JEROEN BLIJSIE, TIM HAMONS, and RACHEL S. SMITH Visual Tools and Stories from 50 Experts WorldwideTHE ULTIMATE FIELD GUIDE TO VISUAL PRACTICE.

FULLY ILLUSTRATED, WITH TOOLS AND STORIES FROM MORE THAN FIFTY PROFESSIONALS AROUND THE WORLD.

Visual practice is transforming the way people work. It makes conversations visible, ideas tangible, and decisions clear. If you’ve wondered how to tap into the power of visual practice in your team or organization, or if you’ve ever wished for meetings where everyone participates and gets energized and excited about the work you’re doing together, this is the book for you.

Learn from experts around the world who are immersed in visual practice every day: a visual coach who helps clients envision and achieve their goals; a facilitator who is passionate about hosting great meetings; a consultant who empowers teams to reach and sustain high performance; a graphic recorder who helps communities rebuild after a disaster. These stories (and many more!) are told by industry leaders—those who bring visuals to offices, retreats, schools, digital meetings, and everywhere else that collaboration happens.

Filled with rich illustrations, step-by-step guides, and examples of visuals in action, this field guide will teach you how to harness the power of visuals for your organization. Whether you’re looking to break into the field of visual facilitation, or you’re a seasoned veteran seeking to expand your tool kit with new techniques (like creating and shooting a sketch video), The World of Visual Facilitation is your go-to guidebook for all things visual.

ABOUT THE CO-EDITORS

Jeroen Blijsie is a visual facilitator, trainer, author, and founder of The Visual Connection, located in The Netherlands. Together with his team, Jeroen facilitates organizations in strategic visioning and planning, business improvement, and team building. He also educates professionals in the art of visual facilitation.

Tim Hamons is a Singapore based visual facilitator who believes that drawing is your best tool for thinking, collaborating and working through change. As co-founder of Art of Awakening, he works with groups to visualize change, and regularly speaks and trains throughout Asia on the power of visual thinking.

Rachel Smith is a Seattle-based consultant who believes that remote work can often be more effective and engaging than face-to-face work—when supported with the right visuals. She facilitates groups in all industries and at all levels, from the front lines of retail sales to the C-suite of global technologies.

PLACE FOR ISBN

FOREWORD BY DAVID SIBBET

Including ONLINE BONUS MATERIAL

DESIGN BY VISUALITY

THE WO

RLD OF VISUAL FACILITATIO

NUnlock Your Pow

er to Connect People & Ideas

Blijsie, Hamons &

Sm

ith, editors

www.theworldofvisualfacilitation.com

JEROEN BLIJSIE, TIM HAMONS, AND RACHEL S. SMITH

THE WORLD OF VISUAL FACILITATION

Unlock Your Power to Connect People and Ideas

The World of Visual Facilitation: Unlock Your Power to Connect People and Ideasby Jeroen Blijsie, Tim Hamons, and Rachel S. Smith, editors.

Initiator and Project Manager: Jeroen BlijsieCo-editors: Jeroen Blijsie, Tim Hamons, and Rachel S. SmithCopyeditor: Sonja StoneCover and Interior Design: Visuality.eu

Copyright © 2019, The Visual Connection Publishers. All rights reserved.info@thevisualconnection.nlwww.theworldofvisualfacilitation.comwww.thevisualconnection.nl

July 2019: First Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a database or retrieval system, or published, in any form or in any way, whether electronically, mechanically, by print, photo print, microfilm, or any other means without prior written permission from the publisher.

While the publisher and the authors have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information contained in this work is accurate, the publisher and authors disclaim all responsibility for errors and omissions, wholly including damaging results for the use or reliance on this work. Use of instructions and information contained herein is at your own risk. This work contains intellectual property rights of multiple authors; it is your responsibility to ensure that your use of the material and information complies with regulations and rights.

For errors and omissions, please notify info@thevisualconnection.nl.

