Explaining It Again Isn't the Answer: What I Learned About Training the Person in Front of Me
I put my head in my hands. I couldn't believe she was asking yet another question.
I had already explained it three times. Three different ways, or so I thought. And here she was, six months into her new job, sitting across from me and asking again. I was exasperated with the situation. With the clock. With the fact that I had a dozen other things to do and we were still talking about the same thing. Apparently, I was not getting through to her. She was not picking up what I was putting down. I needed to assess the way I was training her and do it differently.
It dawned on me: I had never asked her how she learns best.
I hadn't asked her about her learning style or communication style. I hadn't looked back at the pre-employment assessment she completed that gauged working styles, learning styles, and communication preferences. I had been training her the way I like to be trained and then getting frustrated when it wasn't sticking.
Suddenly, I looked up. Took my head out of my hands. It dawned on me that I was the roadblock. I was the bottleneck. I was the one stalling progress. Not her. I needed to change the way I did things.
I invited her into my office, asked her to take a seat, and began by telling her how sorry I was that I wasn’t communicating the right way. I explained my realization that I needed to change the way I was presenting concepts and tasks. I asked her if she’d ever thought about her learning style or communication style and we dove into talking about how she likes to learn. I asked her to think about a time when she really enjoyed learning a new concept and how she picked up the information best. Together, we reviewed the assessment she took before getting hired that provided insights into her working, learning, and communication styles. We read through it together.
I asked her questions I should have asked months earlier: What helps things click for you? What makes you feel lost? When I explain something, Do you prefer watching me do it, reading through it, trying it yourself while I'm around the office and available for questions? The answers were different from what I would have said about myself.
It took a few weeks to adjust. There were some tough conversations in there too — I had to let go of some ego, admit I'd been the roadblock, and change habits I'd built over years of managing the way I was managed. And we got there. Now I train her in the way she learns best and the repetition I used to dread has disappeared.
I had forgotten the principles of adult learning and communication styles and this was a good lesson in remembering.
Adult Learners don’t learn the same way kids do
Malcolm Knowles, who gave us the framework of andragogy (the study of how adults learn), laid out a few principles that, looking back, explain exactly why my early approach wasn't working.
Adults need to know why they're learning something. The WIIFM. What’s In It For Me. Adults approach new learning through the lens of everything they've already lived, believed, and practiced. They want to know why something matters, how it connects to what they've already done, and what they'll gain from it. They bring a lifetime of experience to the table and expect it to be respected. They want to solve real problems, not sit through lectures. Adults learn best when they have ownership over the process.
When I was training my employee, I wasn't connecting the what to the why. I wasn't drawing on what she already knew from her prior roles. I was essentially teaching her like she was a blank slate. Every adult learner walks in the door carrying a lifetime of experiences. . They come from all different backgrounds and cultures.
Instead of saying 'get the job posting up by end of day,' I started saying 'the hiring manager has interviews scheduled for Thursday, if the posting isn't live by the end of the day then we lose two days of applicant time and she'll have a thin pool to work with. You've coordinated postings before, so you know how quickly the right candidates move.' She stopped checking boxes and started thinking two steps ahead. Once I started framing tasks with the reasoning behind them, the lightbulb went off and she went off on her own to handle the task at hand.
VARK: Visual, Auditory, Reading/Writing, and Kinesthetic
The VARK model breaks learners down into four broad preferences: Visual, Auditory, Reading/writing, and Kinesthetic. Most people lean on a mix, but most of us have a dominant one or two.
Visual learners want to see it. Diagrams, flowcharts, color-coded spreadsheets, a whiteboard sketch.
Auditory learners want to hear it. They'll retain more from a ten-minute conversation than a ten-page document.
Reading/writing learners want it in text. Send the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Let them highlight it. They'll come back with notes.
Kinesthetic learners want to do it. They'll learn by clicking through the system themselves while you talk, not by watching you click through it.
A facilitator once asked my group, “Imagine you buy a piece of furniture from IKEA. What do you do with the instructions?”. She paused while we thought about it and continued, “Do you A) take the instructions and read them thoroughly, review required tools, count each bolt and screw, line up the pieces, and then begin? Do you B) find a video on YouTube of someone making the furniture, listening to them as they walk through each step? Or do you C) ball up the instructions and try to fit it all together and when it doesn’t fit, you take it apart and try again?” I was in the third group. I'm kinesthetic first, with strong reading/writing tendencies. Give me the task, let me try it, and I'll fill in the gaps as I go.
My instinct, naturally, was to train the way I like to be trained. But the person in front of me processes things differently, and what works for me wasn't working for her. Learning how she learns and communicates set this experience apart from the others. It changed the way I trained employees.
None of these styles is better than another. Understanding that everyone learns differently helped me adapt my training style so employees thoroughly understood the tasks I was presenting. Which made their lives easier.
Know, Show, Do, Review: The Cycle That Actually Sticks
The other piece that reframed how I train people comes from Kolb's experiential learning cycle — but I've always found Kolb's own language dry and academic. The version I've learned is simpler: Know. Show. Do. Review.
Know — the person understands what they're doing and, critically, why it matters.
Show — you demonstrate it. Walk them through it. Make the invisible parts of the task visible.
Do — they try it themselves. Hands on the keyboard, feet on the floor, in the actual work.
Review — you debrief together. What worked? What didn't? What would they do differently next time?
Learning happens across all four stages. Most of us, when we're rushed, collapse the whole thing into Show — watch me do this, now you do it — and then wonder why the employee didn’t learn. We skipped the reason behind the learning. We handed over a procedure without building understanding.
Now I follow all steps. I explain the reasoning before I demo. I let her do the work while I watch. We debrief afterward, and I ask what she'd do differently. Then she does it again with that new understanding baked in. It takes more time upfront and a lot less time on the back end.
Applying this to the job
If you manage people, here's what I'd offer from the other side of that head-in-hands moment:
Ask before you assume. If your company uses hiring or communication assessments, read them. If it doesn't, have the conversation anyway. "How do you learn best?" is a surprisingly rare question for a manager to ask.
Train the person, not the protocol. The SOP doesn't change. How you walk someone through it should.
Explain the why. Remember WIIFM. Adults tune out instructions that feel arbitrary. Context is the thing that makes the instruction stick.
Run the full cycle. Don't collapse training into watch me, now you do it. Know. Show. Do. Review. All of the steps, all of the time. The review is where learning embeds itself in the brain.
Watch your ego. When someone isn't "getting it," the uncomfortable first question is whether you're the one not getting through. Sit with that one.
I'm a better manager now than I was before that conversation in my office. I became a better listener and it turns out, the fastest way to stop repeating yourself is to start paying attention to who you're talking to.
