Metaphor My Life

Global Citizen Year Fellow Ananda Day talks about imagery, metaphor, and life:

"Some people live their lives in technicolor. Others live life in misery. And still others live in ignorance, bliss, knowledge, etc. While there may not be one way to live life, it has become blatantly obvious to me that almost everyone lives their life in metaphor."

clipped from globalcitizenyear.org Metaphor My Life  Ananda Day Two days ago, while struggling to fall asleep (due to the hilarious wolof jokes being told outside my window by ten Senegalese men), I pulled out a stack of Visual Explorer cards, from the Center for Creative Leadership, that I had gotten during training. Visual Explorer is basically a stack of really nice photographs that are card sized. I then asked myself questions, and tried to find out which picture perfectly explained my emotions or ideas about that question. It is surprising how much more you find out about yourself when you make yourself realize why one image or phrase resonates, and another doesn’t. This led me to think about how much of my life is explained like Visual Explorer – in metaphor. read more >>

"Can this blind man do Visual Explorer ... ?"

"I was of course pleased to meet Enos and glad to have him as part of our program. My mind, however, began working overtime on how I would incorporate him into the upcoming Visual Explorer exercise. What could I do to be sensitive to this blind gentleman’s needs? ... "


Steadman Harrison at the Center for Creative Leadership sends us this story from the Leadership Beyond Boundaries initiative:

"In December 2006 I traveled to Kenya as part of a research initiative called Leadership Beyond Boundaries. I looked at the map and guessed that it would take me about an hour and a half by car to drive from the capital city of Nairobi up to a smaller town called Nakuru where I was to host a Leadership Forum Workshop for our contacts at ERMIS Africa. In Nairobi I hired a driver who agreed to take me out to Nakuru and we started our journey.

"Kenya is a very large country. The short trip I had anticipated turned into a nearly 4 hour drive across the Rift Valley ridge of mountains more than 8,000 feet above sea level. The road was last paved in the 1960s and at times the driver chose to drive off road because the potholes were so bad. At one point I looked out and saw a heard of zebras and asked if we could pull over so I could take a picture. The driver simply veered the car off the road and drove straight out into the field into the middle of the heard so I could see them better. This was the start of my adventure.

"I’ll focus here on one story that happened that first day at the workshop in Nakuru. I decided to set up Visual Explorer early in the morning before the workshop began as a bit of a backdrop and to create some intrigue about the activities we would cover later in the day. The colorful 8.5 by 11 pictures lined 3 of the walls of the conference room. This was an open enrollment workshop and my friend, Bancy, had sent out all the invitations. I had no idea how many participants we would have nor did I know anything about their backgrounds. As participants came in that morning I would introduce myself and some of them asked a few questions about all the pictures spread out around the room.

"Enos Awili was about the tenth person to join us that morning. He came in being led at the hand by a friend. Shortly after being seated he invited me to come over and speak with him where he told me a little bit about his life.

Born in 1950, I became blind as a result of infections by Trachoma and Glaucoma combined. I then went through the normal academic education in a residential school for the blind twenty-seven miles from Nairobi city. I then worked for a bread-producing company until it closed down in January 1993. Since then, I have not been in any gainful employment but thank the Lord for providing me with sponsors who paid school fees for my three children. Despite my financial problems I still feel it’s my duty to teach people about the ethics of good leadership and how to stay free from HIV and AIDS scourge. So I am here today as a representative for Persons with Disabilities National Council of Kenya and look forward to this program.

"I was, of course, pleased to meet Enos and glad to have him as part of our program. My mind, however, began working overtime on how I would incorporate him into the upcoming Visual Explorer exercise. What could I do to be sensitive to this gentleman’s needs? After introducing Visual Explorer that morning I promptly assured Enos that he could be fully involved in the exercise.

"As the exercise began I asked him to briefly describe both his organizational challenge and the ideal future state of his organization (the two questions I had asked the group to consider as they picked out their two pictures). I then led him around the room briefly describing each picture. To my surprise this didn’t take long. When we came across the picture of ‘a donkey with its feet tied together’ he exclaimed that this was his picture he was looking for. And when I described ‘the bird with outstretched wings having just caught a fish’ he said that this was his future organization. The really rich part of the exercise was watching Enos’s sheer delight as each of the members of his small group described the two pictures in great detail.


"At the end of our debrief, he was in tears as he shared what a great gift it was to be a part of such a wonderful exercise that captured the challenges facing the disabled people of East Africa and the hope that he had moving forward to a day when so many people in need would have the resources they needed to soar like eagles.

What do you see? Using Visual Explorer for admissions essays at the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

click through to the New York Times article
more on Dean Schall's address
more at the NYU site
more at Leading Effectively CCL blog

reposted from the New York Times, EducationLife section, Sunday, November 1, 2009

Below is the online application page with the instructions for the essay (click image to enlarge).

More from Dean Ellen Schall:

Excerpt from Dean Ellen Schall's Convocation Remarks
Presented to 2009 graduates of the
NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
May 15, 2009

“In the Wall Street Journal last week, 10 college presidents were asked to answer a question from their own schools’ applications. They all found it harder than they imagined. We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship - one that could last for years.

"Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application - in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started. more>> and more>>

Creative conversations with the women of Kpendua, Ghana, West Africa

"This is the Nyobilbaligu Women's Group having their monthly meeting on my veranda. Using the Visual Explorer cards, this meeting focused on thinking for oneself, creativity, problem-solving, and information sharing."

"[In these photos] three women at our women's group meeting trying to decipher what exactly is in each photo. When they weren't asking their friends for help, they were sitting quietly turning the Visual Explorer cards over and over in their hands."

This item is reposted from the CCL Leadership Beyond Boundaries blog, Visualizing new futures with women in rural Ghana.

From: Cheri Baker
Sent: Saturday, August 01, 2009 5:44 PM


Continue reading this post >>

Levels of looking

Al Selvin has been a fine fellow traveler in the development of Visual Explorer from nearly the beginning. The first time I met Al we uploaded VE images into Compendium maps and a prototype of what we now think of as D!gital Explorer was born (see this joint publication for example). Al's ideas about knowledge art started taking off around that time as well.

One of the few ways that Visual Explorer can get off-track is when the level of looking is shallow or cursory. VE works best under conditions of "slowing looking down" (per David Perkins) and paying attention in more artful and more disciplined ways. This kind of attention is one of the potential benefits of using VE and needs just a bit of facilitation, usually, to come alive. Al's post on his Knowledge Art blog, reposted below, unpacks this essential insight.

clipped from knowledgeart.blogspot.com Levels of looking A few weeks ago I facilitated a Visual Explorer session for a social services agency for mentally disabled children and adults in the Hudson Valley. A friend is the IT director at the agency, and asked me to help run a communication session for the IT group and its internal clients. This was the first time in several years that I've done a true, extended VE session with enough time and mandate to set it up and introduce it properly. There were 10 attendees, half from IT and half from other parts of the agency. We did two rounds, the first on the question "What's the place of IT in the organization?" and the second, after discussion, debrief, and a break, on "How can IT best support the organization (and vice versa)?" We spent about 2.5 hours in all. In the first round, the small groups got engaged quickly and the discussions were lively. Even people who hung back at first got excited as it went on. One of the IT guys was at first reluctant to engage and didn't even pick a picture during the browsing period. But after the first two people in his small group took their turns, he jumped up and grabbed a picture, and ended up giving one of the more evocative and insightful descriptions. In both large group rounds, the discussion was engaged and (as far as I could tell as an outsider) did enable people to talk in ways they normally don't to each other. A number of themes emerged, such as the separation between the different groups, surprise by non-IT people about how the IT people felt about their work and their relationships with the rest of the agency, how to better communicate about the goals and benefits of IT projects and deal with resistance to change by helping people to see what they could get out of the new capabilities, etc. Afterwards, a number of the people said that it had been valuable and that the pictures enabled them to have a better and deeper dialogue with each other. I noticed a paradox in the session, which I've seen before. It involves differing levels of looking at and talking about what people see in a picture, and how the picture relates to their situation and concerns. It's relatively easy to get people to talk about what they see in a VE image on the level of what the picture "says", what they think the story of the picture is. This is a wonderful human capability -- something a computer could never do (e.g. "these people are happy because they just won a race", "nothing's really clear, the racers and the audience can't see each other well, there's such a frenetic pace" etc.). But the paradox is that it's not so easy to get people to go to the next level, to really look at and talk about the actual 'physical' details in the picture -- to engage with and talk about what they really see rather than the story or ideas that are suggested to them. In other words, people relate almost instantly to what they see as the "story" of the picture, suggested by the images, facial expressions, etc. -- the visual detail that strikes us on a sub-verbal level, all the time, in conversations with others (for example, the way we "read" other people's moods and interpret what that might mean for us, as we scan their faces or listen to their voices in a meeting). But to go farther -- to be able to say exactly what visual and aural nuances might have given us this impression (the crease of a brow, the elevated pitch of part of a spoken sentence) takes an extra effort and does not come readily for most people. I often think of what I had to learn in film classes in college -- not to just let a film "wash over" me in a tide of impressions and effects, but rather to pay close attention so I could see what techniques the filmmaker used to give me those impressions -- the small details of editing, sound, lighting, composition, color, and many others. This can lead to a deeper level of insight and articulation. As the practitioner in the VE session I'm describing here, I tried to inculcate this to some extent. As people were working in the small groups, I walked around and made a few suggestions, such as pointing out specific visual details and getting the groups to look at them, when it was apparent that the group was in 'story' mode and could benefit from taking a closer look. That did seem to shake things loose a bit and move the conversation to a more engaged level. This same dynamic occurs with other forms of collaborative media. Getting people to look closely and talk about what they see requires a level of effort -- for both participants and practitioners -- beyond what is easiest to do. The "story" level is also a good thing and generates dialogue that takes people out of their normal way of relating, but going farther is where a lot of the potential lies. Posted by Al at 9:27 AM

Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit: Video introduction to VE

from David Shurna on Vimeo
Visual Explorer™ was used to close Jane Goodall's Global Youth Summit, and the event was captured on video. The question posed was "What is one of the most important things that you learned about leadership at the Global Youth Summit?" The power of their week-long leadership experience shines through in their stories and images. Enjoy! Thanks to David Shurna at Global Explorers, and thanks especially to the participants.