ISBN 978-9-082-86850-0

IXTHE WORLD OF VISUAL FACILITATION

CONTENTS

Meet the Authors VIOnline Bonus Material XIIFrom the Editors XIIIForeword XVIIAcknowledgements XXIThe Book Behind the Scenes XXIII

Getting StartedVISUAL LANGUAGE AND DRAWING

Holger Nils PohlMy Journey as a Visual Facilitator 3

Malgosia KosteckaThe FUNdamentals of Visual Language 9

Kelvy Bird and Holger Nils PohlUsing Color 19

Heather Leavitt MartinezLettering for Legibility, Hierarchy, and Speed 27

Tomoko TamaariVisualization of Human Emotion 37

Tim Hamons and Jerre LubbertsGraphic Formats: Start with the Right Structure 45

Jim NuttlePolish Your Charts for Clarity and Impact 59

THE BASICSMara Callaert How to Set Up a Room for Visual Facilitation 73

Renatta AlgalarrondoThe Right Tool for the Job 79

Mike RohdeSketchnoting: Your First Step Into Visual Thinking 99

Jessamy GeeVisual Note Taking: Elements & Principles 113

Martine VanremoorteleGraphic Recording: An Improvisational Dance with the Facilitator 125

Dana Wright WassonUsing Stickies To Create Exciting Ideas and Engaged Participants 133

Holger Nils PohlDesigning Meetings with the Clarity Framework 137

Meetings and More

MEETINGSDana Wright WassonIn Defense of Meetings 147

Nevada LaneVisual Meeting Warm-ups 153

Mia LiljebergPresentation Skills: Let the Picture Do the Job 161

Rosanna von Sacken and Jenny TrautmanMulti-Sensory Facilitation Tools and Applications 169

Sam BraddThe Camera as a Visual Tool to Close a Meeting 177

LARGE SCALE MEETINGSTomohide Oshima and Sabine SoederVisuals in World Café: How to Prepare, Host, and Harvest 181

Sabine SoederCo-Creation of the First Tirolean Entrepreneurs’ Day in Austria 189

THE WORLD OF VISUAL FACILITATIONX

Tomohide OshimaA Multilocation World Café in Japan: Big Plans for a Big Visual Event 199

Sam BraddVisuals at Large Events 211

VISUAL LISTENINGAnthony WeeksCentering Listening in Visual Practice 221

Sophia LiangTackling Our Listening Mindset 229

Brandy AgerbeckThe Value of Visual Organization 239

Julie StuartSensing into Emergence 253

DIALOGUEGerauld WongWhat Do You Mean?! Creating Purposeful Dialogue from Visuals 263

Tracey EzardConversations that Matter: Visual Collaboration among Educators 273

Matthew MagainBetter Communication with the Empathy Forecast 285

IMAGES AND STORIESSophia LiangThe Metaphor in Visual Practice 293

Anthony WeeksIs Your Metaphor a Box or a Catalyst? 304

Anthony WeeksFacilitating for Story 305

Tiffany FornerStorymap Project Lessons: A Designer’s Perspective 315

Renate KenterIMAGEning the Future 329

TEMPLATESLynn CarruthersThe Joy of Templates 339

Jill GreenbaumCoaching with Templates 347

Dana Wright WassonCreating Impactful Employee Engagement with Templates 355

TEAM PERFORMANCELaurie DurnellHow to Get Teams Unstuck Using Visuals 363

Jeannel KingOne Visual Meeting Creates One Huge Shift 371

Beyond the Paper

VIRTUAL AND VISUALHolger Nils PohlThe Case for Digital Facilitation 381

Comparing Paper and Digital Media 387

Holger Nils PohlApp Magic: Presenting and Facilitating Using Digital Media 389

Jerre LubbertsLive Digital Mapping 395

Amy LenzoConnection, Collaboration, Creativity: Using Visuals for Online Engagement 405

OFF THE PAPERBrian TaralloVisual Facilitation in 3D 415

XITHE WORLD OF VISUAL FACILITATION

Greg WhickerCreating Immersive Visual Environments 425

Dean MeyersFacilitating with All Hands at Play 431

Marsha AckerUsing the Geography of the Room to Access Collective Intelligence 439

