The perception of teaching methods and the retraining of mature managers

Abstract

The comfortable progression from the childhood perception of career through college or university to a job for life, is being shattered for many managers. Mid-life they are now being forced to change career and retrain. This paper looks at their perceptions of learning methods, often related to the choice of career and confirmed by both experience and actual training. The paper discusses how preferred individual styles can be classified according to their response to the Kolb Learning Style Inventory (LSI) and by their Egograms and offers advice on how the methods used for retraining can be tailored to individual perceptions. During the research study upon which this article is based, it was noted that the Kolb classification most often associated with senior managers (Assimilator), did not fall into what could be termed definable “personality type”.