Learning Styles and Team Dynamics: A Journey from Personal Trips to Strategic Decisions
In this episode of "How Many CTOs Does It Take?" podcast, hosts Scott Porad and Brad Hefta-Gaub dive into the fascinating world of learning styles and their impact on teamwork in both remote and in-person environments. The conversation begins with Scott's personal trip, transitioning into an insightful discussion about the importance of understanding and leveraging different cognitive styles within engineering teams. The episode highlights how visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learning play crucial roles in effective communication and decision-making, supported by examples from strategic planning and mentoring junior engineers. The hosts stress the significance of intentional approaches to creating shared understandings, particularly in remote settings.
- 00:00 Introduction and Podcast Origins
- 00:50 Family Trip to Philadelphia
- 03:38 Work Trip to San Francisco
- 04:27 The Importance of In-Person Meetings
- 07:52 Learning Styles and Cognitive Styles
- 17:08 Mentoring in a Remote World
- 23:35 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
- 27:55 Outro and Credits
Resources:
- How Many CTOs Pod: https://howmanyctospod.com
- Scott Porad: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottporad/
- Brad Hefta-Gaub: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradheftagaub/
Brad: I'll bet you one of the things that that engineering manager's secret is, is they're good at understanding learning styles and cognitive styles of their team members and they're understanding how to facilitate that in each of the engineers.
Scott: Hi, everybody.
This is Scott.
When Brad and I were first toying around with the idea of recording a podcast,
we would just hop on the phone and record our conversations.
Today's episode is one of those conversations from all the way back in the summer of 2024.
Enjoy.
Brad: You had a trip last week, I guess.
What was that all about?
Scott: One trip, two locations.
last Friday,
because as our audience knows, we record this on Friday,
on Focus Fridays.
Brad: Focus Fridays.
Scott: I was visiting Aunt Carol in Philadelphia.
Aunt Carol recently turned 80,
and so we went out there with the family and spent the weekend with her.
She is a woman who loves life and she loves to eat and all we did for like three days was eat meals.
Brad: that's awesome
Scott: because
Brad: and
Scott: she's 80 and she can't get around as well as she used to so having a meal is like a thing you can do right oh
Brad: this is your mom's
Scott: my goodness this
Brad: sister your dad's sister your
Scott: is
Brad: wife's
Scott: my wife my wife's father's sister who was sort of like a second mother to her it was just a very influential person in her life growing up because they're very much alike
like they're really just cut from the same cloth um and they've you know they have fun together so we had a good time we were in philadelphia we had a philadelphia cheesesteak
Brad: Good.
Excellent.
Did you have it with a whiz or with the mozzarella or provolone?
Scott: we had it with we had it
we i'm glad you asked that question we
Brad: Do you have it with, uh, with hots and, uh,
onions with all the works or what did you do?
Scott: i'll tell you how we had it we had it carol's way and
Brad: Uh-huh. Okay.
Scott: her her way is whiz it's whiz with pizza sauce and onions and she put hot sauce on it i did not put hot sauce on it because i don't i'm not a real hot sauce guy
Brad: Sounds like a great time.
Scott: It was terrific.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: You know,
there's a lot to admire about her.
I'll give everyone two things.
The first is,
as I mentioned, she's 80.
She was a lawyer.
She went she graduated from law school in 1970,
which for women being lawyers at that time
Brad: Oh,
Scott: was very unusual.
Brad: yeah.
Scott: And she started a law firm with two other women because they couldn't get hired.
No one would hire her after graduating law school. They're like a woman lawyer.
That's ridiculous.
So they they had their own law firm in Philadelphia.
And she has not let getting old in the challenges of life get her down.
down she just says it's just my body right
i'm fine it's just my body that's not doing well it's
Brad: That's great.
That's awesome.
Sounds like it was a fun
Scott: it
Brad: trip.
Scott: was but well then i flew from philadelphia to san francisco for work
Brad: And
Scott: Where
Brad: so did you was that like meeting new teams or what was it? What was the what was this is actually a super interesting topic because we live in the world of the virtual.
And so whenever I hear people doing like in-person work trips,
I think to myself,
ah,
we have a great topic of debate.
It seems to be all the rage like.
Do you have to be in person to make stuff happen?
So tell me about this work trip.
What was the purpose of it?
Scott: I will tell you the purpose of it and then I will tell you something very interesting that I observed that goes directly to your question.