Matthew MagainA Bulletproof Process to Creating Sketch Videos 449

Matthew MagainShooting a Sketch Video: Tips and Tricks 459

Pro Stories

VISUALS IN ACTIONTul LekutaiMy Journey as a Visual Facilitator: From Buildings to Court Rooms 471

Julie StuartCreating a Visually Immersive Experience from Start to Finish 477

Tomoko Tamaari Visuals for Recovery: A Story of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake 485

Philip GuoDigital Graphic Recording, Live on Chinese Television 491

Jillian LeeFuture Heroes: Graphic Facilitation for Industry 4.0 499

Jill GreenbaumMy Journey as a Visual Facilitator 511

Frank WesselerUnderstanding Business Processes through Visualization 517

INTERSECTION WITH OTHER FIELDSBen TinkerHonoring People and Process through Visuals 531

Dean MeyersFacilitating Human-Centered Design: People Come First 543

Lisa AroraVisuals Meet Mediation 555

Lynne CazalyAgile Ways of Working 563

Marko HamelVisual Selling®: RethINK Customer ConversationsOn Paper and Digitally 575

Marko HamelThe 13 Most Common Visual Selling Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them 587

Your Future as a Visual Facilitator

Trent WakenightFuture of the Field: Introduction 599

Mathias WeitbrechtFuture Casting Our Field 601

Kelvy BirdAttending to Tone 609

Michelle WalkerThe Growing Edge for Visual Practitioners 617

Sabine Soeder and Mary Alice ArthurAn Integrated Approach to Visual Facilitation of the Future 627

Trent WakenightFuture of the Field: Conclusion 635

About The Editors And Co-Authors 637Index 647

Pro Stories

VISUALS

MEET MEDIATION

Intersection with Other Fields

Lisa Arora

Mediators working visually offer the brain a second channel of

communication. This mitigates impacts of stress on communication,

and optimizes our ability to listen, understand, think, and remember.

INTERSECTION WITH OTHER FIELDSVISUALS MEET MEDIATION556

If you find yourself stuck in conflict, whether it be a business deal gone bad, an impossible colleague who sabotages your work, or your spouse walking off into the sunset with your kids and all your worldly possessions, rather than battle it out in an adversarial process (like court), further damaging the relationship and incurring expensive legal fees for a final outcome you can’t control, you might consider resolving your issues through mediation. Increasingly, people are seeking the assistance of a mediator (an impartial third party) to settle their differences in workplaces, business dealings, family situations, and more. Mediation can be thought of as assisted negotiation.

The appeal of mediation versus adversarial methods of conflict resolution is quickly apparent. The parties involved (not the mediator) get to make the decisions and have full control of the outcome. The process allows for creative problem solving. It’s affordable, confidential, and flexible.

But do you know what the

mediation process generally

isn’t? It isn’t visual.

As I discovered during my own divorce mediation, mediators typically take no notes at all. Most often they take notes privately on their own notepad. The media-tor might write the issues for discussion on a flipchart, but after that, the markers never move again. Instead, the mediator returns to taking notes on their notepad, which the interested parties usually can’t see.

In my divorce mediation, I lacked confidence in the mediator because I couldn’t see what sense

she was making of the discussions. There were proposals flying back and forth, but the information was written on the mediator’s notepad. With my background as a visual facilitator, this struck me as odd; as the decision makers, my ex and I were the ones who needed to see and work with the information—especially our financial information!

Most mediators are not trained to pay atten-tion to what the parties might find helpful to see. Visual communication has been grossly underused in mediation . . . until now.

As visual mediation makes its debut, mediators around the world are beginning to combine the traditional mediation process with live, interactive visual-communication methods. Much like peanut butter and jelly, visual communi-cation and mediation are better together.

VISUAL MEDIATION: THE BASICSVisual mediation is the practice of using large-scale imagery to support aggrieved parties in the process of communicating their concerns, generating options, and reaching agreements about how to resolve their issues.

During this type of mediation, visual information might be experienced in several different ways.

