VisualsSpeak blog

Sue Waters has been cleaning up her blog again. She wasn’t happy with her former header image.

I assume this is the skyline of the Australian city she lives in? I don’t know for sure, and many of her other international readers may not know either. Is that a problem? Maybe, maybe not. But let’s look to see what she might be trying to convey for her blog.

What’s the blog about?

The title is Mobile Technology in TAFE. From her About page, we learn TAFE stands for Tertiary and Further Education. She is an aquaculture lecturer. But it doesn’t take reading very far to learn she is passionate about all kinds of technology. Not just a little, she lives and breathes it. And it’s not just using it, it’s about helping people all over the world learn how to use it.

The old image is busy. Lots of buildings, and the image is cropped so there is no space above the buildings. When she first started using this header, the busy visual quality reflected the posting frequency and how the blog was chock full of information.

The blog went on a diet

Now Sue didn’t stop her constant output of information, rather she added other outlets. She found Twitter early on, and it was a perfect medium for her. I still don’t get twitter, but I know everytime I log in, Sue will have posted something interesting to look at.

She also started writing for The Edublogger to help people using the Edublogs system. What I know is when any new thing comes out, if Sue hasn’t already written not only about how it works, but how to actually apply it in educational practice, she will very soon.

So if you follow Sue in various places, you know she has increased her output. If you only look at her personal blog, the quantity of information is lower. Not in quality, just quantity. So, I think her instinct to reduce the clutter in the visuals better reflects the new overall feel of her blog.

A new header image

Sue put up this new image.

And she got this comment from Christy Tucker

Does it seem like the header image leads your image off the right side of the page though? Look at the line of the rocks and the direction the person is facing–it seems to all be pointing off to the right. I wonder if you flipped the image horizontally if it would work better. You’d have to move the text somewhere else, perhaps, but with the image flipped it would draw your eye right down to the content.

Just a thought–you might want to check with Christine Martell or someone else more visually inclined. It’s possible I’m simply imagining things!

Well, Christy, you are not imaging things. The header does lead the eye to the right. But lets’ look at why.

At first glance, you might think it’s just the direction the boy is facing. This certainly contributes, but it’s aggravated by the type which is anchored visually by being right up against the left edge and visually pushes into the back of the boy.

Now, there aren’t any right answers for how to deal with this. Just some options to consider. First, you can move the type over so it leads the eye to circle back around the rocks.

If you have more image software skills, there are some other things you can do. You could shorten the tag line so it fits in the rocks, and flip the boy so he is looking back the other way. This shifts the eye to lead strongly down along the back of the boy. In order to really see if this works, you would need to look at it in the template to see how this lines up with the rest of the template.

You could also remove the boy entirely, and allow the header to lead the eye down the space between the rocks, but in a softer way.

Moving the type to the top balances the image standing along better, but once again, you would want to test it in the actual template to see how it works with the rest of the elements around it.

The same would be true for darker type. You would want to look at it in context, and pay particular attention to how it related to the title of the blog.

What do you want to say with your image?

We’ve made the isolated header work better visually, but does it say what Sue is trying to convey? She said:

the idea was the lonely person staring out into the vastness of the ocean wondering what to do and where to get help.

To make this work, we probably need to bring the boy back. However, when we face him toward the pile of rocks, he isn’t really looking out into the vastness. So, I moved him to the right and adjusted the type to visually relate the the framing of the rocks on the left and the boy on the right.

This leads the eye to circle back and focus on the tagline.

The type feels a bit crowded still, so I also try the shorter tag line and change the type color to relate to the lichen on the rocks below it. The water where I removed the boy also needed a bit more touch-up, and I could spend even more time improving it.

But what’s the right answer?

In design there isn’t a right answer. It’s a balance between what you are wanting to convey and the limitations of what you have to work with combined with the opinions and desires of the person who gets to decide. For a blog header, you are also affected by the template you are using and all of the other elements that surround the header.

Any of these headers can work. Let’s send it back to Sue and see what she thinks. And have her try some of them in her template to see how they work in context.

Design is a process of trial and error for many of us. It might look like we can just pull these things out of the air, but I think for most of us it is iterative. Some people can visualize exactly what they want in their heads then just create it, but I think there are many more of us that try lots of variations to see what will work.