This was the senior leadership team.
The company I work for is a fiscal year starts on September 1st, which is kind of a peculiar thing.
And so this was sort of like.
a kickoff kind of like let's seal the plan for the next year and kind of kick things off and there were some strategic questions to be had as well and actually that leads to the interesting thing so there were two days there were two each day on each day there was I mean there were many topics but each day one pretty meaty strategic question came up and what the questions aren't that interesting but what was interesting was this
On both days, the answer to the strategic question that we coalesced around might not be the right answer,
but it was the one that we coalesced
Brad: Yep.
Scott: around,
was arrived at via the whiteboard.
The whiteboard was a tool to help people understand the shape of the problem.
because you start out with these big strategic questions and you're just like all over the place right and on day one the question was the whiteboard ended up just being a way to outline the different choices so that people could see like here's option one like it allowed us to we could have done that in a document but some person finally went to the whiteboard and was like hey let's just try to like write down what the choices are we're debating here on day two
It was actually a very interesting discussion.
It was a discussion about how is it that we met our financial plan and everyone's going to get their bonus this year,
but we didn't meet our goals.
Brad: Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Scott: And somebody used a Venn diagram.
Well, there was a bunch of drawing on the whiteboard, but ultimately it came down to a Venn diagram.
which said and it's not that we didn't meet in all of our goals it's just like why are there so many reds and yellows on here but yet the scorecard which is the pnl says we're all getting our bonuses what's what something's not right and somebody was able to draw a venn diagram which said hey look some of our goals have in your targets and some of our goals are laying groundwork for future year
Brad: Charts.
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: And so they were able to articulate that the goals that were missed were not in-year contributing goals or something?
Scott: Yeah, that's exactly right. It was doing projects,
engineering projects and product and engineering projects this year to drive revenue and profit or whatever next year,
which those ended up, some of those ended up red and yellow.
And so, but the main point, it was the whiteboard that helped us come to that understanding.
So your question about we live in this remote world and what do we do with in-person meetings,
I don't know, but I would say it demonstrated that when we had a fuzzy question that just needed people to explore it, each of those questions we probably spent two to three hours just getting our heads around and trying to understand.
you kind of need that space to just explore you know there were times where people got up and stood on the other side of the room and got something to drink and it was just a more flowing discussion than I think happens in zoom and there was the whiteboard which helped facilitate the conversation
Brad: that's a great story i think that's a really really interesting act i think that um i have a couple reactions to it one reaction i have is that um
Are you sort of familiar with sort of the notion of like learning styles,
especially for like adult learners,
but learning styles in general of visual kinesthetic and auditory kinesthetic
Scott: I didn't know that there were three specific learning styles, but I knew that people had different types of learning styles.
What is kinesthetic? I mean, visual and auditory you can kind of make sense of.
Brad: is like the act of doing something.
Scott: Okay,
gotcha.
Brad: Right.
And so like this is like, for example, I know about myself that I'm a visual and kinesthetic learner and I am not an auditory learner.
Right.
Like, which is to say, if you're trying to teach me something and you get up in front of me and you lecture,
I'm going to be like.
I'm not going to get it.
I will literally not understand it.
I won't. I can't. I can't. But.
If I take and while you're lecturing,
I write my own notes,
then
Scott: That
Brad: I'm getting the feedback of the visual that I'm reading my notes and the kinesthetic of writing something and that helps wire my brain to remember the information.
Scott: makes sense. And what is the kind of learner who is...
from reading who just who learns best
Brad: That
Scott: from visual
Brad: tends stuff to be visual.
Like if you're a visual learner,
then reading tends to be pretty good.
And so, for example, this is one of the reasons why.
And so anyway,
so I'm going to I'm going to say that I think the whiteboard is a great example for people who are visual learners.
The whiteboard is an incredible tool for them.
Right.
For
Scott: Mm
Brad: people
Scott: -hmm.
Brad: who are auditory learners,
they can just hear you talking about the things and they're not it's not as they don't need it to be written. They don't need it to be visual for them.
And then, of course, for the person who's like trying to think and those learning and thinking are so closely related to each other that like, you know, some people are just going to be.
better at thinking through a problem when they're moving their body or
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: when they're writing it when they're doing some motion it just activates a part of their brain that helps reinforce these like learning thinking problem solving neurons
Scott: Yeah.
I really do believe I have this book over here on the shelf.