The video is a good introduction to Visual Explorer™ in action (another intro to VE is posted here). The main difference from a typical VE session is that in this case, since time was limited, there were no small group dialogues. We recommend breaking into small groups of 3-5 to share the images and stories in great detail, using the dialogue technique called the Star Model.


Notice David's technique of combining the digital images of the selected images with the text written by each person, and making that into an animated power point show. You can view that show by itself, as a powerpoint show, by downloading it here. Below are two examples.

sharing a VE image at the Summit

-----Original Message-----
From: David Shurna [mailto:dave@globalexplorers.org]
To: Palus, Chuck; Horth, David
Subject: Visual Explorer and the Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit

Dear Chuck & David:

I wanted to let you know that I have returned from the Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit and your Visual Explorer activity was amazing! I used the activity at the conclusion of the week long summit as a way for students to share what they had learned about leadership throughout the week. I have attached the PowerPoint presentation that represents all of the images chosen by the students coupled with words about their action projects and their leadership lesson. The session was also filmed and I will be getting this out to you as well.

I was particularly struck by how well this work across cultures. We had youth ages 16-24 from more than 20 countries involved in the activity. Many were from developing countries and English was their second language. The images helped them open up and share powerful lessons and ideas in ways that we had not seen the rest of the week.

I was particularly struck by the variety of images selected and the creative ways in which students expressed their thoughts. One student from Kenya selected an image of a burning house and described the way in which this photo represented the destruction of his country that was taking place right now. Yet beyond the fire, he saw in the image something that represented his hope that he could inspired change when he returned.

Another student from Hong Kong selected the rugby image and discussed the ways in which he felt that he was often beat up, pushed around and discouraged by the lack of progress he was making on environmental issues in Hong Kong. Yet, he said the conference reminded him that we all get beat up at times and we need to have persistence and hope.

Not too many dry eyes in the room after these moments. Thanks so much for being willing to share this incredible resource with our organization. Please let me know how you would like me to post these lessons and information on your blog. Again, video will be forthcoming.

Sincerely,

David Shurna
Executive Director
Global Explorers

10,000 images

Here is a re-post from Andrew Webster on the ExperiencePoint blog, about an experiment in the power of images to stick in memory.

clipped from blog.experiencepoint.com Visuals for Learning There are countless advantages to leveraging visuals to enhance learning. I’ll focus on recall. Check out this discussion about recall percentages with/without visuals. There’s reference here to Lionel Standing’s 10,000 pictures study. The long and short is this: Individuals are shown 10,000 pics in five days (yes, that does sound insane) After seeing all 10k pics, subjects are shown some of these again, but all mixed up with other pics they haven’t seen Subjects are able to recognize which were ones they were already shown with 83% (!) accuracy The more vivid the image, the more likely a subject was to recall it Standing extrapolates that if you see 1M vivid images, then you would remember 98% of them in the near term, and 73% in the long term Here's the abstract for Lionel Standing's journal article "Learning 10,000 Pictures" published in 1973 in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.

Picturing action learning

My good colleague Tom Boydell at Inter~Logics writes:

Hullo Chuck ... It was interesting to hear of your postcard and playing card versions of Visual Explorer. We continue to use the original form extensively - some of the pictures are getting a bit worn; we bought a second set but it was stolen - shows how popular it is!

We use it for exploring almost any concept - not just leadership. Also quite often in an Action Learning setting when we ask people to describe where they have got to in their ongoing projects. As things have worked out we have used it more outside of the UK - especially in Jordan, Syria and Egypt - the latter many times on a large project with the Egyptian Post Office. We have also used it several times on a programme for a Danish multi-national - 15 different nationalities including N and S America, Europe, Asia, and Africa on each occasion.

So from all the above I think you can gather that we have found it to work really well in a wide variety of cultures.

All the best,

Tom Boydell
Director, Inter~Logics
tboydell@inter-logics.net

The newsletter of SetMatch in the UK just published this short piece by Tom Boydell on the use of Visual Explorer™ in action learning programs.

Picture Post

I use this name Picture Post – which reminds me of a long-defunct weekly magazine that I enjoyed reading at school – as a general label for a number of ways of using collections of pictures. You can use calendars, postcards, posters or other reproductions – good excuse to go into art galleries! – although we use a specific set that I will say more about at the end of this piece.

