Stop talking past each other: how learning styles can improve your team's engagement.

One critical and highly overlooked aspect of managing and coaching our marketing team is understanding how we and those we lead, learn best. So I thought I'd dedicate today's newsletter to helping you understand your team member's preferred learning styles (visual, auditory, read/write and kinesthetic) and why it does matter to do so!

If you’ve never considered how these styles impact your leadership, your coaching, or meetings, you’re not alone. But knowing and leveraging learning styles can really transform your leadership approach, creating more engaged and productive brand teams. Neglecting this, however, can lead to miscommunication, frustration, and costly mistakes.

At its core, it reminds us that people absorb information differently. As FMCG leaders, we’re often in the deep end of brand campaigns, dealing with weekly cross-functional meetings, high-stake decision making. Understanding learning styles ensures that your message not only lands but sticks. And boy do we know how important that is, in our marketing world.

Let me give you a few examples of learning styles that may surface from what you observe and hear from your team members:

• Your visual brand managers thrive on charts, graphs, images, graphics, vision board, to see patterns. They learn best by seeing information, looking at people performing the skills, visualising the information in their mind. Think videos, infographics, reports that contain images (not full of words).
• Your auditory brand managers connect through discussions, explanations, storytelling. They learn best by hearing information. Tip: share links to podcast or videos (with audio) to help them with growing a certain skill or a specific area of marketing.
• Your read-write brand managers prefer detailed notes, reports, documentations – anything displayed as words and texts. They will rather read about how to perform the task in a book. They tend to find helpful to write things down to learn and remember it. Think about how during a PDP/end-of-year review, you might support them in learning or improving a skill.
• Your kinesthetic brand managers learn best by touching and doing, hands-on experience. They prefer watching someone else perform the skill and then try it themselves (think training, shadowing for example for them).

All in all, it's quite clear that recognising and accommodating these preferences can make a real difference between a brand team that’s merely informed (or not quite on top of all the information, insights and decisions) and one that’s truly aligned and growing / learning. Marketing is at the center of pretty much every corner of the company and conversations. If there is ONE team that needs their learning preferences understood, it's theirs!

This will help you enrich your coaching and conversations.

When you know your team’s learning styles, coaching becomes way more effective. Imagine for a second giving a performance review to a brand manager who's learning style preference is auditory: they’ll engage more deeply in a dialogue than in reading a written summary. Sounds obvious now, but have a think about your team. Have you used the same approach with every single one of them? Conversely, a read/write direct report of yours might appreciate a carefully crafter follow-up email outlining the key points of the review afterwards. If you fail to do so, some key points might be missed or not fully understood / digested.

Moreover, in meetings, understanding these learning styles amongst your team can drive better outcomes. Remember that providing a mix of visuals, verbal explanations, and opportunities for interactive participation ensures everyone in the room stays engaged. Think of it as creating a multi-sensory experience for your team – it’s inclusive and very energizing.?

The risks if you ignore it altogether.

Without this awareness, even well-meaning leaders can unintentionally alienate brand managers. And to illustrate my point, here’s a scenario:

• You’re presenting a critical marketing strategy in a team meeting. You’ve built an impressive slide deck filled with dense text and bullet points. While your read/write learners are diligently taking note, your kinesthetic attendees and auditory ones are tuning out. You leave the meeting frustrated that no one seems “on board”, while your team feels equally disheartened, struggling to connect with the vision.

Sounds familiar? These disconnects don’t just hurt morale – they lead to misaligned execution, missed opportunities, and wasted resources. In an industry like our FMCG world where speed and precision are non-negotiable, these missteps can be very costly! Think Annual Brand Presentation in front of a board that has all learning styles too – would you want to risk it? Avoiding costly mistakes like product launch delays, training inefficiencies, campaign misfires can be eased.

Here's how you can get started!

• Know your own style: reflect on your learning preferences – how do you absorb information best? When you’re self-aware, you can also adapt your style to better suit others. Note that we tend to apply onto others our own preferred style. It might or might not be the most effcient or suitable way.
• Now discover your team’s styles: incorporate tools and questionnaires or 1h as part of your team marketing team day to identify what helps them learn and retain information best. Think of asking how they learn a new hobby – it can facilitate the conversation and find patterns in the way they learn best (outside of work, then bring it to work).
• Third step, time to adapt your approach: mix and match methods in meetings, coaching sessions, and training to meet diverse needs.

In summary

In FMCG, where the only constant is change, leveraging learning styles can give you a competitive edge as a marketing leader. It’s not just about knowing your team, it’s about influencing others and empowering them to perform at their best. If you take the time to understand how you and they learn, you’ll improve the collaboration and communication, for more impactful results.

Reach out to me today to chat about how I can support you in your journey. I have coached marketing leaders like you to develop the confidence, assertiveness, and inspirational presence needed to lead a high-performing, motivated team that drives real impact.

Speak soon,

Mags

Turning overwhelmed marketers into confident and inspiring leaders ? Leadership Coach + also Leadership & Management Trainer