Schuman S. - The IAF Handbook of Group Facilitation (2005)(en)

VERBAL AND VISUAL FACILITATORS

The International Association of Facilitators (IAF), founded in 1994, is composed largely of verbal facilitators. Nevertheless, visualizers have participated in its conferences on several occasions and conducted events. This is a first step in the professional interlinking of verbal and visual

facilitation.

No More Flip Charts?

A facilitator recently posed the provocative question: “The flip chart is declared illegal. What are other types or methods for collecting and/or displaying ‘group memory?’” (D. Driver, e-mail to the Electronic Discussion on Group Facilitation, Nov. 14, 2003). The answers were: stenographer, electronic meeting system, time line, blackboard, photos, sticky walls, cards on which participants write/draw, draw on the walls, and graphic art.

In the place of flip charts, visualizers offer large murals or small cards, both drawn simultaneously during the meeting, that contain images and texts in different mixtures, prefabricated templates to draw and write into, techniques to encourage people to do the drawing themselves, white boards, and computers one can draw on and project simultaneously. There is great diversity in reproducing the results; they can be printed on paper as booklets, posters, and wallpaper, or digitalized and put on the Web. Above all, the visualizer integrates visual language into the process. Visual facilitation is thus more than facilitation plus some pictures.

Benefits of Visual Language for Facilitation

The participants of visualized events observe what they are saying much better than on handwritten flip charts and are able to look at the issues directly. Central themes become clearer, and boring text protocols become at least partially superfluous. Decisions are made more rapidly. One can present the content of a daylong meeting within a matter of minutes to someone who has not participated, and people remember the content many times better than they do text (Horn, 1998). A visual group memory emerges that is the basis for further steps in the process. All of this enriches the group process and saves time and costs as well.

The Visualizers

There are thousands of people who have learned to visualize and at least hundreds who practice it professionally in different ways. The core of this group is driving the increasing professionalism of this field.

As shown in Exhibit 23.1, the range of services that visualizers provide goes hand in hand with various descriptions of the activities involved, such as scribing, graphic recording, visual practitioning, visual coaching, visual repatterning, graphic facilitation, and visual facilitation. (See “Key Terms and Definitions” at the end of the chapter.)

The IAF Statement of Values and Code of Ethics for Group Facilitators also applies to the work of visual facilitators. So the growing field of visual facilitation belongs in the broader family of group facilitation as represented by IAF.

Roles

Is it possible for a single individual to guide the group process and visualize at the same time? Based on our experience, this happens only in exceptional cases. As a rule, two facilitators that are well suited to one another should act in combination: one to guide the group and one to visualize on its behalf.

For any cooperation to occur, it is important to clarify the roles. They must be precisely defined in coordinating the responsibility for the images and the process up to the joint development of new methods.

Exhibit 23.1

Visualizer Services Range

OUR WORK BASE

Our methods are different from those of many other visualizers. As this chapter does not strive for an overall description, we will concentrate on our method.

We focus on our coworkers who carry every company. Our facilitating work serves to give these people a voice in their organization as a way to involve them and at the same time to honor them.

Just as images are older than texts and every child processes images before words, we work in the same sequence, always starting with images. Images are culturally universal, archaic, emotional, and open to various interpretations. They represent patterns and archetypes. With images, we gather the essence of a process.

Words are younger than pictures, culturally specific, more precise, rational, logical, and mainly used for communication limited by rules. Adding some words, we anchor the image in the specific situation. We use the advantages of both words and images to foster communication, synthesize the process, and form our specific dialect of the visual language.

We all have our own wealth of internalized images that we have collected over the years, and they slumber within us. When we work with organizations by externalizing the group’s images, we reopen the emotional entrance to their internal world.

Methods

Live visualization is the metaphorical trunk of our tree. Over the years, it has grown branches in different directions, mainly connected with group meetings and ongoing processes. Today, we define our work in three stages: preparing images, live process images, and summary images. These are the elements from which we compose our specific services in order to satisfy customers’ needs. To pass on our knowledge, we offer seminars and coaching.

Preparing Images

To support events, we have developed a variety of methods and techniques, such as informative documents (agendas, posters), motivating material (complex company games, hand-drawn films), didactic products (metaphorical sea, land, and road maps; illustrations of messages; fairy tales), and live interviews.

For these methods, we use common drawing and painting techniques and formats, such as pastel and crayon, on huge wall paper, friezes, and collages. The visual language we choose is customized for each client.

Live Process Images

In general, images drawn live on site during the facilitating process are a visible recording of what is happening during the session. Our technique is very simple and has not changed much over the years. We use small cards and felt-tip pens. The small cards are easy to handle and accommodate one idea or thought, each one a basic truth; one is forced to avoid unnecessary details. They have the freshness of a small sketch and are thus easy to comprehend. When we work with these cards, we follow exact rules:

•Using seven selected colors (we eliminated black), we first draw the image and then add a word or brief text in a specified script. White boards and touch screens present new possibilities.

