Personal and Professional Development

Use of Honey and Mumford learning theory in My Learning Style

In 1986, a learning style questionnaire based on Kolb learning cycle was introduced by Honey and Mumford. With the help of this learning style questionnaire, an individual can evaluate his learning style and preferences in the four different categories, such as Activist, Reflector, Theorist, and Pragmatist (Honey and Mumford, 1992).

Figure 1: Honey and Mumford Learning Style Model (Source: Honey and Mumford, 1992)

As per this learning cycle, activist people, learn new things and skills from real life experiences, working in teams and business simulation. Further, reflectors gain new learning insights through listening and evaluating others work and experiences. In addition, people, who are theorists, learn from different concepts and theories and pragmatics learn by developing a link between theory new information and its real life application (Gray, 2004).

On the basis of this cycle, I am a reflector learner. It is because, I prefer to evaluate the work done by others and their experiences and focus on views and perceptions of others. I always try to be analyzed other’s works and experience in different activities and their ways to handle the situation with good communication skills to learn new things. For managing the diversified needs of the hospitality environment, this learning style is very beneficial for me to understand the different preferences and needs of the stakeholders and work with a diversified team.

Different Approaches of self-managed learning and my Preferred Learning Style

Self managed learning can be gained through different approaches and process. Some of the important approaches are seminars and conferences, training and education classes, social networks and the internet (Davies, 2006). By joining different seminar and conferences, individuals can have ideas and experiences of experts that how to develop their skills and capabilities in different areas. Further, social network are the most common and influential ways to develop self learning. At different community groups and social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on individuals share their perceptions and thought to learn new skills in personal and professional development. Apart from this, the internet is also one of the main approaches for self development, as it provides a wide material about development of team management skills, risk management abilities, personality development and so on.

Here, my preferred learning approach is the seminars and conferences. It is because I am a reflector learner, I like to evaluate and understand other’s experiences to handle different situations and what types of behaviors and approaches they followed to resolve the problem. I learn through other’s experiences, thus, seminars and conferences allow me to reflect their styles.

Benefits of Self Managed learning for me and my Organization

As, self managed learning has different approaches, it has several benefits for the individuals as well as organization. From individual viewpoint, I evaluated that self managed learning provides me opportunities to think from a new perspective and understand the changing business and social world. Through self managed learning, I become more able to understand my roles and responsibilities for my work place as well as my family in the future and I also learn the value of time and work life balance to accomplish all my targets on time in the hospitality firm. In order to become competitive in the unpredictable hospitality industry, self managed learning supports me to develop critical skills as per the situation and demands of the customers and other stakeholders and society, so that I can adjust in a diversified environment.

On the other hand, from the organizational point of view, self managed learning is beneficial to motivate the employees to take an active part in different processes and operations of the firm. By promoting self managed learning, the firms can help the employees to take an active part in the decision making process and generate innovative ideas (Gordon, Tindall-Ford, Agostinho and Paas, 2016). An effective and efficient use of available human resources can be done through self managed learning, as it will allow individuals to develop their skills and at their own level and complete the business goal and objectives on time. Return on investment in training and development, seminars and development events, educational meets and so on will be high for the business firms (Gray, 2004).

Suggestions to Encourage Life Long Learning

For encouraging lifelong learning and developing skills, it is important for me to join different learning seminars and events, conferences and summits. It is considerable for me to focus on communication, team management skills in a culturally diversified area of the hospitality industry. So for ensuring a lifelong learning, it would be beneficial for me to join some communication classes and social seminars related to diversified cultural management and communication management (Yan, Zhang and Guo, 2016). Apart from this, regular self evaluation and communication and relationship development, analyzing the decision making and problems solving styles of others, motivation and so on are some different ways to encourage lifelong learning.

Conclusion

Thus, on the basis of the above discussion, it can be concluded that self managed learning is one of the crucial elements in the individual’s professional and personal development. I am a reflector learner, who prefers to listen and evaluate other’s works and experiences to learn different ways and approaches used by other to handle different situations. Self managed learning is beneficial for me to handle a diversified team work environment in the future in the hospitality industry and manage extraordinary communication skills to fulfill the needs and requirements of the customers. Further, self managed learning will be beneficial for my firm to get high return on investments of different training and development programs and ensures timely completion of responsibilities and assigned tasks.

References

• Davies, A. (2006) Management development through self managed learning: the case of West Sussex County Council, Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, vol. 20, no. 4, pp.16 – 18.
• Gordon, C., Tindall-Ford, S., Agostinho, S. and Paas, F. (2016) Learning from Instructor-managed and Self-managed Split-attention Materials. Applied Cognitive Psychology, vol., 30, pp. 1–9.
• Gray, D. (2004) Learning Through the Workplace: A Guide to Work-based Learning, Nelson Thornes.
• Honey, P. and Mumford, A. (1992) The Manual of Learning Styles (3rd Edition). Maidenhead: Peter Honey Publications.
• Yan, Y., Zhang, B. and Guo, J. (2016) An Adaptive Decision Making Approach Based on Reinforcement Learning for Self-Managed Cloud Applications, 2016 IEEE International Conference on Web Services (ICWS), San Francisco, CA, pp. 720-723.