1. Information graphics help explain mediation both before and during the process. Graphics can also introduce additional information that allows both parties a greater awareness of their conflict dynamics. The Errors in Thinking graphic (Figure 1) encourages self-reflection: what errors are present in my thinking? How do these errors perpetuate my ongoing conflict?

VISUALS MEET MEDIATION

INTERSECTION WITH OTHER FIELDS VISUALS MEET MEDIATION 557

PRO STO

RIES

2. For both the mediator and the parties, visual templates can also provide a clear frame in which to focus, guide, and capture individual thoughts when preparing a mediation session. Whether used in a session or completed individually, a visual framework (like the one shown in Figure 2) allows clients to analyze various aspects of a problem and consider a situation from multiple points of view.

Figure 2: Possible scenarios.

1 This infographic is adapted from Bill Eddy’s Managing High Conflict People in Court.

Figure 1: Errors in Thinking.1

This agreement template, which includes Best Alter-native to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA), Most Likely Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (MLATNA), and Worst Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (WATNA), helps clients identify the range of possible alternatives and outcomes from the perspective of both sides.

3. During mediation, ideas, expressions, and information from both parties are captured as they’re spoken—in text, images, and colors on large blank sheets of paper. Visual templates can also be used to guide and capture a predictable segment of a mediation dialogue. For example, the Visual Mediation Agenda Template (Figure 3) is used to engage clients as they lay the foundation for mediation. This template also provides a distanced view of the process, illustrating the big picture.

INTERSECTION WITH OTHER FIELDSVISUALS MEET MEDIATION558

Figure 3: Visual Mediation Agenda Template.

By virtue of working in large scale, information remains visible throughout the discussion. It naturally supports non-linear discussions when issues are interconnected, as they often are. A skilled visual mediator actively leverages these maps as a facil-itation tool in the process of finding resolution.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF VISUAL MEDIATION Working visually optimizes people’s ability to process information.

Figure 4: Visual aids increase focus and retention.

When we’re stressed or in conflict, our amygdala—the part of the brain that experiences emotions—becomes overactive. We become unable to process and store new information the way we usually can. Mediators who work visually offer the brain a second channel of communication. This mitigates the impact of stress on communication, and optimizes our ability to listen, understand, think, and remember.

Image 1: The setup of a visual mediation session can

affect parties’ perceptions of their conflict.

Both the physical setup and the process of co-creating the meaning that is recorded on the map prove especially powerful in a conflict setting. Here are the top five reasons why:

1. The physical setup literally externalizes the problem, making the problem the thing to be worked on. This supports a core principle in mediation: separate the problem from the people.

2. Working visually during mediation helps regulate emotion as people receive acknowledgement that they’ve been heard. When people feel heard, they’re more likely to listen to the other person.

3. Both parties can easily see whether or not the mediator understands what’s being said. This dramatically increases transparency and promotes trust in the mediator’s impartiality.

INTERSECTION WITH OTHER FIELDS VISUALS MEET MEDIATION 559

PRO STO

RIES

4. Everyone can confirm whether the words on the page reflect their perception of what was discussed. Parties will react to things that are recorded if there isn’t true alignment or agree-ment. This serves as a beacon for the mediator, making it obvious where more work is needed.

5. Parties see each other’s comments on the same page as their own, facilitating an automatic shift from ‘my point of view’ to a ‘big picture’ perspective.

These are all things mediators encourage as they shift the parties from their initial, tightly held positions to a place of deeper understanding and sometimes empathy. How convenient that in a visual mediation, collaborative problem solving is intrinsic!

PATHWAYS INTO VISUAL MEDIATIONPeople Interested in Becoming Mediators To become a mediator requires training. At present, mediation training and standards vary greatly around the globe. Unlike facilitation, where facilitators often work without formal training or certification, mediators (depending on the type of mediation and country) are often legally required to complete comprehensive training programs, pass and maintain certifications, and abide by codes of conduct. It’s imperative to recognize that certain types of mediation are regulated in certain jurisdictions.