I facilitated a session at the International Association of Facilitators conference in Atlanta, Seeing Differences: Using Photographs to Facilitate Diverse Groups. Like many of the breakout sessions at this conference the session was three hours long, which provided an opportunity to delve deeply into the material.

We covered a lot of material in the session.

• things to consider when setting up the room
• who is your audience?
• what outcome are you looking for?
• creating a question to bridge the audience and the outcome
• what we see in the visual language
• how the visual language gives us clues about the person creating the image
• what changes when people make images in a group
• adjusting questions, images, and process for different audiences

An interesting challenge arose

A VisualsSpeak user dropped by and presented an interesting challenge. How do you convey the results of a VisualsSpeak process to people who weren’t part of it? For those of you who have never been part of a VS session, a tremendous amount of information, ideas, strategies, etc are generated in a very short period of time. The challenge is not getting the input you want but what do you do with the data you get. This is an area that we have been working on and have a few ideas for you to try.

But first, let’s take a look at the kind of raw data that you get from doing a typical VisualsSpeak process. This is a condensed version.

Group images

We created group images exploring the question:

What makes facilitating diverse groups successful?

Here is what the groups came up with.

From the top left, we enter the concept through windows with many panes. Some we can see through more clearly than others. There are different colors of fabrics, different money, doesn’t matter, there is a variety of people who are different than Western culture. The woman is proud of her fuchsia hair. There is a yin/yang in the arms with interesting bandages where the colors are reversed. Different hands hold objects. There is a man doing yoga, children marching. There are multiple different colors, diversity in images. In some you can tell the ethnicity and culture and some you can’t, just a feel. Really builds us together in the natural world, salad, different bird feathers. Function in the farm metaphor of team working together to provide food. When all is said and done, all people looking all different, all the same, yin and yang parts together. The child in the water is looking to young people for inspiration for the need to take risks. The money shows the governments of the world meeting to build coins, far away, but similar. It is more attractive with all the colors, one would be boring.

In the center there is an underlying spark, creativity with new things coming from it. The salad bowl diversity, bounty coming together. The chocolates are all different, but all chocolates are neatly organized. Overall people, metaphors all together, but different. Windows of opportunity. We see some commonality in diversity like the celebration of family ties. Building bridges isn’t easy, fraught with challenges, so this bridge has different bushes and thorns. Different faces, not necessarily ethnicity, but different ideas in some communities. Overall perspective is the giraffe. All different kinds of beads, different but strung together. When it does work, and comes together, there is underlying conflict that can’t be ignored. At the same time you have to leap and hope to survive. Find a team with common things to bind. Doors of opportunity. Diverse looks. Beautiful by coming together with one objective. Bring down the fences, together sign universal cultures, commonalities like currency. Several windows, doors, labyrinths facilitators are aware of when working with diverse groups. A maze of confusion and challenging with pitfalls we can fall into especially if we aren’t partnering with partners in other cultures to help us find the pathways around them. The spider web of connecting. Eggs are the nurturing process, hope for new life bringing diversity together. The balloon has different colors but blended together which makes it interesting and able to take off.

Now the challenge

Here is where one of our VisualsSpeak customers dropped by and asked about sharing the results of a session she had done at her company. She has been using the VisualsSpeak ImageSet for strategic visioning and the team participating had to help others in their organization understand what had happened. She had tried a number of things to convey the outcomes of the session such as making poster prints of the images and having people tell the stories that emerged. It was OK, but didn’t really convey the power of what happened in the room.

The reports from the groups above have the same challenge. Magic happens in the room. People connect deeply. The process of offering your ideas and working through the negotiation to come up with the result is where much of the value lies.

The results seem like they should be more finished than they are. If instead of using photographs we used sketches to record these initial ideas, it would be clear that the sketches needed more work to become conveyable ideas by the very nature of them being sketches. Since the photographs look good, and many of the assembled images are attractive, they seem like they ’should’ convey a message. And to the people who were there they do. Because to them, the images are like notes, they remind the participants of the experience they had. For someone who was not part of the process, this is more like raw assessment data.

How to communicate the results of a VisualsSpeak process

There are a couple of options. Using the example above, we have two groups who have created images and stories.

