Visual Explorer™

Life-Career Planning in an MBA program

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:37:00 +0000

"It worked! The images they picked really hit home in ways that surprised them."

From: Carol Connolly Bruce,
To: Chuck Palus

Chuck,

I used Visual Explorer in my Mid-Career MBA course at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

There are evening students, most over 30 years, all with work experience. One of their assignments was to create a Life-Career Plan. So I asked them to pick an image that represents their Current Reality as part of their Life-Career Story. Picking the image helped inform their writing of the story. In preparation for the Life-Career Plan, they picked a second image that represents their vision for their life/career. In the plan, they used Robert Fritz’s concepts of Structural Tension, Current Reality and Vision/Aspiration. Then they integrated the two images, Current Reality and Vision, and the steps it will take to move from the first to the second.

Many of them didn’t think they could do it, but I encouraged them to try and just see what happened. Well, it worked! The images they picked really hit home in ways that surprised them. Their plans were very good, lots of authentic self awareness and opening up to go after things they’ve wanted to do but have pushed aside due to limiting beliefs and mental models, which they were to uncover in their life/career stories. Several are really going for it as a result of the work they did in the course, all are much clearer on what they want. They also commented on how they have a sense of renewal and less fatigue about where they are in their work and lives.

Carol

Carol Connolly Bruce

Faculty

The Center for Creative Leadership
brucec@ccl.org

Visually exploring burn out

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 19 May 2010 22:28:00 +0000

Cathy M. writes about her experience of Visual Explorer cards as introduced to her by her CCL feedback coach.This is a great illustration of using VE for one on one coaching, and also suggests a self-coaching process, in this case on the topic of burn out.

During my attendance at CCL for the Leadership Development Program, I was blessed to have TZiPi Radonsky as my feedback coach. Prior to attending CCL, I was going through a bit of professional and personal “burn out”. During my feedback session, TZiPi offered me a deck of cards that had a photograph on each card. My assignment was to file through the deck and pull out any cards with pictures that spoke to me in some way. I flipped through the deck and pulled out 7 cards that contained scenes that evoked peace, tranquility and joy in me and 1 card that represented destruction and burn out.

Two interesting things came from the experience:

1) My initial reaction to the burn out card revealed a picture of a bridge embankment that had been destroyed by a tornado or bomb. This demonstrated how I was feeling at that moment. After the empowering, feedback session with TZiPi that followed, I looked at the cards one more time and I couldn’t find the card with the destroyed embankment. I realized that the picture I originally saw as destruction was actually a beautiful bridge crossing a canal leading to a forested area. I was stunned at how being in a more peaceful, clear thinking place completely transformed the picture into something of beauty. Additionally, I never could get the picture back to the original view.

2) The second awareness I had from the card experience came about 4 weeks later. I had been working hard on my CCL goals which included getting back to a state of peace. I began noticing a sense of calm and tranquility in the following weeks and enjoyed recognizing things around me that previously gave me joy. These included:

a. Snow skiing - so I began planning a ski trip with friends this winter.
b. Music - so I purchased tickets for a Christmas concert with the symphony.
c. Nature - so I made a point to notice the sky through the Fall leaves above me on a lunchtime walk through the woods.
d. The beach – so I gathered several girlfriends and went to the beach for the weekend.

A few weeks later, I revisited the cards that I had chosen at CCL (TZiPi sent e-files of them to me) and I was amazed to discover that all of the activities I had planned and accomplished were depicted on the cards I had chosen with TZiPi.

This was quite remarkable. I was pleased to see that the things that evoke peace and joy for me are true even in times when I am in a non-positive place. And, I was impressed that visualizing things I enjoy motivated me to make them happen.

This was an exciting activity!

Cathy M.
CCL attendee, September 2008

Metaphor My Life

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:48:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:05:00 +0000

"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.

Visual Explorer with the Afghan National Army

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:50:00 +0000

A collage of officer's VE images from the program

Earlier we looked at Visual Explorer in Afghanistan, used there in leadership development with the Afghan National Army. Clemson Turregano at CCL leads that work. Check out this great collage (top of post) they made of the VE images picked by the class--fabulous. The slideshow below puts the initiative in context and shows the program design.. But the very best part is this next story from Clemson, when his set of VE images got vetted by the local mullah ....

