they are located, smaller companies are more likely to  take the family/incubator forms whereas larger companies tend to choose the Eiffel Tower or guided missile forms.

Avery [2] identified 19 criteria for sustainable leadership practices from Rhineland (Germany/Switzerland) companies (Table 1).  The book argues that the "Anglo/US approach to capitalism and business is seriously flawed and does not bring the quality of life to individuals and societies that many people seek" and thus by shifting to embrace the Rhineland criteria in the Sustainable Leadership Grid (Table 1) companies can become financially, socially and environmentally successful.

Table 1: The Sustainable Leadership Grid comparing Rhineland and Anglo/US models (from Avery (2005) [2]),
subdivided into Management and Decision Making (yellow) - Focus on People (pink) - Systems and Processes (blue).

1. F Trompenaars, Riding the Waves of Culture - understanding cultural diversity in business, Economist Books, London, 1993.  ISBN 0-85058-428-0.  Third edition, 2012: ISBN 978-1-904838-38-8. PU CSH Library.
2. GC Avery, Leadership for Sustainable Futures - achieving success in a competitive world, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2005.  ISBN 1-84542-173-6.  PU CSH Library