You might ask the group participants to create a summary;

• What are the common themes?
• What are the images both groups used?
• How can you arrange the images and concepts to make them easier to understand?

The other alternative is to create a summary yourself to help convey the messages more clearly. In this example, I did not participate in the group discussions since I was facilitating the whole session. If I was facilitating for a business or organization and knew I was going to have to create a report, I would be listening to the process as it unfolded and taking notes. I would also ask questions in the debrief to get input from the group about what they thought the most important points were to include. Remember the wisdom of the group.

Don’t strip out the creative juice

One thing to watch in this summarization process is not to lose the minority input. Part of what VisualsSpeak is all about is giving voice to everyone. Sometimes the most important idea will be spoken by one person. Creative sparks and insights that can open up whole new possibilities most often are not the common themes. Often it is the combination of popular ideas with a minority spark that reveals new possibilities.

For more on using the VisualsSpeak process

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I got a lot out of all the sessions I attended at the International Association of Facilitators (IAF) conference, but this session is the one I have continued to think deeply about. The one that continues to intrigue me. There were a number of factors that intertwined to make it successful.

The method

Lisa Heft facilitated a plenary session at the conference on Facilitative Leadership. The attendees of the conference gathered together in one room in small groups at round tables. Lisa has the presence of an experienced facilitator, you can tell within moments that you can trust her to lead you into a process.

Lisa selected a dialogue technique originated by Leilani Rashida Henry, based on inquiry circles, that she describes as a Question Circle. The process starts with an open ended question, passing from person to person. No discussion, just deep listening. Each person ends with another question, which isn’t necessarily to be answered, but adds to the fuel of the dialogue process.

The design of the panel

Not only were the panel members very accomplished at what they did, their areas of expertise were widely divergent from each other. They were each leaders in very different contexts. This provided a foundation of rich input to start the process on stage, before each audience table group began the same process. The panel were seated in comfortable chairs with a low table in front of them on the stage. It created an accessible feel, like they were ready for a conversation.

The dialogue that developed about Facilitative Leadership

Each panel member started with reflecting on what facilitative leadership means to them. The ending question was what they were left wondering after sharing. This is an excerpt of their individual bios and some of what I heard from them.

Lisa Heft specializes in interactive, participant-driven processes for engaging dialogue, reflection, learning and interchange.

• Believe in the wisdom of the group
• Create nutrient rich environments
• Assist the emergent leaders
• Use mistakes for reflection and learning
• Don’t be afraid of the unknown, or if you are stay in the moment and walk forward into the unknown
• Gather collective wisdom, together we can figure it out
• Is it nature or nuture? Are people just like this, or can they learn to be facilitative leaders?

Deborah Dunagan is the Global Leader, IBM Intellectual Property Services, Corporate Technology and Intellectual Property.

• How can you reconcile with employee expectations?
• Starts with inquiry, who are you and what do you want?
• Many people prefer fear and control, they are motivated by it
• Facilitative leadership can be threatening to people who want to be controlled and stay where they are
• How do we enable people to not identify with their pain and instead enable expression?

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger belongs to the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation of Northern Alberta, Canada. She is the National Aboriginal Youth Engagement Coordinator for TalkingITGlobal.

• People don’t want to listen to high risk youth, they can’t get beyond their image of homeless, gangs and drugs
• Youth have a lot to say if only someone will listen
• Encourage people to take the responsibility to use their voice
• How do we take the risk to listen to those we don’t think will listen?

Phil Sharpe is currently SVP Sports Technology and Operations for Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

• Expect something new, but not something specific
• Look for people who can achieve goals, but don’t often get to pick
• What do I do with people who are aggressive? Develop them or let them go?
• It seems to be command & control versus free-market
• Are there folks who don’t respond to facilitative leadership, and what do you do with them?

Dr. Meenaskshi Chakraverti is Senior Associate and Deputy Director, International Science Programs at the Public Conversations Project.

• What is the language around how people speak about their realities?
• Does your question make sense in the particular environment?
• Can I understand what an appropriate question is?
• Realms of possibility are very different when you grow up in scarcity leading to differences in discourse
• Do we see the world differently?

The panelists told stories, here I just list what I concluded from their stories. Not the same richness, but I hope I’ve been able to at least share enough to demonstrate the range of input that emerged from their reflections.