I had laid out the VE pictures in the hallway prior to the class. Going through the deck, I removed any that I thought might be culturally sensitive (women in shorts, that kind of thing). There were still pictures of women, but none that I found might be offensive to Islam. As I was about to welcome the students, a nice gentleman appeared in full Afghan regalia, toting a very nice camera. My translators informed me that he was the local imam, responsible for the area in which the school was located. He spoke a little English and informed me that he was a photographer and asked if he could look at the images. I replied that I welcomed his insight and asked if he might review the pictures so that they would meet all the ‘cultural’ requirements. I left him alone for a while and when I returned, he and I spotted the one picture I had overlooked – Lady Godiva on a horse. Before I could get to it, he looked to the one next to Lady Godiva and said ‘This one OK’ – then he saw Lady Godiva, and handing the picture to me, he stated, ‘this…not so much…’ We both laughed and then he stayed most of the day to watch the interaction with the class. When he left, he thanked me for allowing him to help us.

Effective Group Coaching

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:02:00 +0000

Jennifer Britton has a new book called Effective Group Coaching: Tried and Tested Tools and Resources for Optimum Coaching Results. On her blog she cites Visual Explorer™ as the first of My Five Favorite Group Coaching Tools This Year. An excerpt:

Thursday, December 17, 2009
My Favorite Group Coaching Tools This Year

Every year at this time, I like to look back and take stock of some of my favorite tools and resources of the year, and share them here on the blog.

This year, five of my favorite tools and resources are:

Visual Explorer from the Center For Creative Leadership. Those of you who joined me in Orlando know the power of this visual tool. I continue to bring it in to team and group coaching sessions, along with workshops and seminars as a conversation starter, and awareness builder. Visit CCL to learn more about the tool in its many different forms.

Facilitative Coaching by Dale Schwarz and Anne Davidson. This book is chock full of exercises and resources for your coaching work. Although geared primarily for a 1-1 setting you could adapt many of these for a group context.

MindMapping seems to make my list each and every year, but I do so love this tool for program design, brainstorming and getting clients unstuck. Check out the tag MindMapping for some ideas on how I use it. Once again, MindJet.com is the best computer based MindMapping tool around. Try out their 21 day free trial at http://www.mindjet.com.

More at the Group Coaching blog>>

Opportunities to lead and experience full lives: Living the mission at UGARC

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:17:00 +0000

What does the mission statement mean to you?
What do you need to do for the mission statement to be fully achieved?
- framing questions for the UGARC Visual Explorer sessions

Our colleagues at the social services organization Ulster-Greene ARC (UGARC) have been using Visual Explorer™ in a series of creative conversations to build understanding of and commitment to the mission among their 1000+ employees. The method involves gathering about 35 people at a time in three and a half hour sessions, with the Executive Director participating in each one. UGARC has been quite pleased with the process and the outcomes. What they are doing is a fascinating form of leadership, and leadership development. Let's take a closer look.

This post documents the details of the process so others can follow and adapt from it. All you need for the process is a set or two of Visual Explorer images, facilitators, a big enough room, and a worthy mission needing understanding and commitment!

(Thanks to all the fine people at UGARC! Thanks also to Al Selvin at Compendium Institute for helping to birth this process at UGARC; his detailed process notes are invaluable and are linked here.)

Some facts about UGARC, from their website:

We are a not-for-profit agency that serves nearly 2000 people who have developmental delays or disabilities throughout the mid-Hudson and Catskill Mountains (New York state) region. The disabilities include mental retardation, epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, autism, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy, to name just a few.

Our vision: The dreams, desires and needs of people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities are realized through innovative services and advocacy.

Our mission: To offer people with intellectual and other developmental disabilities opportunities to live and experience full lives.

This is challenging and rewarding work, and it is not for everyone. It's vital that UGARC engages people explicitly and deeply around their shared direction. The mission is the reward--and if you don't believe that you may be working in the wrong place. UGARC built a wonderful process for this kind of engagement, a conversation using visual images as something in the middle to work with.

