HOW DO YOU GET SOMEONE TO DO WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO DO?

I was not aware that I had a personal learning style and I felt that I did not have the confidence or the personal skills to be able to persuade others to get involved in the MPE programme. I felt this as I had been unable to answer the question put to me in the set about what skills I thought I might need to have to influence others. In an attempt to learn more about myself I carried out a skills audit using the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles Questionnaire (Honey and Mumford 1986). This identifies the type of "learning person" you are. They describe four types of style of learner theorist, pragmatist, reflector and activist. The basic tenet of the work is that you will be able to learn effectively and adapt to different learning situations if you score highly on each of the four styles. I knew I would have to learn about the needs and wishes of other members of the UGWP as well as to improve my learning generally for my studies so thought this would be a good starting point to develop my learning skills and self awareness.

The results showed me to be high on the first three dimensions, theorist, pragmatist and reflector, but low scoring on the last one, activist. For each dimension Honey and Mumford have compiled a short description of the strengths and weaknesses of each learning style. I needed to identify the areas in which I was weak so that I could work on these and turn them into strengths. With this in mind I compiled a list of the weaknesses of the theorist, pragmatist and reflector, which would correspond to my weaknesses as I had scored highly on these dimensions. To this list I added the strengths of the activist; again these would correspond to my weaknesses as I scored lowly on this dimension. For each weakness the scores ranged from 1 - not relevant to 5 - very relevant so I identified weaknesses were I had a score of 4 and 5 as those that were the most important. This gave me a list of skills I was weak in.

In summary (see table 4) it appeared I had become a task-oriented person, impatient with waffle, not assertive and with no 'small talk'. Reading these statements was a real eye opener. I felt that these were activities that I had been guilty of doing (or not doing). Throughout my working life at Salford I felt I had changed and that factors such as the

volume of work, stress, need to achieve had all had a negative influence on me and the way I related to other people in the organisation. But I did not believe that this represented areas that I was naturally weak in. I believed that it was within my capacity to focus on these failings in my dealings with others to use the traits and attributes I have, to bring them out and begin to apply them to situations as and when I needed to. I felt I should take something positive from this personally striking finding.

Reflector

Slow to make decisions Not assertive

Have no ‘small talk’

Pragmatist

Tend to reject anything without an obvious application

Tendency to seize on the first expedient solution to problem

Impatient with waffle

Task oriented not people oriented

Theorist

Low tolerance for uncertainty, disorder and ambiguity

Intolerant of anything subjective or intuitive

Activist

“not” flexible and open minded “not” happy to have a go

“not” happy to be exposed to new situations

“not” optimistic about anything and therefore likely to resist change

(these are the strengths of an activist which I don’t have as it is the dimension I scored poorly on)

Table 4: List of personal weaknesses identified using Honey and Mumford’s learning styles Inventory

So I looked through the full list of weaknesses and identified four key themes, these were People, Ambiguity and Change, Decision Making and Assertiveness. Under these themes I

used Honey and Mumford's list of strengths in these areas and added a few of my own which involved influencing others. This produced a list of activities for me to work on and try to improve my personal performance in interacting with colleagues.

People – Spend time chatting to people finding out about their point of view; practice developing the conversation towards my agenda; take time to let the conversation develop. Ambiguity and Change - treat uncertainty and change as an opportunity for developing something new; actively seek to change current situations; try to be flexible in your views and the views of others; do not reject ideas just because you cannot see their application. Decision making – give some time, thought and input from others prior to decision making but do not dwell for too long.

Assertiveness - ask others directly to take on tasks but allow time to develop the conversation; praise them and stress their attributes relevant to taking on the task; explain why something needs to be done and when, giving contextual information.

In addition to these Carneagie (1981) suggests several other factors that he has found successful. These are to remember people's names and use them when you speak to them, getting people to talk about themselves and listen, and to make the other person feel important.

Having gone through this process of learning how I might influence others I felt invigorated and was looking forward to my first meeting of the Under Graduate Working Party.