I really believe.
that drawing at this book called on the back of a napkin by dan rome and it's about visual explanation selling
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: idea solving problems and selling ideas with pictures i say this all the time there's a reason people say a picture is worth a thousand words
Brad: Right.
Scott: So I understand that not everybody can get things through pictures. I get it. But there is definitely some quality of visual that helps convey ideas.
And sometimes it actually doesn't even really help convey ideas.
It just the process of trying to draw it helps clarify.
Oh,
so now I can say the words.
Right.
Brad: Right.
Scott: I needed somehow you need to use the picture to shape the words.
Brad: Yeah.
And what I what I think is interesting is now I'm I'm a visual and kinesthetic and auditory is really hard for me.
So.
like a great simple example now obviously if it's a physical thing you're trying to learn how to do uh it seems even harder to me that someone could be auditory in learning a physical thing but there are people that you can just say to them like you know like a ski instructor's like hey you know you're not putting enough pressure on the outside edge of your ski
And some people can hear that and immediately go,
oh, I know exactly what that means.
I'm going to go do that.
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: you say that to me and i'm like i have i mean yeah all of those words made sense to me but i cannot connect those at all right and but then the second they say okay well okay watch me do it watch what i'm doing okay now i'm seeing something there okay now you follow me and try to and try to emulate it and then i'll and then
and this is like a funny thing like okay follow me okay now i'm getting the kinesthetic and then if the person turns and says i watched you and you did and they start talking to me i'll
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: be like that information just left my brain right like even what i just learned with the movement i just lost it when you started talking to me but if instead they hold up here's a video of you doing it see what you did there
Boom, then I get the visual and kinesthetic reinforcement,
right?
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Interesting.
Brad: Anyway,
so what I think is interesting is I do think that this notion of if you are a team or you have members of your team that are visual and kinesthetic learners' thinkers, then...
Absolutely, this experience that we're having right now on a video call or a phone call,
like just let's now take the video away.
Let's take all the visuals away and we're just going to have a conversation.
That can be very hard and that can be very essentially like inefficient.
Scott: So I have two thoughts,
really a comment and a question.
The first is the comment,
you know, I mentioned there were two days and the whiteboard got used two days. It was different people that used the whiteboard.
Totally.
And one of them wrote words on the whiteboard and the other one drew pictures.
That's interesting.
And you could say, hey,
within that group, there are 11 or 12 people in the room. Within that group.
um we weren't all visual but like you can imagine that in i mean just keep it simple right if there's three types of learning in any group of 10 people or 12 people there's gonna be four visual learners
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: and four cuts right so you can imagine that being in a space creates the types of um
opportunities just the types of methods modalities for all types of learners when you're in a space whereas if you're over zoom it it can cut off some types the
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Scott: question I have actually is unrelated to work is more related to education now we're getting way off track here but this is such a question which is
I guess it's a two-parter.
First is these learning styles,
at what age do they develop?
And do they develop at a young enough age that we should actually be having different types of schools that teach differently?
Like, I'm just making this up. Should you get tested before kindergarten?
Brad: Just like what kind of a learner you are.
Scott: and okay well maybe it's not different schools maybe it's different classes right but like okay you're going to go in the visual class and you're going to go in the auditory class and you're going to go in the I'm just I don't know but is that a thing could that be a thing
Brad: Well, here's what I don't know the answer to the question of where do these develop,
when do these develop.
I do think that they're pretty apparent over time. And I would say my understanding,
again,
I'm not an I'm not a teacher, but I have several.
family members and friends that are teachers and i think they would if they were listening to this conversation they would basically say this is what we do all the time is we are always using all three styles of learning and we and we are always and and and we learn as instructors like this is the piece of the of learning how to be an instructor is to learn that this matters
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: to learn that you have a bias because you are a type of learner yourself and if you don't know how to break your own bias then you will only cater to people that have the same learning style as you and so you need to be you need to be cognizant and you need to create lesson and student activities that allow all of your learners to experience this and
be aware of it, watch the students and how they're learning.
They don't, they might not know their learning style and,
Scott: Right.
Brad: and, but you need to be present and aware of it and then you can help guide them to the types of activities that are going to help them learn better.
Scott: Yeah,
I bet a second grade teacher with, you know, 20 or 30 kids in their classroom who's been teaching for 10 years can probably five minutes can figure out.
They could probably give kids three,
five-minute activities and basically 80% of the kids they could know right away what
Brad: Yeah, I'm sure that's the case.
