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.

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 >>

Visual Explorer™ in Afghanistan

Here is a repost from the CCL Leading Effectively blog. Clemsen Turregano goes on to talk about members of the Afgan Army picking Visual Explorer images to define leadership "in their hearts and their heads."

clipped from lbbtest.net Leadership Essentials in Afghanistan Clemson Turregano traveled to Afghanistan to deliver a Leadership Essentials program to the Afghan Army. In a series of posts on the Leading Effectively blog he recounts the experience: “We would have to deliver in Dari. We would be working with a population that although very intelligent, and may not have a had a great deal of formal education. Every one we would be working with had served in war, with the Northern Alliance, the Mujahadeen, or even the Soviets. Some of these men had actually fought against each other, on opposite sides, at different times. more part 1>> and more part 2>> and more part 3>>

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

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:

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.

Using VE in youth leadership programmes at Excelerator: The New Zealand Leadership Institute

We have been having an excellent ongoing conversation with Lisa Markwick at Excelerator: the New Zealand Leadership Institute about effective applications of Visual Explorer in her work. Here is a fascinating story about using VE to conduct pre-program interviews, and work with participants in youth programs. Thanks Lisa ...

From: Markwick, Lisa, The University of Auckland Business School
To: Palus, Chuck; Horth, David;
Subject: RE: Visual Explorer

We run (and research) a variety of different leadership development programmes, with our most established being our 18 month development programmes. These are targeted towards a number of different contexts including young people (21-28y), the "Future Leaders Programme", Community Programmes (defining community as a geographic region), corporate programmes, and Senior Executive (cross sectorial) programmes. We have plenty of opportunity to engage participants and others in creative and strategic practices and processes where we have found VE to be a very powerful "starter cue".

Let me tell you an example. I was in Dargavillle meeting a group of prospective participants for a youth leadership programme. Dargaville is a rather depressed town about 3 hours north of Auckland, and the main centre of the Kaipara district where we had just been running an 18 month Community Leadership Programme. I asked this group of about 6 young people to each choose 2 pictures, one to represent the possibly for the future of Kaipara, and the other to demonstrate their commitment to participation in making it so. One of the young women chose a picture of a whole lot of empty blue seats in a stadium. For her it was about her commitment to participation: filling the seats and having people want to come to "what ever great things were on offer" in the area. When one of the others in the group saw it she built on this further (with enthusiastic backing from the others). Saying "yes...the colour of Dargaville needs to be blue...not red..." which we came to discover is the colour of the gang patches the local gang is currently wearing in town which are frightening and holding young people (and the district) back. This led to more fascinating conversation about commitment and belonging.

This is from a group of young people who hardly know each other and are not accustomed to speaking out at all, let alone in a group of strangers, for an "interview."

And a later story ...

Our latest use of the images has been with a group of 21-28 year-olds on our future leaders programme. We first engaged them with a fish bowl / open space type conversation about moments of “vitality” and encouraged dialogue to draw out how this may relate to their personal aspirations and hence to the sphere or core of their leadership challenges. After each person had been in the hot seat they went and literally sat by the fire where there a coffee table with the post card sized VE2 images spread out. From an intuitive space they each picked a card that represented their aspiration and hopefully where their leadership challenge lay within that. They really enjoyed having something tangible to “show” where they were at. Also because they knew we could then upload the digital image on our programme learning website (moodle based) they were able to have continuity with that image while giving us back the originals (mostly!!). Many of them then incorporated the image into a wider strategic picture of their challenge.

What we were attempting to get to was to find a way to represent leadership in complexity along side personal passion. I think they (and we) did that well and the images were an integral aspect of this. Some things just can not be said with the words we have at our disposal. Pictures hold those necessary nuances.

Regards,

Lisa Markwick, Programme Director
Excelerator: New Zealand Leadership Institute
The University of Auckland Business School

Visual Tools for Social Change Leadership at RCLA

In their May 2008 newsletter the Research Center for Leadership in Action (RCLA) at the Wagner School, NYU, announces the Social Change Leadership Network: "The Network will sponsor a dynamic set of activities and facilitate important connections among leaders that advance their knowledge and work ... We hope the Network will help leaders and their organizations become increasingly effective in advancing social change." more>>

The same issue talks about using visual tools for "facilitating difficult conversations, building connections among diverse groups of people, and convening leaders to problem solve or address the challenges of critical social issues." The newsletter links to a terrific Practice Note on "Visual Tools in Facilication ... our experience and learnings with three visual tools: Visual Explorer, Graffiti Wall, and Murals/Tapestries." open the Practice Note>>

RCLA researcher / practitioners report outcomes from these visual tools that reinforce and extend what we have experienced in using Visual Explorer:

"In our experience, the use of visual tools in facilitation has been valuable in:
• Encouraging inclusion and participation;
• Tapping into artistic and creative ways of expression that are often ignored or disregarded;
• Tapping into tacit knowledge;
• Triggering thoughtful conversation and dialogue;
• Allowing groups to discuss or express complex issues in a non-threatening way;
• Building group cohesion;
• Aiding memory recall and retention;
• Varying energy and format in group processes."