The International Mediation Institute (IMI)2 promotes understanding and disseminates skills, all in a non-service-provider capacity. IMI is working on transcending local jurisdictions to develop global, professional standards for mediators, advocates, and others involved in collaborative, dispute-resolution processes. Mediators Who Want to Work Visually An online training program for experienced mediators who want to learn to work visually is now available. BIG Beginnings in Visual Mediation3 addresses important nuances when applying visuals to mediation that generic visual facilitation training does not. Most crucial to recognize is that the filter (decisions

2 To learn more about mediation training, visit www.imimediation.org.3 Arora, Visual Communication Skills for Mediators, www.bigbeginningsinvisualmediation.com.

made about what to record and what not to record) is far more selective in mediation than any other type of meeting. After all, what is written on the map establishes focus for the parties. In mediation, the words that make it onto the map are absolutely not benign to the parties’ success. Furthermore, mediators must consider and ensure that the visual practices they adopt are carefully aligned with the practice standards and ethical codes of conduct to which they are held.

For Visual Practitioners (Graphic Facilitators and Graphic Recorders) Who Want to Partner with Mediators It is possible that a mediator could partner with a vi-sual practitioner (graphic facilitator, graphic recorder, or even another visual mediator) to conduct a visual mediation. However, before partnering with a mediator, it behooves graphic facilitators and graphic recorders to have some formal training in the mediation process. A graphic facilitator or recorder working in tandem with a mediator does not need to display their own com-petence in core mediation skills (since the role they play as a partner to the mediator is virtually silent). However, in order to support (rather than unwittingly undermine) the mediator, they do need a strong understanding of mediation process models and styles.

It is imperative for graphic

facilitators and graphic

recorders to recognize

that many of the norms

they subscribe to in

typical meetings are not

appropriate in a mediation.

INTERSECTION WITH OTHER FIELDSVISUALS MEET MEDIATION560

To be effective in a mediation, a graphic recorder must (among other competencies):

∙ Understand the mediation style being used and the defining characteristics of that approach. In some cases, this may mean having some level of understanding of the legal context surrounding a conflict.

∙ Have a clear understanding of each person’s role, and be aware of potential ways in which their presence in the room could negatively or positively impact the mediation.

∙ Be willing to sign a formal agreement to participate and be legally held to certain terms (including confidentiality).

∙ Know what to cover by preparing with the mediator in advance. Trust building between the mediator and a visual practitioner partner is paramount.

∙ Be able to identify the current stage of mediation at any given moment (as the process is rarely linear).

∙ Be skilled at hearing the layers of a mediation dialogue; distinguish between positions, interests, possibilities, and more.

∙ Be capable of making highly selective decisions (that are in-line with the mediator’s judgment) about what to capture. In mediation, while all comments are valued, not all comments are equally valuable for reaching an agreement and achieving the goals of the mediation.

∙ Similarly, the visual practitioner partner must be skilled at making decisions about when to map the parties’ words and when to map the mediator’s words. This involves a working knowledge of the range of communication interventions used by mediators, and the ability to extrapolate why the mediator has chosen a particular one in that moment.

∙ Be experienced at mapping highly organic conversations and creating meaningful structure to the information.

IN SUMMARYWhen properly applied, visual communication is an agnostic skill set that can improve any mediation process. Applying visuals to mediation encourages mediators to consider the communication experience from their clients’ points of view, the exact wish I had as a party to my own divorce mediation (where visual communication was completely absent). The mediation process becomes a lot more effective when people can see and work with their own information while making life-changing plans, decisions, and agreements. It’s an exciting future for mediators who want to mediate visually (and visual practitioners who wish to partner with mediators). Moving into that future, both mediator and practi-tioner share a responsibility to be well trained.

WORKS CITED:

Arora, Lisa. Big Time Visual: Visual Communication Skills for Mediators, www.bigbeginningsinvisualmediation.com. Accessed 11 June 2019.

Arora, Lisa. Lisa Arora: Visual Divorce Mediation, lisaarora.com. Accessed 11 June 2019.

Eddy, Bill. Managing High Conflict People in Court. High Conflict Institute Press, 2008.

International Mediation Institute. International Mediation Institute, www.imimediation.org. Accessed 11 June 2019.