Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity

Chapter 21. The Path to Visual Competency: Learning from the Groups You Lead

I often feel that writing about visualizing as an interactive medium is a bit like writing about talking. Visualization is a language with almost as much range as spoken language, and can be learned and used widely in that same way, as you have probably concluded reading this book. I no longer think of drawing and communicating with pictures as something separate and special, but a regular part of the give and take of any group trying to make sense out of their organizations and work. And the uses have migrated into everyday life as well. My journal is like a friend that I can talk with and to and learn from, mirroring back my thinking in both writing and drawing.

Competency Development Continuum

In The Grove's facilitation training, we use a competency development continuum I co-developed with Suzanne Bailey when we were working together to train teachers in California to work this way. The progression was inspired by the same Theory of Process that inspired the Group Graphics® Keyboard and the Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model®. It suggests that you have a lot of degrees of freedom in the simple early stages, and that these become foundations for the more complex skills. The "turn" in the process is learning to record anything that is thrown at you in a meeting in an appropriate format. Mastering this ...