Objectives:

Staff at all levels will think about the mission with an open mind
People from different departments will creatively connect with each other
All staff will live the mission

Outcomes:

100% engagement in a non-threatening environment
More alignment to the mission within and across departments
Widespread renewal of passion for the mission

Here's a summary of the process.

Thirty five people at a time gather for three and a half hours in a comfortable place. The Executive Director talks briefly about the mission. People spend five minutes writing their thoughts (privately) about two questions:
1: What does the mission statement mean to you?
2: What do you need to do for the mission statement to be fully achieved?
Each person chooses two images, one for each question, from the Visual Explorer set, browsing all the images laid around the room. Groups of 5-6 sit in circles and share their images and their ideas about the two questions (in a process we call the Star Model, described below.) Then the whole group gets back together and talks about what they learned about the two questions, and how was it talking like that, and they have a good chat about the mission.

This is not complicated nor is it difficult. There are a few tricky aspects and clear instructions, and basic facilitation, are necessary. The script for the process used at UGARC is provided at the bottom of this post.

Here are some interesting observations that Bart Louwagie, their IT Director and a catalyst of this process, shared with me recently.

It's non-threatening. There is not much of a chance "to say the wrong thing."
100% participation ensues naturally. It's fun and inviting.
The mission is in the foreground
Easy and simple, you can do it with your own staff
Overall feedback is very positive
People talk closely with each other in these sessions on many topics using many stories.
It's also a chance to get different departments (who attend together) to get on the same page
Now some people are using Visual Explorer in other places like staff meetings, or in their families

The following agenda spells out the process used at UGARC. The details can be adapted of course to fit a variety of objectives and contexts. (Here are slides from one of the sessions, which also produced the "hands on the mission" poster at the top of this post.)

Sample Agenda

8-9: Arrive
- Hand out first handout with the two questions
- Hand out their name tags and a sequential number between 1 and 16
- Hand out the agendas
- Hand out map with assigned areas
- Food-coffee is in multipurpose room.

9-9:15: Introduction, recognition

9:15 Laurie (Executive Director)
- Talk to the mission and the mission statement
- Laurie say that the goal is for us: [COMPLETE]
o All to sign the mission statement with our hand print, which you will do at the end of the session.
o Do a personal commitment by writing to yourself
o We have a FULL day, so stick to time indicated

9: 20 Sue & Bart (Senior leaders)
- Explanation of Visual Explorer with the one sample slide. Model the process.
- You all have a handout with two questions that we would like you to think about and write some initial thoughts down. This is something just for you personally. Spend 5 minutes on both questions.
- Question 1: What does the mission statement mean to you?
- Question 2: What do you need to do for the mission statement to be fully achieved?
Directions:

Look at all the pictures
Pick two pictures that talk to you, one for each question.
Please be silent while you choose pictures.
Come back to your seat with the two pictures.

- Talk about time management; why it is important for all to keep track of time so that all have a fair share in the conversation.

9:40
- 15 minute walk around with music and pick their pictures and come right back to your seat.

9:55
- Short 5 minute break

10:00
- Look at the back of your questions form to find the instructions below..

Instructions

Please be seated in your group by 10:00
A. Please make sure to start this phase on time. Spend 1 min reading the instructions.
B. Question 1 first

1. Person A starts and shows the picture to group and makes sure everyone can see the picture during the conversation. Describe the physical image itself in detail. (1 min)
2. Talk to why you chose that picture, “How does the picture speak to the question about the mission?” (4 min)
3. Then hand the conversation over to another person B in the group who says: “If I had picked this picture (the one of person A) this is what I would have seen…” Allow everyone to answer that same question in turn (1 min each), limit back and forth please.
4. Person A with picture “thank you for your input” (0 min)
5. Next person presents their own picture with process starting on number 1.

C. After half hour total all pictures for 1 question should have been reviewed by the group.
D. When all have done image/question 1, same cycle for image/question 2, go back to B. You should start on question 2 by 10:40
E. Finish group discussion of both questions and be back in main room by 11:20.

That's the agenda that UGARC followed. Of course this can be adapted for other contexts and timeframes.