We find that pictures can be used in many ways, including:

• As an introduction exercise; lay out a number of pictures and ask each participant to choose one that says something about them or their problem/challenge. Then ask each to explain to the others why they have chosen that picture (they can choose more than one if you think this would be better)

• As a different type of introduction, as participants to choose and talk about one or more pictures that somehow represent to them eg
o what they are hoping to achieve from the Action Learning programme
o what they think Action Learning involves; how it works
o their team, department, organisation
o perhaps the course they are on (for example if Action Learning is part of a broader programme)

• Make the pictures available as a resource to add to an account of progress on a challenge or problem – say on a flipchart (as in the example at [the top of this post], chosen because we have found that pictures like this can be used in any cultural context)

• Ask participants to select one or more pictures that say something to them about the progress of the Action Learning set or programme. This can be “static” – i.e. as they experience it now – or over a timeline – say the past four or five meetings. Choose different pictures to represent each meeting and then explain how they represent the “biography” or “life” of the group as each member has felt it.

• Choose pictures that represent some of the key stakeholders in your project – how you see them, what you perceive them as feeling or doing, how you relate to them.

• Perhaps not so much in an Action Learning set, but in another context - e.g. a workshop - choose up to say four pictures that represent how you see and feel about the workshop topic (eg leadership; finance; diversity; equal opportunities; engagement; etc etc etc!)

• If there quite a number of participants, they can make individual choices, divide into smaller groups, share their pictures, then as a group select some that they want to represent them as a group. It’s often good to ask them to select at least more than one more picture than there are people in the group – so if say 5 people, ask them to select 6 pictures. This allows for each to have one of their “own” but also forces them to choose a more “collective” one.

And so on. There’s no end really to how they might be used. You do need quite a number of pictures – with groups of up to about 25 we use a set of 224, and two such sets if a bigger group. As I said you can build up your own collection, but we use a set called Visual Explorer™, published by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL ) at www.ccl.org/ve .

Action learning in Damascus, Syria (courtesy Tom Boydell)

Tom's books are found on Amazon and everywhere--great stuff, have a look! For example, A Manager's Guide to Leadership:

The Art of Public Service

Visual Explorer™ image #780

Excerpt from Dean Ellen Schall's Convocation Remarks
Presented to 2009 graduates of the
NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
May 15, 2009

See the related New York Times article: What do you see?
More at the NYU site

“In the Wall Street Journal last week, 10 college presidents were asked to answer a question from their own schools’ applications. They all found it harder than they imagined. We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship - one that could last for years.

Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application - in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started.

It seemed fitting, as you graduate, for me to put myself to the test we asked you to take up as you, or some of you, entered. So I looked through the Visual Explorer photos and picked one. I will show it to you in a minute. On our application we ask you to tell us how the image you selected represents your connection to public service. Let me try to answer for myself.

The title of my essay is “The Art of Public Service.”

NYU Wagner named itself a school of Public Service 20 years ago, in 1989. For years we had to defend the choice, explain it, compare and contrast it to public administration or public policy, the more obvious choices. The faculty and the then dean, Howard Newman, stood firm though. In naming the school, they saw beyond the way the world was dividing itself into sectors and methods. They imagined that we would come to care more about results and change than in what sector the work was housed. They appreciated that careers were likely to cross boundaries, that people in their late 20s or early 30s were more likely to have 7 jobs than one, that claiming the name of public service for our school would set us apart… and indeed it has. Now 20 years later, we have a president of the U.S. who exemplifies the spirit of public service and who has made the call to public service a virtual national anthem.

I wrote a piece 15 years ago, a few years into being a faculty member at Wagner, called “Learning to love the swamp: rethinking education for public service.” The swamp is a metaphor for the important, complex, and messy problems that resist technical analysis. I argued that the world of public service has more swamp than high ground. Ending poverty, overcoming racism, ensuring equal health outcomes for all, creating public school systems that work, building cities that are sustainable - these are the kinds of challenges that await your talent and commitment. Important challenges, and ones that require the most sophisticated and skilled levels of professional public service. Another name for this professional excellence is …artistry - and that brings me to my image and to the topic of this essay. The Art of Public Service.

I believe more than ever in the need for artistry in the work of public service. We invited you to join us at Wagner to change the world. We offered you – or hope we did - a varied set of tools and frameworks from which you can draw. But tools and frames alone don’t do the trick. Public service is as much about art as science. When we bring artistry to public service, we bring passion, creativity and the gift of seeing new possibilities. Holding a sense of ourselves as artists as we go about the work of public service helps us to stay bold and aim high.

It’s important to remember at the same time that art is not easy and that there are no guarantees- either in art or in public service. I took a beginners’ pottery class this past fall.

I showed up every Monday night, from 6 - 9, much the way you showed up for a class. And it was VERY hard. I was the worst in the class, a fact clear to me and to every one else. Yet I stayed and kept on trying. I knew there was learning in the trying, in sticking with what didn’t come easily. I never actually cracked the code or became a potter. Yet at the end, I have these small little pieces of “pottery” in my house and the odd thing is I display them. They are on the entry hall table and they make me smile when I walk in. They remind me to take myself seriously, but not too seriously, to stretch even in the face of initial resistance, mine or others, to find pleasure in small wins.

Here then is the image I chose:

An image of a person - alas, not me - bringing a pot to life on a potter’s wheel.

