TABLE OF CONTENTS The goals of this activity are to
enable participants to identify their own communication styles
learn to adapt individual communication styles to those of others.
Assessment Assessment 11 3: The Language System Diagnostic Instrument (one for each participant)
Clock 30 minutes
You have already read about intake (communication) styles in Chapter 2, but here is an additional summary of this information. Emphasize to people that this assessment shows the diversity of ways people communicate and prefer to receive information. The danger is that we believe everyone else needs the same communication behaviour as we do, and that is not the case.
Explain that studies on how individuals prefer to receive new information have been conducted for years in the field of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). These fall into the categories of Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic. Each leader uses a combination of these three intake styles. Some might fall strongly into one category, some have no preference between two and some are equally able with all three. Intake styles are not the same as intelligence: whether you prefer to learn by seeing, hearing or doing has no bearing on how intelligent you are; it just determines your preference for receiving or sending information.
Explain that it is easy to identify their own preference(s) and guess someone else s preference(s) from certain physical characteristics that track with these preferences. Visual learners prefer books or videos, tend to speak quickly and at a somewhat high pitch,...