The experience of the staff at UGARC in doing this exercise has typically been quite positive. Here is a reflection from Don Crespino, Ulster-Greene ARC Vocational Coordinator:

As with most trainings, I entered into the Visual Explorer Training not knowing what to expect. The Visual Explorer session was a rare and enlightening experience in the field of working with individuals with intellectual disabilities. I feel that we as a culture are realizing that more often than not, it is our thinking and approach that greatly hinders us from providing quality services (more than anything else). The Visual Explorer exercise managed to unite different types of people and employees on all levels by getting them to experience universal meanings based on seeing the same thing in all aspects of life. The fact that everyone was able to express themselves in an environment where there were no wrong answers, just interpretations based on a few different photographs and everyone uniquely expressing how they see things like our agencies Mission Statement in them, was so thought provoking towards the right thinking and approach in our field of employment.

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:48:00 +0000

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).

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:04:00 +0000

"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

Hello yet again! Of course, when I reached Tamale, not only was the Internet down but power all over the city was out for about 12 hours! I'm sorry for the delay, but it's an expected part of life here. Here's some information for your blog about the three women's group meetings I held in Kpendua using the Visual Explorer cards.

Work began soon after moving to a very rural village in the Northern Region of Ghana. As a Health/Water and Sanitation Peace Corps Volunteer, my work is incredibly varied and always interesting. Through constant interactions with the villagers in Kpendua, I have learned more than I ever imagined about another culture and its people.

Since I first moved to Kpendua, I have marveled at how strong and hard working the women are. Because I was so impressed with their dedication to their families, a group of village friends and I decided we should start a Women's Group. But at the first meeting, more than 65 women showed up to participate! In time, our one women's group became four separate ones, and our work together ever since has been very worthwhile.

At the majority of our monthly meetings, my Ghanaian counterpart and I teach interactive lessons on HIV/AIDS, nutrition, proper breastfeeding, hand washing, or a topic of a similar nature. For the two strongest and most active groups, we are also trying to create business plans for alternative livelihood projects like corncob charcoal and beekeeping. But the most interesting work I've done with them has been related to the role of a Dagomba (a tribe in Ghana with whom I live) female, gender equality in a village, and leadership development activities.

When I first moved to Kpendua, I used a well-known Peace Corps technique (specifically a PACA tool) in which you begin by posing a positive question to get the group comfortable and more receptive to information gathering, then following up with a more difficult one that makes the group think about some negative aspects of their life. After a meeting in the capital of Ghana with Lyndon Rego, Steadman Harrison III, and Phillip Brady from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL), I was able to bring some of CCL's techniques to a village in the North. In three separate women's group meetings, I repeated the same PACA tool--but this time with a very helpful visual aid: CCL's Visual Explorer Cards. And wow, what a difference they made! When I first posed the question to groups of villagers more than a year a go, I just got blank looks in response. When pried, I could get some answers out of the villagers, but the concept and reasoning behind my questioning was too unclear. They couldn't seem to fathom why I was asking them, "What aspects of your life here do you appreciate?" When pushed, they could only answer about tangible things. They'd say, "We like that we have a clinic in our village that serves nine surrounding communities," or "We like that we have a Primary School." I was disappointed to find that that was all I could get out of them. Frustrated at the time, I eventually moved onto other techniques. But this time around, using the same technique with the Visual Explorer cards made all the difference.

While it was still very difficult, the women were very chatty once they understood the concept of the meeting. I started by asking the women, "What is the best thing about living in Kpendua?" (Most villagers I live with trouble with the concept of the word, "best." They also have trouble with the concept of "goals," "improvements," and "future plans," but that's another frustrating story!) When I rephrased the questioning to, "What is already happening in Kpendua that makes you the happiest? What is successful? What is good about living here?" I was able to get a few very informative and interesting responses. The most impressive answer I repeatedly received was related to the Visual Explorer Card (VEC) that depicts a group of young boys standing with their arms around each other's backs.

Through that photo, the women talked about how it's great that everyone here helps each other, specifically to floor compounds (an amazing communal and very musical experience), plaster the mud walls (with a mixture of cow feces and mud), harvest groundnuts, and gather maize for naming ceremonies. Another group commented that they were happy that when a man asks other villagers for communal labor farming, men gladly ride their bicycles to farm to help weed. In addition, they were happy we have meetings and discussions so everyone's voices can be heard. The photo of the dilapidated house by a riverside drew murmurs of approval.