This captures in a simple visual image what I wish for each of you as you go forth. That you embrace the boldness of seeing yourself as artists, as creators and changemakers, as people who bring passion and the fullness of your selves to the critically important challenges of public service. And that you have the discipline and energy and commitment to keep on going, even if you don’t get it right the first time around, that you learn from what works as well as what doesn’t and that you find joy in small things as well as big moves.

Thank you.

Playing Cards with Al and Aldo

Today's message from Al Selvin, live from the Tilburg railway station.

Chuck, David,

I'm finding the playing-card size VE very useful for spontaneous 1:1 sessions. Even the extremely rapid one that Aldo and I did this morning, in a coffee shop at Tilburg (Netherlands) railway station. It was quite high quality even in that short time, and with the small pix.

Aldo's site: http://communitysense.nl/

Al

Leadership Beyond Boundaries

The Center for Creative Leadership is making a difference in grassroots leadership worldwide by means of our Leadership Beyond Boundaries initiative. Visual Explorer™ and Leadership Metaphor Explorer™ are just a few of the tools used in this initiative to have better dialogue about leadership and the future, in places like Kenya, India, Thailand, and the USA.

Create effective framing questions for Visual Explorer sessions

Effective framing questions are the key to getting the most out of a Visual Explorer session. An effective framing question is one that elicits the right conversation. The right conversation, in most situations, is one that is open, insightful, and honest, and gets down to the essence of the challenge or topic at hand. The wrong conversation is one in which either people converse about a topic they don’t find important, or in which people avoid being open and honest.

Effective framing questions are often used in pairs, for example: What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses? Pick a card for each question ...

The first guideline for creating an effective framing question, or two, is to determine what the group really wants or needs to explore together. The group itself, or the client of the work the group is doing, may be able to propose the most meaningful questions. Good framing questions speak directly and honestly to the issues the participants care about. Good framing questions draw participants into their own personal perspectives and experiences. If the question is too general then participants may respond in general, depersonalized way. Ask, How do YOU see [this issue]? rather than What is the most important aspect of [this issue]? Compose a few alternative questions, then try them out with one or more of the participants before the session. You may be surprised at how a question can be interpreted differently from what you had in mind.

Sample framing questions (insert your own specific context):

• What stands out for you in the data we just reviewed?
• What are the possibilities we see in this situation?
• What are our strengths? What are our weaknesses?
• What is one hope you have going into this?
• What is one fear you have going into this?
• How do you feel about this at a gut level?
• What does your intuition tell you?
• What are we missing, neglecting, or under-estimating?

• Where have we been? Where are we going? To what do we aspire?
• What would we do if the roles were reversed?
• What if we couldn’t invent anything new and just used what we had at hand?
• What if one of our key assumption is wrong, or backwards?
• How would we do this if we had unlimited resources? If we had no resources?
  

See also
THE ART OF POWERFUL QUESTIONS: Catalyzing Insight, Innovation, and Action by Eric E.Vogt, Juanita Brown, and David Isaacs; 2003; Whole Systems Associates, Mill Valley, CA.

97 percent of the 89 employers surveyed believe that arts training is crucial to developing creativity

Here's a message from Lou St. Ville (Director of Education and Development at Crate&Barrel, & an alum of the Center for Creative Leadership's Leading Creatively Program) ...

From: St. Ville, Lou [mailto:@crateandbarrel.com]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 1:20 PM
To: Palus, Chuck; Horth, David
Subject: Your book is needed...

Thought you would find this article from CLO magazine interesting. It made me think about how important your research (and book) is to the US workplace now. I'm speaking about this to a class at Columbia College here in Chicago next week. I will certainly speak to this need here at C&B. ... lsv

In The News

Published April 2008

Study Finds Curriculums Not Keeping Pace With Workforce Needs

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

A recent survey found that school superintendents and employers agree that creativity is becoming increasingly important in U.S. workplaces, according to a report by The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators (AASA).

“Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce?” states that 99 percent of the 155 school superintendents surveyed and 97 percent of the 89 employers surveyed believe that arts training — and, to a lesser degree, communications studies — are crucial to developing creativity. But findings indicate that most high schools and employers provide such training and studies only on an elective or as-needed basis.

“As long as creativity is identified as a skill that can be developed and recognized as an integral input for innovation, and corporate leaders emphasize the need for innovation in order to meet their business objectives, the need for including creativity enhancing programs [in] the requisite training curriculum should be obvious,” said Jonathan Spector, chief executive officer of The Conference Board.

Retreats That Work with Visual Explorer

Visual Explorer goes with me to almost every retreat I facilitate—even when we don’t actually plan to use it ...

says Sheila Campbell, president of Wild Blue Yonder. Campbell is co-author, with Merianne and Jeff Liteman, of Retreats That Work: Everything You Need to Know about Planning and Leading Offsites. Merianne Liteman, of Liteman Rosse, Inc., agrees.

“Because it’s so versatile, we find lots of uses for Visual Explorer in retreats. We believe in responding to what’s happening in the moment, so sometimes we see uses for VE that weren’t in our retreat plan. The deck is almost always in the room with us.”