Of special interest to Visual Explorer users is their combination of murals / tapestries and VE. "A mural or tapestry is a visual collage of ideas, issues, or questions that revolve around a common theme." In a program targeting young leaders and encouraging their involvement in the policy making process,

"The youth were asked to conceptualize a policy area/social problem that interests each of them, by using Visual Explorer. After this exercise and subsequent discussions, each person was asked to draw the envisioned solution to his/her issue of interest with the intention of creating a collective mural. The ‘pieces’ were then placed together into a mural that represented all policy issues of interest to the group, the solutions foreseen, and the connections between the issues, as well as the complexity faced. At the end of the process was a collective creative work that connected individuals’ interests and desired changes." more on VE at RCLA>>

The Connected Leadership Project at the Center for Creative Leadership is proud to be a collaborator with RCLA in building relational leadership theory, research and practice, most centrally with the Leadership for a Changing World Project.

See also Visualisation in Participatory Programmes (UNICEF)

VE in Palestine

Hello Chuck and David,
We just got back from facilitating leadership development courses for the senior staff of three Palestinian ministries (Youth and Sports, Women’s Affairs, and Finance) where we used Visual Explorer to great effect. The stunning visual imagery made a tremendous impact on the participants’ ability to be deeply reflective and to think creatively about how best to manage the conflicts that are inevitable in any office (and exacerbated by the stressful circumstances under which they work). We never work anywhere in the world without Visual Explorer in our bag of supplies.
Keep those thought-provoking images coming!
Merianne Liteman
Liteman Rosse, Inc.
http://www.retreatsthatwork.com

Organizational Leadership Development in Ethiopia Among NGOs

The Center for Creative Leadership has been working to make leadership development more accessible in our world through the Global Voice of Leadership (GVOL) initiative. The effort involves developing new models to reach out to new populations and regions. One of the approaches being explored is to enhance the capacity of NGOs to develop local community leaders.

The beta version of our Visual Explorer Post Cards was recently used in Ethiopia for organizational leadership development, as part of Leadership Beyond Boundaries . During the debrief of experiential exercises and appreciative inquiry tools, participants routinely draw the parallels to their everyday work and see the analogies and metaphors of these simulations come to life. Participants report that their understanding of their impact on others, their appreciation for the complex cultural context within which they work, and the importance of building clear direction, alignment, and commitment through their leadership influence increases throughout the course of their workshop experience. ... more>>

VE at Cheetah Camp, Mumbai, India

Using the portable poker-card size prototype

Philomena Rego from the Center for Creative Leadership worked with facilitators using Visual Explorer in support of grassroots leadership in India. Her reports can be found at Leadership Beyond Boundaries. Recently we have this report:

Jeevan Dhara is an NGO based in Cheetah Camp, Mumbai. This is Asia's second largest slum. Jeevan Dhara operates pre-school classes for children, adult literacy classes and study classes. It also works on HIV/AIDS issues and drug & alcohol rehabilitation.

Visual Explorer was used with the teachers of these programs. The framing question used was "How do you see your work/role in this community?"

The session was conducted in Hindi, as the teachers are mostly Muslim, and Hindi is the most understood language in Mumbai slums.

The teachers enjoyed the session which was aimed at improving their ability to work together and stay committed in spite of the difficulties. VE helped them to express themselves more freely since they were speaking about the picture they had picked. The pictures do not have any language barriers.

Laos Leadership Forum 2007

Not only one tree will make a fence, not only the leader can create societal change. — Lao proverb

A Leadership Forum was held on June 11, 2007 in Vientiane, Laos, aimed to raise awareness about the challenges of leadership in the public and private sectors, and to discuss approaches to further strengthen leadership skills in Lao PDR.

Read more about this forum (English - Lao) at www.worldbank.org/lao.

The agenda was structured around the following questions:

• What is Leadership in the Lao context?
  
• How can Leadership be learnt?
  
• What are the challenges of Leadership & Leadership development in Lao PDR?
• How can we strengthen Leadership Development in Lao PDR?

Visual Explorer was used to get people talking about the sometimes sensitive topic of leadership in a communist society. The framing question used for the Visual Explorer session was, “How would you describe leadership in your own organization to new employees?” In the words of one of the facilitators:

We just said “go pick a image that speaks to this question.” We role modeled the process once they returned to their seats, and then we turned them loose. The room was very quiet at the start. Then came voices, then attentive eyes, then leaned in shoulders, then animated conversation, and finally laughter. So, in terms of VE process outcomes, they got it; it worked. In terms of content outcomes, VE helped make the undiscussable (namely leadership) discussable. It helped the group to view leadership as something not just associated with senior politburo members, but as something relevant to all. Given the conference theme, "Leadership Concerns Us All," this demystifying process was a great outcome to achieve.

Contact Patricia O'Connor and Chris Ernst at the Center for Creative Leadership.

More information on Lao PDR at www.worldbank.org/lao

Read more at the World Bank >> English - Lao

More at Leadership Without Boundaries.