Communication: Learning Styles

How do you describe pain to someone who has never experienced pain? Or the sensation of being too uncomfortably hot? Shiveringly cold? What must it be like to be stabbed or shot? Even equating colour with pain? Only those who have been really know. The rest of us must use our imagination to “feel” such sensations. And we would almost certainly get it wrong. Similarly, the pain of injury or the pain of muscle modification caused by stressing the muscle whether by stretching it or working it under load to build it up. The only way to know is to experience it and then be able to recognise it. Both types of pain must be experienced and once you understand it becomes obvious, but not always: until it's pointed out.

That's the problem. Communication. To even begin communication we have to firstly get attention. Once you have it the issues must be clearly and interestingly put over. In an understandable way. Learning styles being different and having a mixed audience makes it all the more difficult to target properly. A greater challenge. Too simple for some, but for others it may be all new a little too complicated.

Something outside our own experience is always difficult to begin with. We have to use the models of our own experiences to meld with what we are hearing for the first time to make sense of it all. If it is a recognisable situation then direct knowledge will instantly transport you to full understanding.

Skilled communicators know how to do it. Clever people.