Visual Meetings
By David Sibbet
John Wiley, 262 pages, $35.95
When we think of meetings, we think of words. But meeting facilitator David Sibbet believes the first thought that should come to our minds - and to the people leading those sessions - is visuals. And not PowerPoint. Instead, our meetings should revolve around a panorama of visual design to help stimulate thought and record our progress.
There would be flip charts, with sketches and doodles that try to give meaning to ideas. Instead of proposing an idea orally, you might write it on a map that the group collectively creates to represent the journey of change your company is embarking on, or on sticky notes that could then be grouped on a wall with your colleagues' suggestions.
"My confidence in this way of working is rooted in three phenomena that I have experienced since the first time I picked up magic markers and began facilitating groups visually," Mr. Sibbet notes in Visual Meetings.
First, engagement explodes in meetings when participants are listened to and acknowledged by having what they say recorded in an interactive, graphic way.
Secondly, they can think in a big-picture way when their ideas as a group are shown visually, and they can check for patterns or make connections better.
Finally, creating memorable media also increases the group's memory and follow-through, again assisting productivity.
We occasionally try this in major meetings but the author argues we should do it routinely. It might mean getting over your fears that you can't draw - he uses simple drawings, with stick-like figures - and learning some new techniques.
Metaphor maps, for example, stretch everyone's thinking. One group imagined their company as a ranch, and as they started to fill in the blank elements of the picture - what kind of soil and what kind of animals they raised - they developed provocative insights on the workplace.
After the end of a meeting, you might try Mr. Sibbet's confidence check. Draw a line on a whiteboard or flip chart, mark 0 at one end and 10 at the other end. Then ask people to rate how confident they are that the decision they made was a good one, with 10 being completely confident and 0 as having no confidence, and mark their response with an X on the appropriate spot on the line. The result is a stark picture of the mood of the room, and a chance to discuss some of the divergent feelings that have been uncovered