Hello and many thanks to those of you who came back to me after my post last week- great to hear from you. Today I’m continuing with Howard Gardner’s 7 intelligences and looking at Visual/Spatial.
This area has to do with vision and spatial judgment. People with strong visual/spatial intelligence are typically very good at visualising and mentally manipulating objects. They tend to have inbuilt “navigation” skills. They can be proficient at solving puzzles. They have a strong visual memory and are often artistically inclined. Those with visual/spatial intelligence also generally have a very good sense of direction and may also have very good hand-eye coordination, although this is normally seen as a characteristic of the bodily-kinesthetic intelligence.
People who are good at sport often have a high level of visual/spatial intelligence.
For example:
- Rugby players who can kick a ball across a pitch into the path of a running colleague for them to intercept.
- Cricket batsman who can place a ball deftly between two fielders.
- A footballer who can take a free kick from way out and see how they can curve a ball around a wall of defenders to score.
Those with a strong visual/spatial intelligence often have the ability to view things in 3D. The ability to easily reverse a car into a tight spot could be a sign of this intelligence as could the ability to run a map in your head- some people say that they have a compass in their head which allows them to have an amazing sense of direction- no need for satnav for them!
If this is a strong intelligence for you, how can you leverage it to get better learning returns? Why not make the most of what you have got? Invest a little in your development and take some time to consider your unique mix of intelligences and discover strategies to vastly improve your learning potential.
For those of you who struggle with reversing your car or have to use satnav to get out of your driveway, that doesn’t mean that you cannot develop this intelligence. You will have to work at it though. There is no such thing as can’t. You just don’t know how to do it yet!
Next week I will be looking at the Body Physical intelligence.
JUN
About the Author
Phil has over thirty years working in key management roles with particular expertise in Finance, Sales, Service, Teamworking, Culture Change and Performance Management. For more than twenty years he was involved in the very demanding Corporate Banking world. He has hosted and facilitated conferences for large organisations on a Europe wide basis. He is a qualified psychometric assessor for staff recruitment and MBTi qualified. He is an NLP Practitioner. In addition Phil is an accredited deliverer of “Celemi” Business Simulations. He has a real skill in taking complex concepts and models and bringing these to life. He has designed and implemented Learning and Development programmes into major organisations and now works in design and delivery of “Attitudinal Based Learning” and “Accelerated Learning”. Loves: Time with family and friends, Real Beer, Music, Walking - particularly along the coast.