Scott: these kids'
strengths and weaknesses.
Brad: And by the way,
I do think this, what's interesting is, so I got into one of these conversations.
with a couple of um you know colleagues of mine that aren't work colleagues but we're all professionals and we started talking about like learn you know like remote because one of them was like oh i went into the office today kind of thing and and um and so we started talking about that whole like in person versus zoom
And,
you know, I I've got one of the one of the engineers on the team, you know, really small team,
but one of them is a junior engineer.
This is his first job out of college and, you know, kind of helping mentor him. And he's in a city that nobody else in the company is in. Right. Like there's no there's no in person with him.
And so how do we mentor and grow his talent?
Right.
And I think that.
One of the things that we've had to do is be really,
really intentional about how do we leverage all these virtual tools,
right?
Scott: Mm-hmm.
Brad: I don't.
I haven't done this with him or I don't know if his mentor is doing this with him,
but he might like a kinesthetic version of something that works for a program.
Someone who's a kinesthetic learner who's a software developer,
you know what works great for them?
Pair programming.
Scott: Yeah.
Brad: Pair programming is definitionally a kinesthetic learning experience.
Scott: Well,
that's interesting you say that because I think of it as a visual learning experience like
Brad: These.
Scott: I just need to see you do it.
Brad: Well,
so that's the interesting thing, right?
Me watching a live stream of you code, if I'm a visual learner,
I'm going to be learning by watching you.
Scott: Yeah
Brad: If I'm a kinesthetic learner,
then you saying,
hey,
why don't you?
Take
Scott: right
Brad: this next function.
Scott: has it has both parts yeah so I definitely have a lot of visual in me because I'm often I'm just like I just need to see the code like just show me just let me just look at it for a minute just
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: like see what's there and
Brad: Yeah, totally.
Scott: that helps me a lot just to just to see it
Brad: Like here's another version.
Like I was I was talking to another colleague of mine. We were talking about code reviews and and there's this one engineer who I basically noticed that the way that he does code reviews is he downloads the code and
Scott: Mm
Brad: starts
Scott: -hmm.
Brad: running it and modifying it to his liking and then provides feedback on the code review.
Scott: Does
Brad: Right.
Scott: he commit or does he just provide the feedback?
Brad: Maybe he provides the feedback or, you know, he even will say to people like, do you want me to make a commit to, you know, I bet you dollars to donuts.
He's a kinesthetic learner.
Like he can't he can't understand the code without kind of doing the process himself.
Scott: Yeah, that's interesting.
So I haven't done a lot of coding.
lately
Brad: But
Scott: We
Brad: when I was,
Scott: got to get you back on that horse.
Brad: you know, earlier in my career, I don't think the kids, as they say, used debuggers anymore.
Scott: Oh, man.
Brad: But,
you know, when I was working as a full-time engineer as opposed to sort of a manager type,
I always felt like I lived in a debugger because...
you know I would go through I'd walk through my code in it I would change values and move back just to see how it all behaved like
Scott: Yeah,
Brad: did it
Scott: totally.
Brad: behave the way I expected it to
Scott: Yeah,
this sounds to me like you've got a kinesthetic streak in you probably.
Brad: that's a that's a kinesthetic that's a yeah it's a kinesthetic thing i was i i think about it i felt like then and i feel like now i was just playing with it this
Scott: Yeah,
Brad: wasn't like
Scott: totally.
Brad: i was debugging trying to find a problem i was this was more like the qa before i committed and i was just like i just want to understand that this is going to behave the way i want it to behave
and because it is you know it is a little bit like it's coding is a little bit like we're sculpting with noodles you
Scott: Yeah, totally.
Brad: know
Scott: Totally.
Brad: you know and they're all it's all flexible and bendy in there once you start throwing actual values through those variables and whenever there's a problem in fact the last thing I'll say about this in relation to the kids is now
When people have problems,
they do what I would refer to as print F debugging,
right? They start to throw log lines in there.
And that was like, when I was getting started, that was kind of like.
i'm being blocked in their word that was that was the wrong way that was you're being an amateur if you still
Scott: Totally.
