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

Remarks We are not aware of another method of gathering the opinions of so many people within only six weeks and making them available in a way that everybody understands and can use.

The method combined strict top-down elements: the structure, the given themes, the selection of the participants, and unusual freedom during the interviews, which were conducted similarly to groups in open space technology without a leading figure. Subsequently, both aims were met: gathering a broad range of information, facts, and emotions relevant for the workers and for the project, and guaranteeing their direct use in the planning process.

It was not easy for top management to risk this process. Now, ten years later, the company wants to apply the same method again to make a retrospective evaluation of the process as well as to add a research department to its development center.

Live Process Images: Emotional Organigram

One year after the merger of a large insurance company, another drastic savings scheme was announced. The board of directors decided to travel to the main office and inform the employees in nine individual meetings. The initial question posed to us was: “Can you capture the participants’ immediate reactions in the coffee break and make them visible directly after the presentation by the board?”

Process. After the chairman announced the cutbacks, the employees left the room, many of them furious, frustrated, or paralyzed. The visualizer invited the employees to express their views and their feelings. The reactions were intense and emotional, as were the resulting images.

The visualizer drew their reactions (in less than one minute per image) and displayed them for all to see. The plenum gathered again. The chairman fetched the most critical images, took them to the platform, held them up, and commented on them with great seriousness.

Product In each of the nine meetings, a picture wall was created depicting the heated topics. All nine picture walls together formed an emotional organigram, that is, a graphic chart showing the interrelationships in the organization.

Remarks The fact that the images found their way to the chairman so quickly and that he responded to them immediately and honestly was most unusual. The brain of the board and the worker’s belly had found a way to connect with one another. The images served as a barometer of public opinion. Communication had begun.

Small and flexible image cards are well suited to record reactions and opinions at lightning speed and present them on site for interaction purposes.

Live Process Images: Large Group Drawing Action

One hundred fifty international facilitators from sixteen countries were expected for the IAF annual conference near Amsterdam. The initial question from the conference design team to us was: “How can the conference attendees get to know one another and, at the same time, make their expectations of the conference known?” We proposed a guided drawing action, which we had successfully tested in other large groups.

Process The participants sat in groups of eight around “What Do You Expect” templates (which are shown here); they were laughing and holding broad felt-tip pens in their hands. The templates had been designed and printed in advance by the visual facilitators.

The visual facilitators supervised the drawing activity and explained the rules. Each person was to jot down his or her expectations of the conference on a sticky note and attach it to the template. Each group then had twenty minutes to think of an idea for a jointly drawn picture. The sticky notes were removed from the templates, and off they went with their drawing (another twenty minutes). In conclusion, the group was to give the picture a short title and write it on the template.

Directly following the drawing, the completed pictures were mounted at designated places. The individual pictures were then explained by the members of the conference design team who had not painted themselves.

“Oh, you did such a wonderful opening for the IAF! You could just see people coming to life as they discussed their expectations and thought of ways to image them. It created the right feeling for starting the conference. So this is a big hug and thank you!” said Maureen Jenkins, representing the conference design team.

Product Within one hour, twenty posters were created that made the expectations of the conference visually clear in a most impressive fashion.

Remarks Guided drawing actions allow a large group to focus on an important question and answer it within one hour. But there is a caution here: trivial or rhetorical questions result in trivial pictures and cause irritation in the underchallenged groups.

Hundreds of participants can be activated at the same time and make use of the wisdom in the groups. It is important to develop a specific template as well as to acknowledge the finished product. Also important are the room conditions, space, lighting, and display area.

The drawings are a good representation of the group results and keep the process vivid in the minds of those involved, as well as sustaining the results.

The area of application is large. We have led drawing actions for a change process kickoff with 300 information technology specialists, target development with 130 scientists, and a strategy conference with 600 railroad labor unionists, all of whom initially said, “I cannot draw!”