Liteman likes using the deck to help a group deal with particularly thorny issues about which people might have strong emotions.

“The introspection that VE encourages makes the discussion about these tough issues much richer. VE often helps people see all sides of a dilemma rather than be staked in their original positions.”

Campbell and Liteman design a flow into their retreats, peaking in energy as participants make decisions about the issues framed in the retreat.

“By the end of retreat people are tired, but excited about the progress they’ve made. They’re full of good intentions about making a difference when they return to work. But we know they’ll also be bombarded by conflicting priorities and an avalanche of interruptions as soon as they get back in the office. We often use Visual Explorer to help them bridge that transition.”

One of the strong suits of Visual Explorer, say these retreats experts, is that it moves people into a reflective silence in which they can begin to take responsibility for insuring that the decisions made at the retreat take full effect.

When they use VE to close a retreat, Liteman and Campbell usually select a portion of Visual Explorer images that broadly connote leadership, teamwork, achievement or other themes of the retreat. (“At this point,” Campbell explains, we don’t want anyone getting stuck on an image they might interpret as discouraging.”) They choose four or five images for every one person in the group. The images are displayed on a table at the back of the room during the final break of the day. Participants often wander over to look at the pictures and wonder about their use, but they aren’t given any clues upfront. After all the decisions in the retreat have been made, and the group has talked about how they’ll introduce the results to everyone back at the office, the facilitators then talk about how important it will be for each person to keep the retreat spirit alive --- and how difficult that can become in the heat of day-to-day work.

Participants are asked to be silent as they write this incomplete sentence at the top of a sheet of paper: My strongest contributions to keeping the results of this retreat alive will be... . They’re given a few moments to think about the question. Before inviting them to choose an image to begin their own reflections, either Liteman or Campbell demonstrate how to use the pictures, usually inviting one of the group to choose an image. This randomness in the choice of image helps reinforce that it doesn’t matter what image a person chooses, because, of course, the message evoked is within the person viewing it, not inherent in the picture itself.

“One thing we love about Visual Explorer is how many options it gives us in facilitating this critical closing of a retreat,”

After participants have been given time to choose their images and note their reflections, the facilitators can choose to move in several different directions. With a small group of fewer than twenty, they can invite every person to share their resolutions, which can solidify the respect and closeness that have developed in the retreat. (See What I See for Me, pp. 410-412 in Retreats That Work for more information about how Campbell and Liteman use Visual Explorer to close a retreat.) If the work group is likely to encounter serious obstacles in achieving their goals, the facilitators might have them do a second round of reflections based on completing the sentence: I can foresee some challenges, but I will be able to overcome them by... . These reflections, shared with a small group that works well together, can strengthen the group’s resolve to see their decisions through, and help them see how to support each other.

In larger groups, Campbell and Liteman have the participants break into dyads or triads to discuss their VE reflections.

"We feel it’s important for people to voice what they’re thinking, even if it’s not to the whole group. Somehow hearing yourself say it aloud makes the ideas more memorable.”

Liteman and Campbell are not surprised when this closing leads to strong emotions about the retreat. Almost always, they say, some participants are quite moved by the VE images.

"When that happens, we invite people to take the picture home with them. “It wrecks our Visual Explorer decks, but the decks are replaceable; we can stand to lose a few pictures. What we never want to lose is the commitment that the pictures evoke.”

Liteman and Campbell teach beginning and advanced retreat design and facilitation courses for organizations that conduct internally-facilitated retreats. Beginning and experienced facilitators in the program are taught how to use Visual Explorer in a number of ways, from creative thinking to facilitating teamwork to inspiring vision. Months later, Liteman and Campbell report, when they check in with people who have been through the course, the students often reference the VE images they chose at the end of the program.

“People tell us, 'I look at my picture every time I design a retreat, and it reminds me to have confidence in my skills.’

Resources: Liteman, M., Campbell, S. and Liteman, J.: Retreats That Work: Everything You Need to Know about Planning and Leading Offsites, San Francisco: Pfeiffer / Wiley, 2006. www.retreatsthatwork.com www.wildblueyonder.biz

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

Visual Exploration news from bloggers: Facilitating transitions. Beyond the glass ceiling. Treasure Maps for personal visioning

Viv McWaters uses the technique of drawing a Visual Explorer image at random as a way of getting to fresh ideas. Of this image she says "It reminds me of the somewhat artificial world we facilitators operate in. ... How do we make the transition from the ‘event’ - a conference, a forum, a workshop, an on-line discussion - to the ordinary world that we usually inhabit? This photo encompasses that transition." more>>


The bloggers at Beyond the Glass Ceiling write about using lots of visuals at a career retreat. This "unleashes ideas and insights that aren't available to our verbal brains." more>>

Artist and consultant Christine Kane has a popular post in which she describes how to make a Vision Board. As she points out the Vision Board (aka treasure map, or creativity collage) is in some ways like Visual Explorer, but one you can make yourself out of magazine images. "It gives your ego a chance to step aside just a little, so you can more clearly create your vision." more>>

Center for Creative Leadership more>>

Visual Explorer™ Step by Step Instructions

There are typically five steps in a VE session:

1. Frame
2. Browse
3. Reflect
4. Share
5. Extend

See also:
Quick Guide
Effective framing questions
Enabling dialogue
Typical examples


1. Frame

First, select the general topic of the conversation. For some groups the topic will be a given, for example, “it’s about stating out vision.” Some groups may need to consider the one specific topic (among many) that is timely and will lead to a fruitful conversation, for example “what it’s been like to be part of this team over the past year.” It may be that the leader or facilitator of the group uses VE to “dig deeper” into the issues at hand, for example “What stands out as this group’s key challenge? What are the root causes of this problem?” Part of the agenda of a meeting could be to first explore a range of possible topics and then focus in on one for a deeper conversation using VE.