The women said, "The house is very beautiful; it is big and the landlord would be proud to own the house. We are happy that Kpendua has strong mud rooms for strangers (Ghanaian English for "guests") coming to visit because it's nice to have strangers." It was also interesting to hear a woman exclaim she was "happy because she has strong legs to do all the work that women do daily" and that "It's too hard for the women who can't walk well." All this just from a photo of small baby's feet held in an adult's hand!!

When a woman holding the card of crayons asked the translator if it was a picture of bowls, he explained to her that it doesn't matter what the photo is and that what matters is what she sees.

As she grew more comfortable with her thoughts, she made a long speech about how happy bowls make her. She clarified that female villagers use bowls to eat, and food is important. After pushing her to continue, she answered that bowls make her happy because it's nice to serve and share food at baby naming ceremonies and funerals. Though the inevitable tangible answer did come up repeatedly, it was great to hear what the women thought was going well in their communities. They realized they were lucky to have a competent nurse who could take care of them when they were sick at our clinic, which serves the nine surrounding communities.

Another woman's photo reminded her of mosque, and she explained that Fridays made her very happy because everyone was "praying very seriously." Another woman said she was happy we have a road big enough for lorries to pass through our village. Yet another said it made her happy when there was a full moon because people could walk around freely and see at night. (Kpendua has no electricity.) A woman who said it made her happy to see development in Kpendua discussed the photo of an old woman's eyes. Kpendua has a school, a clinic, a mosque, and light poles waiting for electricity. (Though the district has been claiming that "the electricity will certainly come soon" for more than two years, we do have light poles lying on the ground in the middle of the village!) And in a response that portrayed a major tradition in the tribe, a woman said she was happy that the elders here are respected and make the major decisions for the rest of the village after looking at a VEC of an old lady.

After this question, I asked a new series of questions trying to pry answers out of them about they want to happen in Kpendua. I asked questions like, "What do you see in the photos that makes you sad about living in Kpendua? What is difficult? What can we improve on in Kpendua?" This part of our meetings consistently proved very interesting. I have been here for almost two years, but I can rarely get any concrete answer out of this type of question. No matter how patient I am and how many times I explain that my role as a PCV is not to give money, most people just answer this question by saying that they want me to help them buy a tractor. And get more money. This was the first time I was able to hear what the women really want. The VEC cards really helped them open up. With the VEC, I now know that the women with whom I work want a special grinding mill to make shea butter. And on a related note, they want bulk traders to come directly to the village to buy the unprocessed shea nuts. I also learned that they want more Moringa Oleifera trees, a major nutrition project I have been working on with them for about a year. And they want more water, since there are currently only three working boreholes for 3000 people. (There is supposed to be one for every 300 people.) By looking at a VEC of an overturned shopping cart, a woman said she wanted to learn how to do beekeeping. (Apparently word of one of my potential upcoming projects has spread!)

They don't want any more lorry accidents (we had a very serious one a few months ago killing seven people from Kpendua and injuring literally everyone else.) And they don't want people to "grow lean" and suffer without enough food. After gazing at the VEC photo of a pile of skulls, a women said she didn't want any more warfare within the Dagomba tribe. (An ongoing chieftaincy dispute has split the tribe into two major sides.)

But the most exciting answer for me was when each group mentioned that they want latrines!! In the entire village, I still have the only latrine while everyone continues to go to the African "bush" to use the toilet. The women all agreed that they want latrines so they don't have to go to toilet so far away anymore. This answer made me so excited because my counterpart and I have been talking until we've felt like we were blue in the face trying to desensitize the village to the need for latrines.

Overall, the use of the VEC was a huge success. Though one of the women's groups kept asking my counterpart to direct them more with clearer directions, he kept refusing for the sake of the activity. We also spent a great deal of time stressing that there were no wrong answers. They didn't have to know what the picture was of; instead we wanted to hear about anything that they saw. Admittedly, it was also sometimes difficult to get the women to say how the photo related to Kpendua instead of just explaining what they saw in the photo. Even so, I heard more about what aspects of life they want to leave the same and what they want to improve than I have heard in a long time. It was pleasant to hear the women interact so freely with each other, and I enjoyed watching them work together to try to figure out what was on each card.

