I remember a time when I was presenting an event proposal to a client. All the details were there but one particular person couldn’t understand how it would look like on the actual day. The top view layout plan didn’t make sense to him. I figured he was a very visual person and I had to create a 3D visual for him before he understood. That was the day I realised that people process information differently. There is an old Cantonese saying for this: 鸡同鸭讲 — the chicken talking to the duck. Two creatures, same farmyard, completely different languages. Nobody is wrong. Nobody is stupid. They simply cannot hear each other.
So let’s get back to how this takes place in the workplace. You have delivered a clear and well designed presentation explaining a project strategy for the next 6 months. At the end of the presentation you asked if there were questions and nobody had any.
Two weeks later, an argument takes place between two department heads, each blaming each other for not delivering something in their control.
They both got the same message during the presentation but somehow they missed each other’s “bridge”.
This happens because different people primarily process information differently and communicate in a way they understand. We’re not even talking language barriers here.
How We Process Information Differently
The VAK model, Visual, Auditory, and Kinaesthetic, describes three representational systems that reveal how people prefer to learn and communicate.
Originally developed by educational psychologists in the 1920s and further refined in the 1970s, the model suggests that individuals tend to have a dominant modality through which they most naturally take in and process the world.
It is worth being precise about what this means in practice, because the three modes are more distinct than they first appear.
Visual thinkers process information primarily through sight. They benefit most from diagrams, frameworks, written text, and demonstrations that show how things fit together. In a meeting, they are the ones who want to see the org chart, the timeline, the process map because the spatial relationship between ideas is how meaning becomes real for them.
Auditory thinkers process primarily through listening and speaking. They respond well to hearing ideas explained, engaging in conversation, and talking through problems out loud. A slide deck with bullet points is not their natural habitat. A discussion that lets them hear multiple perspectives including their own voice in response is where understanding takes root.
Kinaesthetic thinkers process through doing, feeling, and physical experience. They learn by trying, not by being told. In a training room, they are the ones who quietly disengage during the theory portion and come alive during the exercise. They need to move through an idea, not just see or hear it. A two-hour presentation, however well-constructed, will lose them before the halfway mark.
Where Messages Get Distorted
Understanding these modes helps explain something that frustrates many leaders: the gap between what was communicated and what was understood.
Consider a common scenario. A leadership team wants to roll out a new strategy. They prepare a detailed presentation with forty slides, well-structured, covering context, rationale, implications, and next steps. They deliver it in a town hall. They send the deck afterwards.
The visual thinkers in the room follow the logic clearly and leave with a good grasp of where things are going. The auditory thinkers absorb the key messages but want to talk it through they have questions not because they missed something, but because dialogue is how they confirm understanding. The kinaesthetic thinkers sat through it politely, but the strategy didn’t become real until they were asked to do something with it such as map out their team’s priorities, simulate a decision, work through a case.
The same forty slides produced three different levels of comprehension because of mode.
You can often identify someone’s dominant representational system in how they speak. Visual thinkers say things like “I can see your point” or “let me show you what I mean.” Auditory thinkers say “I hear what you’re saying” or “that doesn’t sound right to me.” Kinaesthetic thinkers say “I feel like we’re missing something” or “I need to get a grip on this.” These are not metaphors. They are windows into how the person is actually processing the conversation.
What This Means for Facilitation
Most corporate communication which includes presentations, briefings, strategy sessions, training programmes is designed primarily for visual and auditory thinkers.
The deck with talking heads and the Q&As in the end. It is a format that works reasonably well for roughly two thirds of the room and leaves the remaining third doing their best to translate.
Effective facilitation understands these differences and adapts accordingly. A visual learner might need a process map where others need a discussion. An auditory learner might need a structured conversation where others need a demonstration. A kinaesthetic learner might need a physical exercise, a simulation, or a hands-on task to make the same content meaningful.
This is why the best team experiences are deliberately multi-modal as genuine comprehension requires that every person in the room has at least one moment where the information arrives in a form their system can actually use.
Practically, this means designing for all three modes in any significant communication or facilitation session:
For visual thinkers: frameworks, diagrams, written summaries, clear visual sequencing. Show them the map before you describe the journey.
For auditory thinkers: structured discussion, space for questions, opportunities to articulate their understanding out loud. They need to hear themselves say it before it becomes theirs.
For kinaesthetic thinkers: activities, simulations, physical movement, role play, real scenarios to work through. Give them something to do with the idea, not just something to think about.
The Cost of Getting This Wrong
When communication is designed for only one mode, the consequences are not always visible immediately. The confusion shows during the plan implementation. The misalignment surfaces in the debrief.
The irony is that most leaders are highly aware of their own preferred mode and naturally design communication that works for people like them. A leader who processes visually will reach for the whiteboard. A leader who processes auditorily will call a meeting and talk it through. Neither is wrong but neither is complete.
The most effective communicators and facilitators are not those who have found the single best mode. They are those who have learned to move fluidly between all three.