Next, create one or more framing questions based on the topic. These are the specific questions (or statements) posed to the group that will guide their browsing and selection of images. For example, “What do you think this group’s new strategy should be? What will it look like in practice?” (These may be more like “framing statements” when not explicitly in question form; for example the frame might be “Pick an image that says something to you about what the new strategy should be.”)

Of course all this depends on the nature of the group. Who is going to be in the room for the VE session? Will each person find the framing questions meaningful? Are they a collection of individuals or a team? A group of trainees in a classroom might start with the question “How am I creative?” A true team might explore further by adding a second question, such as “How are we creative as a team?”

It can be very effective to have two, or more, framing questions that box in the topic. For example you can ask: What are our strengths as a team? AND Where could we improve as a team? Each person would then pick an image of each. There is much power in the juxtaposition of contrasting images. >>effective framing questions

The next aspect of framing is presenting the activity to the group. You need to address the two main questions the group will have: “Why are we doing this activity?” And, “What are the instructions?”

Why are we doing this activity? It is best to say this simply and not over-explain or over-sell the process. For example “We are doing this to have an open and honest conversation about (the topic). We want to explore (these questions).” For groups that are skeptical of VE it is best to give a brief, clear rationale based on addressing some shared issue, with VE as merely one tool for looking at the issue. Don’t position VE as some kind of magic bullet.

What are the instructions? These vary according to the group and the specific application. Specific instructions and options are given (***) in the steps below, but must be adapted to the context.

*** Option. Additional resources are available to assist the facilitator of a VE session. These are in the form of PowerPoint slide shows with instructions, handouts, and worksheets. But simpler is often better.

*** Reflection: Each person thinks about the topic, and takes a few moments to write or reflect about his or her personal perspective on the topic and the framing question(s). These notes can include anything that’s relevant to that individual—observations, answers, emotions, points of confusion, and so on. Group members can use journals, notepads, or the Visual Explorer Worksheet. These notes are private but lead to the selection of an image and point of view to be shared.
Its tempting to skip or hurry this step, but it can be effective as a way to begin to switch mental gears into a more reflective and attentive mode. Ask people not to talk starting with these moments before browsing. Cue the music.

*** State any norms for the privacy of the conversations. For example, some groups will need to abide by the norm of “what is said in the room stays in the room.”


2. Browse

A key step in any VE session is browsing through the images. The facilitator spreads out the images so they can be easily viewed by people as they walk around. Typically the images are placed on the floor or table tops or both. Some people like to line them up square, and some like to scatter them. This is based on MBTI type and lumbar flexibility but otherwise does not matter. VE images have even been hung on walls for browsing but that takes more effort. Placing the images can be done before the meeting if a separate room or hallway is used for browsing. There is something helpful in people having to rub shoulders to browse.

One or more of the participants can help you spread out the images, and pick them up later. If you put them out early people will comment on them and step on them, which can be fun, its up to you.

Card sizes are more compact for browsing and can even be used on a desktop. The digital version of VE allows online browsing.

Browsing is an R-mode activity. The browsing of images, especially since no text is involved, draws powerfully on the right side of the brain. This is good, since it aids the perception of patterns, intuitions, and emotions. Therefore, no talking. Any kind of verbal language tends to turn down R-mode and turn up L-mode. Instrumental, upbeat music is good, Mozart works. They can start talking again once they get into the small group conversations.

*** Browse the images until you find one that is about your answers or reactions to the question. The connection of the image to the question might be literal, rational, or emotional, or a hunch. You may not even know why you picked it at first. Keep the framing question in the back of your mind. Relax, browse and pick. Take your time. No talking.

Probably because of R-mode, this is the step where even the skeptics begin to like it a little bit. The images are provocative. Browsing can be a relaxed but alert “flow” state. People tend to get rushes of emotions and intuitions. Conscious, rational responses to the framing questions start rolling around with the pre-conscious ones. Metaphors suggest themselves. Sometimes the choice of an image is likewise pre-conscious, and sudden, something grabs you, so that it feels like “the image picked me.” All this leads to multiple meanings for the images going on at the same time. Much of the power of VE is in the fluidity of multiple meanings in a highly visual context.

Scientists using VE have often recognized this combined effect of image, intuition, and metaphor as related to doing science. People naturally think in pictures. Images are the meeting place of art and science.