Near the end of each meeting, women were answering the questions very clearly without using the cards. It was the first time they were so open and forthcoming with their responses. It was an amazing change. I will certainly be using these cards again soon!"

Levels of looking

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 18:52:00 +0000

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

Visual Explorer™ in Afghanistan

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:11:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:45:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:56:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:47:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:17:00 +0000

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.

Need a Coach? Try an Avatar

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 May 2009 19:49:00 +0000

A snapshot of a CCL coaching session in Second Life

Reprinted from the CCL Leading Effectively e-Newsletter, April 2009.
Contact Cresencio Torres

Looking for a coach? Planning a meeting across time-zones? Hosting a conference, running a workshop or training employees? If so, an avatar may be at your service. In the not-so-distant future, virtual worlds may be the go-to technology for getting work done.

It is "early pioneering days," according to Forrester Research, but "Virtual worlds like Second Life, There.com, and more business-focused offerings are on the brink of becoming valuable work tools." Forrester predicts that, within five years, the 3-D Internet will be as important for work as the Web is today. Tech consultancy Gartner, too, is predicting the growing popularity of virtual worlds: 80 percent of Internet users will be in a virtual world by 2011.

Virtual worlds open up whole new ways for people to interact. But the technologies may also influence what people communicate, how they innovate and what they learn, says CCL's Cresencio Torres. So CCL's early forays into Second Life are focused on both doing and learning.

For example, CCL's innovation group designed a campus in Second Life for coaching and feedback research. We conducted our first coaching and feedback alpha test in February. The coach and coachee spent three hours "in-world" interacting and using real world assessment data. (The picture below shows the two in the Visual Explorer™ room selecting a picture that began the feedback process.) Through the process, Torres and his colleagues learned a great deal about avatar interaction, focus and sharing of information and goal planning.

"Unexpectedly, we realized that we needed to move beyond the limitations of our current understanding of coaching. It was a major breakthrough in thinking about the entire feedback process and the possibilities that exist once you dramatically change your experience," says Torres. "Maybe in the future, for instance, coaching isn't called coaching at all, but something else."

Millions of Second Life users will have access to a CCL Network and Commercial Island in the summer of 2009. It will be the only Second Life leadership space created for both research and commercial use. Our avatars will see you there soon!

Visual verbal videos: Creating reusable digital artifacts from Visual Explorer™ dialogues

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:26:00 +0000

click for the video (wait a moment to load)>>
KB, the facilitator of this action learning team, and creator of this powerpoint show, writes:

It was a useful tool to that project – one of the best uses of it was to show them this slideshow again several weeks after they were into it – and hitting the sticking points. It was nice to remind them of what they said, in an inspirational way. ... I’m using VE again tomorrow night with leadership partners from dance and theater companies; they operate under a dual leadership structure. We’ll use it with two questions: 1. What do you each bring to the partnership? 2. How does your organization experience the partnership?

VE2 (beta) digital images in a powerpoint template, including instructions for making your own visual verbal slide show, can be found at our VE2 downloads page. Further production into various video and podcast formats can be done with Camtasia software, and for this video we used royalty free music by Kevin McLeod.

Playing Cards with Al and Aldo

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:36:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 17:14:00 +0000

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.

Strategy as a Learning Process

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 20:44:00 +0000

Hughes, R.L., & Beatty, K.C. (2005). Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass

An important part of strategic thinking is visual, imaginative, and intuitive. Visual Explorer is a tool for supporting this often neglected part of strategic thinking. VE supports strategy as a learning process, and can help clarify shared strategic understanding of who we are, where we are, and where we want to go, as well as discerning key strategic drivers.

The benefits of Visual Explorer ™ for strategic leadership & strategy creation include:

Help assess “who we are” and “where we are” as a company in a marketplace
Scan your environment and your organization with fresh eyes
Explore, clarify and communicate mission, vision, and values
Helping identify key strategic drivers
Surface ideas, intuitions, and new perspectives
Get people out of their “stuck” perspectives
Engage emotional undercurrents

Rich Hughes and Kate Beatty (2005) describe strategy as a learning process. Their book Becoming a Strategic Leader shows the importance of both R-mode (“right brain”) and L-mode (“left brain”) processes for this type of learning, and describes how to use VE as a tool for strategic thinking.