HOW TO LEARN

When we started visualizing years ago, everything was simple. Somebody explained the rules: “First, a quick, roughly sketched image, one picture per thought; then brief text in uppercase letters!” We took the colored felt-tip pens and off we went. You see, one can visualize immediately—but not everybody can do it.

Once we needed several visualizers and tested the staff of an architect’s office. Several efficient architects failed. They were not able to sort out the colors, could not cope with the speed, and wrote too much text. Their knowledge was a hindrance to them (ambitious artists often fail in the same manner). But a young Kurd, intuitive, quick, filled with images, was a born visualizer.

We learned that everybody can draw and express themselves by means of pictures. But not everybody can mirror group processes through images. Only some have the talent, the inner willingness, and the courage to do this.

There is no formal educational program available for visual facilitators. Yet each individual can try. Simply take cards and pens into a meeting and draw. If you enjoy it, we, like other visual facilitators, offer workshops and seminars (that are influenced by the respective method of working). We also recommend sitting in on visualization sessions.

Perhaps a passion will arise. Then it means practice, practice, and practice again. When it starts becoming professional, you will enter your own visual world.

IAF board member Jon Jenkins calls a visual facilitator a specialized species, comparing him to a cardiologist. Is visual facilitating really more than the ability to draw fast and nicely? Yes. “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” (Saint-Exupéry, 1991, p. 68).

In the foreground, visual facilitating requires the courage to be spontaneous and risk a quick stroke of the pen; in the background, it requires listening, intuition, love, sensitivity, creativity, knowledge, and experience.

CONCLUSION

In extending and deepening our main points of focus and discovering new possibilities, we have not yet met any limits. This should go on for a lifetime. We would like to encourage others to become involved in this process.

A development has begun in which the pioneering work of some individuals has started to develop into professional networking. We are curious how this development will influence the IAF. When “visual” and “verbal” meet and touch, whether in the person of a facilitator, whether on a team, whether in the entirety of the professional field, it should make facilitation more complete and thus make a contribution to a more holistic and human working world.

Thousands of visual facilitators are needed, from nursery school through college to firms and organizations, to enable the rediscovery of visual culture in all of our lives.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Archetype: Original pattern.

Cluster: A classification technique for grouping items by making comparisons of multiple characteristics (cluster analysis).

Communication graphics, graphic facilitation, graphic recording, graphic translation, group graphics, information architects, interactive graphics, mirroring, reflective graphics, scribing, social architects, visual facilitation, visual synthesis, visual thinking, Visuelle Protokolle: Terms for visualizers and their work in groups.

Didactic illustrations: Messages transformed into metaphorical images.

Emotional organigram: Visual representation of the emotional state of a group or company.

Facility programming: Developing a building program according to people’s needs.

Graphic recorder: A visualizer, with emphasis on the content of a meeting (passive, off-to-the-side scribing approaches).

Large group drawing action: Structured drawing action with large groups to answer important questions visually.

Image: Here, a hand-drawn picture serving as a visual graphic representation, a symbolic map.

International Forum of Visual Practitioners: Emerging network of visualizers; a registered association since 2003.

Live process images: Images visualized simultaneously during group sessions.

Mapping: To make a survey for the purpose of making and drawing a map. Here, mapping inner themes of groups, organizations, and companies using maps as metaphors.

Metaphor: Figurative language; application of term to object or action to which it is imaginatively, but not literally, applicable.

Mural: A mural work of visualization, normally on paper.

Pattern: A discernible, coherent system based on the interrelationship of component parts. Here, it applies mainly to visual elements.

Pattern language: According to Christopher Alexander, development of a structure of patterns describing problems and solutions to create buildings and towns that are alive.

Preparing images: Images of all kinds drawn in preparation for a session.

Scribing: Old term for the production of artifacts, for example, illustrated handwritings.

Sea, land, or road map: Here, a metaphorical map drawn to communicate business themes.

Summary images: Visual documents showing process results.

Visual coaching: Coaching using visualization tools.