What’s Your Learning Style?

Why It Matters in Executive Coaching

In executive coaching, one of the earliest insights that often surprises my clients is this: how you learn matters just as much as what you learn.

Most executives live in a world of high performance, rapid decision-making, and relentless demands. You’re expected to absorb, apply, and adapt—fast. But how you internalize and integrate learning varies from how your peers, your team, or your coach might. This is where learning styles come into play.

Understanding your learning style isn't just a nice-to-know personality trait—it’s a powerful tool for accelerating growth, improving communication, and making coaching more impactful. Many of the au courant assessment tools - MBTI, Hogan, Enneagram, Strengthsfinder, etc. - touch on some aspect of learning, but in my experience, often they aren’t specific enough about identifying and activating your own specific style.

Let’s explore what learning styles are, why they matter in executive coaching, and how you can use this knowledge to become a more agile, self-aware, and effective leader.

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The Big Picture: Learning Styles in the Workplace

Learning styles refer to the preferred ways in which individuals take in, process, and retain information. While the academic debate over the science of learning styles continues, in the workplace and in coaching, recognizing your learning preferences can dramatically improve engagement and outcomes.

In my coaching, I am not just working on knowledge transfer; that would be more of a mentoring model. Instead, I focus on behavioral change, leadership development, and mindset shifts. That’s a deeper process. And the deeper the learning, the more personal the pathway needs to be.

Think of learning styles as the “language” your brain speaks when it’s trying to make sense of a new concept or challenge. If your coaching sessions aren’t “speaking your language,” you might leave inspired but unchanged.

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The Four Most Common Learning Styles

Here’s a quick overview of four commonly recognized learning styles, drawn from the VARK and Kolb models. As you read through these, try to identify which style feels most like you (if you like, you can find no-fee online assessment tools to help you determine your learning style):

1. Visual Learners

Visual learners absorb information best through images, diagrams, and spatial understanding. They often say things like “I need to see it to understand it.”

In coaching: Visual learners often benefit from whiteboards, frameworks, charts, or seeing their thoughts mapped out. For example, drawing out stakeholder maps or decision trees can unlock powerful insights for them.

Tip for visual executives: Ask your coach to diagram conversations or use visual metaphors. Keep a visual journal of your leadership insights. Or, when getting requests from your coach, you can suggest that you fulfill the request in a visual-first style. If I know a client is dominantly a visual learner, I try to focus my requests on things they can diagram, chart out, or draw; and any content I ask them to review will be in the form of video.

2. Auditory Learners

These learners retain information by hearing and speaking. They often process ideas best by discussing them out loud or listening to explanations.

In coaching: Auditory learners thrive in conversational coaching. They gain clarity when they can talk through scenarios, practice dialogue, or hear stories that illustrate a principle.

Tip for auditory executives: Use voice notes to reflect between sessions. Repeat key takeaways aloud to anchor the learning. Ask your coach to record the session and send you a link to the video/audio file for your reference.

3. Kinesthetic Learners

Kinesthetic learners need to do in order to understand. They engage best through hands-on experience, movement, or active experimentation.

In coaching: Role-playing difficult conversations, prototyping a new idea, or standing up and moving during sessions can help these learners integrate coaching insights more deeply. Embodiment exercises work well for kinesthetic learners.

Tip for kinesthetic executives: Don’t just reflect—act. Define your alliance with your coach to include active movement in your sessions and assignments that lean into your kinesthetic learning style. You might try small leadership experiments between sessions and debrief the experience.

4. Read/Write Learners

These learners prefer written words, whether it’s reading detailed content or writing things down to process them.

In coaching: These clients often benefit from structured journaling, reading relevant articles or books, and written frameworks. They may enjoy capturing their takeaways in writing or preparing written reflections before sessions. I have several clients who choose to send me fairly detailed agendas in advance of each session, along with written reflections on their growth, setbacks, etc.

Tip for read/write executives: Maintain a coaching journal. Send your coach a written agenda before each session. Ask your coach for book recommendations or summaries. Employ an AI notetaker to speed up notetaking and to provide AI summaries of each session.

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Why Learning Styles Matter in Executive Coaching

You might be thinking: “Great. I’m a visual learner. So what?”

Here’s what: Knowing your learning style can radically shift your coaching experience. Here’s how:

1. It helps your coach tailor the experience.

Coaching isn’t one-size-fits-all. The best executive coaches adapt their approach to match your preferences. If you’re a kinesthetic learner stuck in a purely verbal coaching model, you might feel frustrated. But once your coach introduces action-oriented tools or movement-based exercises, things click.

2. It accelerates your growth.

When you work with your natural learning tendencies instead of against them, you move faster. Insights land deeper. Change sticks.

3. It improves how you lead others.

Recognizing your own learning style helps you notice—and honor—those of your team. This creates better communication, reduces friction, and builds psychological safety. Imagine the impact of knowing your CFO is a read/write learner while your head of product is kinesthetic. You’d adjust how you deliver information—and likely see better results.

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What If You Don’t Know Your Learning Style?

You don’t need to take a formal assessment to figure this out (though they can be helpful). Start by reflecting:

• How do you prefer to take in new information?

• Do you remember better when you hear something, see something, or write it down?

• In what situations do you feel like you “really get it”?

Also, pay attention during your coaching sessions:

• When do you feel most energized?

• When do ideas click?

• What kinds of follow-up activities are most effective for you?

Your coach can help you observe these patterns and design a coaching journey that aligns. It should be part of the designed alliance that you create with your coach in your first session.

You CAN take online assessments if you choose to; these may help confirm your dominant learning style if you have doubts (for example, I tend to be a multimodal learner, leaning on visual and kinesthetic learning modes but also attuned to read/write and aural modes as well).

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Flexing Beyond Your Style

One final point: while knowing your dominant learning style is useful, the real power lies in being able to flex.

Leaders today need to be agile learners. That means expanding your capacity to learn in unfamiliar or uncomfortable ways. A visual learner may need to get better at listening without seeing slides. A kinesthetic learner may need to sit still and reflect. Coaching is a great lab for building this adaptability.

By stretching beyond your comfort zone, you build what we might call “learning range”—the ability to absorb new ideas and behaviors no matter the context. In a world where disruption is constant, this is a key leadership advantage.

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Final Thoughts: Start With Awareness

The most successful coaching clients I’ve worked with all share one thing: they’re deeply self-aware. Learning style is just one dimension of that awareness—but it’s a powerful one.

If you’re starting or deepening an executive coaching journey, ask yourself: How do I learn best? And then ask your coach: How can we design this work together to match that?

When coaching meets you where you are, transformation becomes not only possible—but inevitable.

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