Modes of Learning and Thinking

Understanding how our minds work has come a long way since the Stanford-Binet "one factor" IQ tests developed in the early 1900s.  As well as the later basic left/right ("bicameral") brain model, it's now thought that we all have our own preferred styles of learning and communicating.  Much has been made of this in NLP.  Some people think visually, in images and colours, some in words, and some need to feel or hear things to truly understand.  If you know your own preferences, and those of others, you'll both be able to communicate better, and use your own strengths.  There is no point presenting a complex 24-page proposal to a strongly visual intuitive: put it in pictures.  Use the mode that works for the other person if you want to connect - do you see what I'm getting at here?  Maybe you hear a different drum - or grasp things another way.  Whatever moves you!

Using Multiple Modes

Typically, we express complex thoughts using language, often written language. Simply using pictures can open us up to other possibilities. Physically modelling an issue can have a similar effect, as can creating a sculpture.  Why switching modalities can work is, to a greater extent, explained by an understanding of the bicameral mind, and the specialisation of hemispheres and common dominance of the left hemisphere that humans display.  Techniques to help overcome the left brains normal dominance include:

Visual Techniques

Simply representing a problem or issue visually - either though the formal approaches of mind mapping, force field or fishbone diagrams, or the less structured approaches of “rich pictures”, fingerprinting or collage - can reveal aspects or data on which our attention hadn’t previously focused. Giving the left-brain a chance to “speak” is the essence here, and in many ways the less structured approaches have a greater chance of success.

Physical Techniques

(including Drama, Sculptures and Role-playing - see exploring) can be particularly effective for people whose preferred style for processing information is visual, kinetic or physical (see "n.l.p" and learning and thinking styles for modelling) rather than linguistic.