*** Option: Upside-Down Images: When spreading the pictures for browsing, turn a few of them over (at least one for each person participating) so those images are hidden. As group members select images, each also selects one of the hidden ones without looking at it. Near the end of the group conversations, look at the hidden image, and interpret them. We sometimes say: “What if these images portray what is missing or neglected or overlooked?” Curiosity runs high about the hidden images. Even if most group members don’t get any insights from the hidden pictures, a few will. Don’t try to control the discussion, but be aware that it may provide an opening to issues that the group had previously avoided. Don’t treat this as mystical—it is projective—and, the facilitator is welcome to turn over deliberately provocative images. Better to treat the “upside-down images” as fun, as play, and then harvest any serious insights that arise.


3. Reflect

Reflection—as in quietly observing, while also thinking and analyzing, in a fully attentive way—happens deliberately at several points during the VE session including (ideally) both before and after browsing, and (optionally) at the end of the conversations.

*** When you have picked an image, spend some time looking at it. (The Worksheet is optional here.) Write down a few notes about what you see. What is it? What is happening? What is unknown or vague? Why were you drawn to this image? And last, after close attention to the image: How does the image connect to the framing question?
Once again, its tempting to skip or hurry this step. There is some built in time for most of the group while the last person picks her image. But it can be quite effective to hold people in this attentive R-mode state and spend time with the image, not glossing over the details, but taking time to observe the image itself. Challenge them to see what is in front of them, beyond first impressions.

At these points of reflection, it helps to ask for No Talking. Note writing is good, but simply some time for quiet observing, thinking and reflecting can suffice.


4. Share

Using the images, share the images and have conversations about the topic and questions, usually within subgroups. Three to five people in each subgroup works well. The larger the group, the more time it takes for all to share. Subgroups can be randomly assigned; or, composed of those who finish browsing at the same time; or, by groups of people who don’t know each other as well; or, by deliberately creating diverse groups.

Make a simplified version of the following steps available to the group on a flip chart or as a handout or slide [link to resource]. Let the groups manage themselves using some version of these instructions, with the facilitator moving among the groups and helping as needed.

*** The group (or sub-groups of 3-5) sits in a circle. One person at a time shares his or her image(s) as follows:
First: “Share the image and describe the image itself (forget about any connection to the question for a moment). What is it? What is happening? What do you notice?”
Second: “What connections do you make from the image to the question? How is the image a response to the question?” (Repeat these two steps for each image held by this person.)
Third: Each person in the group responds to the image(s) offered by this first person. Each response may also have two parts: “What do you see in the image? Do you see the same things that other’s see? What stands out to you? AND THEN: “What connections do you make from the image to the question?” After the first person has shared their images around the group in this way, he or she thanks the group, and the conversation moves on to the next person and their image(s). Continue until everyone has shared their images.

*** Allow at least five minutes per person during the small-group discussions. Let the groups know at the start how much time they have and keep them informed about their time throughout the process.

*** Don’t solve problems for each other. Don’t give or ask for advice. Keep attention on the images, questions, and answers. Explore multiple perspectives and possible meanings.

*** As time permits, the group should continue talking after the last person has shared their images, discussing patterns and themes and implications. The facilitator should be available to answer questions about the VE process but should not exert too much control over the groups. It’s all right if the groups slightly modify or improvise on the instructions.

*** As they finish, group members should make notes about insights from the conversation, including any shifts in perceptions, insights, or feelings about the topic. (The Visual Explorer Worksheet is for this purpose.)

We call this the Star Model for mediated dialogue.




5. Extend

When the initial round of conversations with the images is finished, a momentum is often present, and it works well to extend the conversation in whatever direction is important to the group. The most significant images and metaphors can be reused in ongoing problem solving, invention, and communication. The images lend themselves to cascading to other groups in the same organization, especially in digital form.

*** Debrief the activity, and continue the conversations as desired.
Some key questions to debrief with include: How was that conversation? What happened? What was valuable about the process? Content questions might include: What did you discover about [the topic] from your group? What different points of view were expressed in the small groups? Which images really stood out?

Within this basic sequence of a VE session are options to make the session more useful to participants in the longer term. For example:

*** Record or transcribe the discussions, preserving the metaphors, the insights, and the images for future reference.
Save the images to use as prompts when the group reconvenes.
Prioritize the most interesting connections or insights. List actions steps for each one.
For example, a newly formed team participating in a VE session listed all the metaphors that surfaced during the dialogue that described their mission. It used this list to refine and communicate its mission to outside sponsors, and among its own members.
At another organization, input from a number of VE sessions provided a starting point for a vision statement.

*** Many participants will want to keep the images they selected. They often show up on bulletin boards or office walls and spark further conversations. A set of the images in digital form is available at [link] in collaboration with iStockphoto.com.

*** Use scissors, glue, poster paper, markers, and additional images from magazines and other sources to construct a collage—a composite representation of the topic—using the VE images selected. A dialogue that uses the collage as an object can be deep and productive.

See also:
Quick Guide
Effective framing questions
Enabling dialogue
Typical examples