•The visualizer links these individual images together with tape to form a picture wall. In doing so, he gives the process a face, which interacts with the participants.

•The cards that form a picture wall can be interchanged or regrouped easily. At all times, they give an account of the status of the debate at a glance.

In the case of large groups, we recommend presenting the images using a projector and perhaps background music. As a group memory and a basis for further processes or as a document for others, the images can be digitalized, printed, or used in the Web.

Drawing Actions

Another important tool we use live during meetings is large group drawing action. The participants (as many as six hundred people) draw images on “templates” in answering important questions while observing definite rules. With this method, the group gives answers on issues regarding the group process that were not known before.

Summarizing Images

After most meetings, people often stand empty-handed and often forget very quickly what transpired at the meeting. Visual products, in contrast, support the sustainability of the group work. We produce result maps, images of an anticipated

future, steps of progress (for repeat sessions), summary films, and even visual workbooks.

Afterward, all images get digitalized and reproduced on paper (for example, as posters, brochures, folding postcards, and calendars) or as virtual image walls to be displayed on-line.

We have gained thousands of images from live process visualization. Because of their general nature, they have the potential to be used anew in other contexts.

QUALITY MAPPING

The quality of image-oriented visualization affects the satisfaction, humanity, and truthfulness of meetings, and it touches the participants of the group. It is this last quality that we are repeatedly sur-

prised to encounter. We view it as the main secret of our visualization.

How Images Evolve

Visualization begins with listening. In the process of live visualization, the inner ear perceives not only the words but also their meaning, intent, and often the unspoken intent. Body language, the mood in the room, reactions of the group, and even unconscious content flow into the image.

The visualizer draws and lives and breathes with the group and is supported by it. The more directly one gets to the point, the more the observer feels he is being understood.

The pure image can be interpreted in several ways. Therefore, we add an accompanying word or sentence to anchor it in its context. If we were to reverse this process, we would end up illustrating our own text. When a word or sentence is added, the image emerges in relation to the situation, to the process, and takes on its own special meaning. There are parallels here to interpretation in a psychoanalytical context.

Images Tell Stories

Images meet up with stories. According to the script model, each of us has a treasure of stories saved in our memory. We all use stories that have already been experienced, which give rise to “narrative answers” and are the only way of keeping memories alive (Schank and Abelson, 1995). Stories thrive on metaphors and are therefore of special significance for our work. Metaphors evoke visual images: brainstorming, springboard, floating on a sea of papers, letting off steam.

By combining uncensored truths with humor, our role sometimes resembles that of the medieval court jester. By means of images and stories, it may be possible to gradually approach the heart of an organization, to come closer, little by little, to its main theme and its corporate story.

The Effect of Images

When we discuss the effect of images, we find ourselves at the borderline of art therapy, psychoanalysis, neurobiology, creativity theory, art psychology, and system theory. Each of these plays a role and mingles with our everyday experiences.

The visualizer offers himself as a container for the situation and content. He transforms the absorbed data and develops something qualitatively new. The image evolves in an unconscious process of symbol forming. In the words of Albert Einstein, “Intuition is a divine gift, the reasoning mind is a faithful servant. It is a paradox that we have begun nowadays to admire the servant and to profane the divine gift.”

In this spontaneous production of the image, the visualizer makes himself available as the medium, the collector. He draws the first image that appears without reflecting on it.

Without taking sides and judging, the visualizer acts like an empty mirror, transparent for what is happening. The “thinking hand” absorbs everything without filtering it and then reproduces it.

We avoid repeating in words what has already been expressed by the image. So we create a fruitful friction between words and images.

Patterns and Repatterning

The images achieve their entire effect in their affiliation for patterns. Christopher Alexander has recognized “the extraordinary degree of agreement in people’s feelings (not opinions) about patterns” (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein, 1977, p. 292).“A pattern which is real makes no judgments about the legitimacy of the forces of the situation. By seeming to be unethical, by making no judgments about individual opinions, or goals, or values, the pattern rises to another level of morality” (p. 304).

When a pattern emerges in the group and shows itself, ranging from extremely individual to archetypal, the visualizer then expresses this pattern as “the unthought known,” that is, the implicit knowledge held by the group, heretofore unrepresented and unexpressed. When the visualizer’s outer images meet the world of participants’ inner images, we assume that they arrange them into patterns. We call this process of inner arrangement and ordering repatterning.

The Third Level

If two parties each stay on separate levels of arguments and feelings, they will never meet. Seen through a third eye offered by visual language, both alternatives become equally good or bad, since they are part of the whole. At this level, the level of the heart, new possibilities arise; hidden themes and taboos can be addressed and dissolved. In the illustration here, management, as the company head, demands; workers, as the company’s belly, reject; but both find some understanding on the third level, the heart, through images.

Whether and how such processes take place is dependent on company spirit, the readiness of the group, the atmosphere, and the personal sensitivity of the visualizer. When inner and outer readiness converge, when inner and outer images meet, the group achieves quality without a name.