Brad: did it that way if you didn't use the debugger and now like no one even knows how to use the debugger so that's they do it i'm just like you're blowing my mind this would be so much easier if you could just we could just go live inside john malkovich's brain you know
Scott: Well,
and it's just super interesting that you're sort of saying that in your experience, you're sort of not seeing engineers.
use debuggers as much anymore and i would say um let's zoom the camera out for a second right like i think i think this is a good example of the type of detail when we talk about high performance engineering teams especially when you're talking about an organization in the in the hundreds where you've got to count on managers right like i i think
Trying to assess your, like, I suspect the really good managers,
the one that you're like that engineering manager,
their team always seems to perform well.
They seem to like, you know, them.
They seem to get a lot of shit done.
I wonder what that person's, you know, secret is.
I'll bet you one of the things that that engineering manager's secret is, is they're good at understanding learning styles and cognitive styles of their team members,
and they're understanding how to facilitate that in each of the engineers.
And they recognize that a third of their engineers are going to have a different style,
and maybe they're...
going over to that engineer that's like print effing and struggling and they're like hey can we have you tried it in the debugger you
Brad: Yeah,
Scott: know so
Brad: that is really interesting.
I've never thought about this.
Scott: we're getting close to the end of our scheduled time and what how do we how do we put a bow on this one so we started by talking about
a business trip that you took where you ended up in person and there was this interesting dynamic where decisions,
the answers became clear when the whiteboard was used.
Brad: Yeah.
Scott: And from there, we pivoted into this interesting conversation about how people learn and make decisions and
How much the virtual world, I think, challenges that, like
Brad: Mm-hmm.
Scott: puts extra challenges on top of that.
Brad: Yep.
Scott: There feels to me that there is a through line to all of that.
Brad: I will tell you what the through line is. We're talking about getting people,
a group of people who all have different learning styles,
different contexts and orientation.
And so by context and orientation,
what I mean by that is using the OODA loop kind of context, like what they bring to the table, how they think about the world, what their life experiences are.
with their motivations are we bringing a bunch of different people together with all sorts of different motivations and things like that at different skill levels and talent level etc and we're trying to get them to a shared understanding
right to at least whether it's the right plan or the wrong plan agree that this is the thing that's going to happen
Scott: Yep.
Brad: right whether it was the executive team I was with we were just trying to make some strategic decisions whether it's the kids in school you're just trying to get them to all understand that two plus two equals four and some people need to do that with matchsticks and some people need to do that with pencil and paper and some people need to do that just by someone describing how math works oh and in the remote world it's like
like how we cut some of those tools off for getting the shared understanding
Scott: How do we replace those tools with other tools that work in the remote world?
Brad: to work together as people,
as society,
we have to have shared understandings that green means go and red means stop,
right?
If we didn't have that shared understanding.
the roads would be a disaster well
Scott: How very colorblind ablest of you to know.
Brad: that is interesting as a person who's a little bit colorblind isn't it interesting that one of the most fundamental things in our society
We have a very politicized, very divided society,
but we still agree that green means go and red means stop.
We all,
for the most part, I believe we are still following all the traffic laws in this country, right?
It's, I mean, it's remarkable that that, wait till that breaks down.
Oh my goodness. So my point is, but isn't it interesting that they chose like colorblind issued colors for red and green?
Isn't that interesting?
Scott: it's crazy right
Brad: So I think the through line is to get people to work together in a harmonious way,
they have to have a way to come to some shared understanding.
And different people,
it's like the three men and the elephant,
right?
Different people connect to
Scott: and
Brad: it in different ways,
Scott: they're
Brad: describing touch it in different ways,
but you have to get all three of them to understand, no, it's an elephant.
Scott: Right.
Brad: And you
Scott: And I'll have this final like parting shot.
Brad: get it.
Scott: I don't think that I think there is a false belief that that can only happen in person and it happens easier in person.
I disagree with that.
I think that it's very hard to make it happen in person.
And that the rocks of making it happen,
getting to that shared understanding,
is recognizing these different contexts and approaches and then working together to address those. And in some sense, I almost feel as if the virtual world...
forces us to be so much more intentional that we may in fact get better at it by for you know it's it's a little bit like you know when you lose one of your senses your other senses take over and you become more powerful in those senses you
Brad: Well,
Scott: know ring
Brad: that's the final word. Should I ring the bell?
Scott: the bell another episode all right see you next week
Brad: It was nice catching up, Brad.
Scott: all
Brad: Talk to you soon.
Scott: right bye
This episode of How Many CTOs Does It Take podcast was edited by Saffron Hepdegow.
Our theme song was AI Generated by Brad.
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