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In late October we started looking at how we create content for social media. Making a list of all the places we were posting was a wake up call. It was taking a huge amount of effort, and the conversation was scattered all over the place.

As our product offers have grown we thought it would be easier to break off our newest work and put it on a separate website. I post my artwork on my own blog.

The only way I can keep up with it is if nothing happens. No unexpected things that need attention. Those weeks are rare. So I end up working way too many hours trying to keep up.

What sucks up the time?

I need to redesign the way I relate to social media. While it might be ‘better’ to have separate parts of the business with it’s own special messages and branding, I am clear I can’t keep that up. We are too small a company to sustain it.

I enjoy searching out resources and pointing them out to my networks. It can be a slippery slope. I can justify aimless internet wandering as searching for content.

I think of myself as an artist, but in reality I spend most of my time writing. Is there a way I can get more balance between the...

We hear from facilitators all the time who are using the VisualsSpeak toolset — but usually it is from experienced practitioners. Recently, though, we heard of an experience by someone brand-new to the tools and to facilitation!

Learning by participating

He was working with a group in his organization on planning a conference, and they needed to get a clear vision. The toolset was very useful, and the company’s Chief Operating Officer happened to be in the meeting.

So the next time an issue came up — in this case, a work team that wasn’t really a “team” at all — the COO decided VisualsSpeak was the answer. Now this COO had never done facilitation before, and had only used the toolset once before as a participant. But in she dove!

Results!

Our more experienced user (who was a participant in this team intervention) said that even though the COO made some newbie mistakes, the toolset worked beautifully. It yielded great bonding for the starting-to-be-a-team, and laid a strong foundation. Or, as he put it:

It’s amazing how robust a tool it is–you can’t mess it up even if you’re new at using it!

It’s hard to know where you might make impact in your life, and how you might do it. Often it’s little things that slowly ripple out and take unexpected twists and turns.

Using images in Africa

Mari reviewing the birth records

VizPeep Mari Alexander is a therapist, physician assistant, intercultural consultant and Mom to two teenage boys. She’s also the co-founder of a grassroots nonprofit, Safe Passages to Motherhood that has been working in a rural village in Kenya. They’ve been sharing Home Based Life Saving Skills with a group in the village, and that small group has reached out and shared the information with over fifteen thousand other people.The program teaches people to recognize the signs of childbirth emergencies and to get those women to help before it is too late. Since the program has started, none of the women in the village have died in childbirth. Pretty impressive in an area of the world where 1 in 16 women die having babies.

One of the challenges of working in the developing world is really knowing what is happening and if you are actually making a real difference. This...

When you’re working with a group, there are times when things just work well from the beginning — people are sharing and the dynamic is good. Then there are the other times.

If you find yourself in the unfortunate situation where people just aren’t opening up to each other, work at engaging their curiosity. When people get curious, they naturally lower some of their barriers and dynamics change.

Ask questions like, “Could you tell me more about that image?” Or ask them how they approached the process with questions like, “What caught your attention about these images that caused you to select them?”

The trick is to start with questions that aren’t personal, so participants don’t immediately shut down. From that point, often people will allow you to open the door to a deeper conversation.

Yes, that’s right. Tell your clients to stick it. The photographs! To the wall! What did you think I meant?

Painters Tape!

When facilitating VisualsSpeak processes we recommend
you carry a couple of rolls of painter’s tape with you. These are the blue rolls of tape you can find in most hardware stores.

Painter’s tape – Its versatile and won’t ruin your images or the surfaces the images are being stuck to. It doesn’t leave a sticky residue like masking tape, and you won’t have tape welded to your photographs.

On the walls

One very successful technique we use is to have clients create a group collage on the wall. In advance, we tape a large piece of wide (white) paper on the wall. Then, as a team, people place their images on the paper by applying a piece of doubled-over tape on the back of the photos. Doing a group collage on the wall also shifts the client’s visual perspective of the work, opening up further possibilities of gaining insights.

Read more »

Image printed from ImageCenter used for journaling

Good interventions, whether training, coaching, facilitation, or something else, aren’t one-time events. To be most effective, they need to have an ongoing component that helps participants apply what they learned.

A great way to do this with the VisualsSpeak tools is through the creation of artifacts–pieces that the participant can take away with them for further reflection. There are a number of ways this can happen.

Take photographs of the images

For example when you are using the Visualsspeak ImageSet, taking pictures of each person’s assembled images and printing or sending it to them afterward is a good approach. When we first designed the ImageSet, people didn’t commonly have decent cameras on their phones, so we included tips about how to take good photos. Now we find people often take out their phones and take their own photos.

Professional prints of our photos are available for purchase in our online...

Have you participated in more than your share of bad icebreakers? Those introductory exercises that happen when someone wants to get a group engaged. Ones where you just want it to be over fast? We have too, which is why we were determined to create something different.

What’s the purpose of an icebreaker?

Icebreakers serve a particular purpose. In their ideal form, they start getting people engaged with each other and the topic of the session. Too often, the focus is just to get people talking instead of being mindful about how the activity relates to why a person is in attendance. Many adults do not enjoy pointless activities. For many group facilitators, activities are fun. But to a lot of other types of people, they aren’t. So they need to have a reason beyond potential enjoyment to appeal to a wide range of people.

I also strongly believe icebreakers need to be designed so everyone can be successful. No right or wrong. I want my icebreakers to help people get comfortable, not to embarrass them or set off anxiety. Of course, it’s not possible to make this true for every single person because what is comfortable for one, isn’t for another. But overall, I want to the room to feel engaged and ready...

Kathryn works for a regional mental health agency, alongside a team that has been together a long time. Even though they’ve been a group for a while, the pressure and pace of the work doesn’t give them much chance to talk. They are just too busy providing services for their clients.
So Kathryn brought a VisualsSpeak ImageSet to a staff meeting. And what a difference it made!
In just an hour, they created images about themselves and got to know things about each other they otherwise would never know. That single session created a lot of humor and jokes and created all new points of reference for the people they work with.
Six months later, the team is still using references to that day and what they learned. Way to go, Kathryn! Nice use of the tools.