Martha McGinnis graphic recorded the session. Perhaps a bit more of the flavor of the panel shows here?

Passing the process to the audience

After Dr. Chakravati’s gave her perspectives, the process moved to the individual tables in the audience. The sharing at the tables was just as rich. I won’t share the details of what I heard since I do not have permission to do so. The sharing was deep. People had been moved by the process to reflect on many aspects of their own lives.

I particularly noticed how people who had been in circumstances where they were not asked their opinions really struggled with how to regain their voices. Coming from organizations or being in roles where silence is the norm is contrary to the values we discussed in facilitative leadership. Listening to the sharing strengthened my resolve to continue working to offer voice to all through the work I do.

Ending with a question

Lisa brought the conversation back to the big group, and debriefed the process by asking for reflections. There were a number of people who spoke about struggling with the desire to offer solutions. There aren’t many places where we are offered the opportunity to just listen to the questions and then make a choice about answering or just letting them be.

Each of us was then offered the opportunity to write questions we were left with on index cards. We left these on the tables, and they were collected. The questions were sent to another session, which I will write about later.

How does this apply to VisualsSpeak?

VisualsSpeak facilitates significant conversations and begins with a framing question, similar to the question circle. We ask people to select photographs in response to the question, then ask them to tell the story of the photos. It offers people voice, gives everyone a chance to be heard. I’m thinking I can apply the question circle idea to the VisualsSpeak sessions by adding a request to end individual sharing with the question one is left with.

I’m intrigued by how stating what people knew and what they didn’t shifted the quality of the conversation. There is something about sharing your clarity and your confusion in sequence that created a richer medium for reflection.

I’m thinking adding questions to the individual sharing will be particularly helpful when doing group images. I’ve found it works better to start with individual sharing before trying to work together, to make sure every voice is heard first. This process would be a way to generate even more material to work with.

The IAF conference was held in Atlanta last week. This is the second time I have attended an IAF conference and the first time I presented at one. At the closing session, we were asked to reflect on a key take away. Mine was, this is where I belong.

Yes, I have multiple roles. I am also a trainer, entrepreneur, business owner, coach, artist. Underneath it all, I am a facilitator. It’s so easy to forget when I sit in the office operating my business on a daily basis. I remember when I get around other facilitators and recognize the ease with which I can converse with them.

What makes a facilitator different?

While I hesitate to make any sweeping generalizations, something I notice in my facilitator colleagues is an inherent faith in the wisdom of the group. We focus on the process of the interaction more than trying to control the content.

On Whitespace, Daniel Rose noticed:

When designing large collaborative sessions with complex topics it is almost always the case that there is a big variance between the few people who know a lot about the topic and a few who have little to no context and everyone else falls somewhere in between. Sponsors are generally very anxious to do a lot of “education” around the project so that everyone gets up to speed. Usually this results in a desire to do a 3 hour PowerPoint presentation.

He goes on to talk about the difference between instructional learning versus constructional learning, and how part of our role is to help our sponsors have faith in the group. When I talk with someone who has been facilitating for any length of time there is an almost automatic assumption that the group is wise. Just help the members surface what they know.

Done well, facilitation looks so easy

Not that facilitation actually is easy. There are so many factors that effect the success of the meeting, from the flow to the environment, to the way people are invited and prepared. However, the better the execution, the more seamless and effortless it appears. Do a good job, and the details go unnoticed. The focus shifts to the content, and getting the work of the session done.

Some of the things I appreciate about the IAF conferences

• the opportunity to participate in large group processes
• seeing how various methods work
• three hour breakout sessions, so you can really get deep into the material
• advanced level tracks
• reflection built into the design
• half hour breaks so you don’t have to run from one place to another
• colleagues who do amazing things around the world
• people with passion to make a difference

In the days ahead, I’ll be writing about some of the session I attended and the one I facilitated. I always think this is going to happen faster than it does, forgetting about all the things to catch up on from being out of town. I continue to be amazed by the people who can live blog, and work toward accepting that I’m more reflective and need more time. More soon.

That was an unexpected blogging vacation. I was sick for two weeks, and I’m still recovering slowly.

Just back from the International Association of Facilitators conference in Atlanta. I’ll be writing about the conference, and about the session I facilitated in the days to come. Stay tuned.