Visual Explorer experiments in one-on-one leadership coaching

Recently we introduced our prototype Visual Explorer Post Card Decks to leadership coaches at our CCL Asia Campus as a tool for one-on-one coaching. One of the coaches used the cards, and had some great questions--shared with our responses below ...From: Sai Ram Nilgiri

Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 7:46 PM
To: Palus, Chuck; Horth, David
Subject: Visual Explorer Cards

Dear Charles and David,
I attended your webinar that you ran a few weeks ago for Center for Creative Leadership leadership coaches in Asia. I tried the cards for the first time with the CEO of a large multinational organisation. He had some challenges he wanted to talk about. One of his challenges is to visualize a strategy; and so I thought these pics could assist. We decided on what the challenge was, and then he perused the pictures. He wanted to use more than one picture as he found them interesting. I restated that he needed to get one picture only. Would it be appropriate that they could choose more than one?

However when he started explaining his picture, it was addressing a slightly different issue. It thus became clear to me, I should have written the statement on an A4 so that he could refer back to it or used the white board he had in his room. I did play some soft music which I had on my computer … so the setting was good. I did the next step of giving my view of the picture and then its reference to the challenge. I guess a larger group brings out more perspectives than just one other person. I enjoyed this process and it enriched the coaching work rather than just having a banter of questions and discussion. Just wanted to give you the feedback.
Regards,
Sai Ram

Thank you, Sai Ram. Yes I think you had a good process! Getting them to write in a journal or sheet of paper is a good thing—practicing reflective time with the coach. One coach uses a large easel sheet of blank paper on the desktop between them, so both coach and coachee can write, scribble, draw, etc. It is true that some people cannot seem to chose just one image. Most often I say: fine, pick more. Only when time is limited are we very strict. For the coach it is usually good to ask a lot of open ended questions about the image and alternative views, such as “I wonder what is happening in this part of the image … how would that connect to the issue … .? Regards, Chuck

From the BlackBerry of David Magellan Horth
Dear Sai Ram,
It's very common for people to select more than one image. I personally never enforce it. Indeed there are many ways of using VE which encourages the selection of several images. I was talking to a feedback coach yesterday who says he used the deck with a CEO who had difficulty articulating a leadership story. The coach gave him the whole deck and he thumbed through the deck picking picking out pictures and telling parts of the story as he went along until he had a whole array of images as he completed his narration.
Best regards,
David

Thanks David, I think that was a rich experience for the client. In fact he did choose quite a few pics and I could see a pattern in what he chose, which I did share with him. I shall now expand it so that he could have a collage of pics to visualize his strategy and share it with his team. I shall try and get the digital pics which are online and get him to use them in his presentation to his team. Thanks for the feedback and much appreciated from both of you.
Regards,
Sai Ram