Graphic Facilitation — Teaming With Ideas

Visual Facilitation

People have art trauma. Maybe in 3rd or 4th grade, a teacher said something about something they drew, and from that moment on they decided they were not good at drawing. And they’re going to hold onto that for their whole life. I have a 2-day Visual Facilitation Boot Camp that I teach. I’m so proud of people who come and say that they can’t draw, and sign up for this 2-day intense deep dive into drawing. And the truth is they can draw. The crazy thing is that they can, but they have this belief that they can’t. Are they going to be Leonardo DaVinci? Absolutely not. The number one thing I tell folks is it doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective. We’re not going for representational drawing, where I want you to draw exactly all the light hitting this coffee cup. I just want you to simplify it down to the basic lines so you’re communicating, “coffee cup.” That’s it.

Drawing Collaboration

Meet Tom Russell of InkyThinking, an extraordinarily talented graphic facilitator and consultant tor teams and organizations. We asked him to describe the difference between graphic facilitation and graphic recording, and their benefits to their mission, their vision and their future:

“The distinction between graphic facilitation and graphic recording is graphic recording is passive. You may have been to a conference where someone is capturing on a large piece of paper or digitally, the key points in the messages from the conversation or presentation. So building up an engaging visual picture which then forms a visual reminder of the conversation that is often given to participants after a conference or a meeting. Graphic facilitation is much more active with a group. It’s the group that is putting the information on the chart.

“Example: Working with a group to understand quite simply what their vision is. We used large charts, Post-its, getting that view out and being able to see it, alter it, and explore it, draw that ambition in or push that ambition out to make it even more stretching.”

Team CollaborationCarlos Valdes-DapenaApril 27, 2021Graphic Facilitation, Graphic Recording, VisualizationComment

Employee Experience v Employee Engagement

Dana Wasson, MSOD, author and graphic facilitator: The reason we haven't moved the needle on engagement is surveys are a very flat document of a very three-dimensional thing that we're trying to measure. I think engagement is an outcome. I don't think it's the thing that we can go after to hunt down and make better. I think that employee engagement is something that happens at the end of having a really great experience. So that flips me over to employee experience which is, what are the experiences? What are the touchpoints that we have with employees in businesses small to large?