Visual Explorer is useful for the front and middle of this learning process: assessing where we are, and, understanding who we are and where we want to go, and focusing on key strategic drivers.

VE is also useful in “clearing the lens” of the strategic learning process—clarifying mission, vision and values.

Facilitation

The five basic steps for a Visual Explorer session apply here, as well as the further measures suggested for fostering dialogue. It can be quite useful to capture the key images, metaphors, and language from the VE session as a means of engaging others in the strategic learning process.

Example

Bruce Byington, CCL Senior Faculty, teaches a process of strategic driver identification using Visual Explorer. Strategic drivers are those relatively few determinants of sustainable competitive advantage for a particular organization in a particular industry or competitive environment (Hughes & Beatty, 2005, p. 27). Visual Explorer’s R-mode processing can bring out new ideas and help to "unstick" people and groups.

1. Use VE to explore some of the following framing questions:

What industry or business are we in?
What is our vision?
What would real success look like?
What are we missing that might surprise us?
What is the key organizational capability we need to drive our strategy?

2. Brainstorm potential strategic drivers, as informed by the VE dialogue.

3. Sort, classify, and prioritize potential drivers.

Further Reading

Hughes, R.L., & Beatty, K.C. (2005). Becoming a strategic leader. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Mintzberg, H. (1989). Mintzberg on management: Inside our strange world of organizations. New York: The Free Press.

Palus, C.J. & Horth, D.M. (2002). The leader’s edge: Six creative competencies for navigating complex challenges. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Enneagram and Visual Explorer™

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 23:22:00 +0000

Enneagram- Colored pencil on paper, 30" x 40", 1997 by Lee van Laer

submitted by

Rev. Elaine M. Kebba, M.Div.
Thomas J. Kebba, M.A.

The purpose of using Visual Explorer in the context of an Enneagram Workshop is to begin the process of inner transformation. This exercise will highlight the fact that there are many kinds of people with different personality types. It will suggest that what may be good advice for one person can be disastrous for another. A goal for this exercise is to help people become aware of the “filter” with which they think about and approach life without prior knowledge of the Enneagram. The challenge to the participants will be to use this exercise as a reference point for themselves when they are evaluating what part of the Enneagram, especially Enneagram Type related information, directly relates to them.

DIRECTIONS The leader(s) of the workshop will distribute the Visual Explorer pictures on the floor, table, or other accessible surface. The participants will be instructed to choose two pictures while thinking about two questions:

Step 1: Choose a picture that reflects YOU at your BEST.

Step 2: Choose a picture that reflects YOU at your WORST.

Step 3: In groups of 3 or 4: each person shares their pictures and why they chose them. Other group members listen without comment or inquiry.

Step 4: Each of the group members shares how the pictures chosen speak to them in terms of being at their best or their worst - i.e. "if this were my picture, it would reflect in me . . ."

Step 5: The initial presenter listens and makes connections to their own sharing (how it is the same, how it is different, how some connections may make sense for them, how some connections may not make sense for them, etc.).

Step 6: Group debrief

Step 7: Workshop leader(s) refer back to the Visual Explorer exercise at the end of the workshop day and asks the group about the connections they now see for themselves in terms of their “best self” and “worst self” and how that relates to their Enneagram Type.

DISCOVERING THE ENNEAGRAM
A Bibliography

1. Aspell, Patrick J. & Dee. The Enneagram Personality Portraits: Enhancing Professional Relationships, San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 1997.

2. Baron, Renee, and Wagele, Elizabeth. The Enneagram Made Easy. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1994.

3. Goldberg, Michael J. The 9 Ways of Working: How to use the Enneagram to Discover your Natural Strengths and Work More Effectively. New York: Marlowe & Company, 1996.

4. Palmer, Helen. The Enneagram in Love and Work. San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1995.

5. Palus, Charles J. and Horth, David, M. Visual Explorer: Picturing Approaches to Challenging Changes. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership, 2008 (Revised).

6. Riso, Don Richard, and Hudson, Russ. The Wisdom of the Enneagram. New York: Bantam Books, 1999.

Powerful moves in Visual Explorer™ facilitation

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:14:00 +0000

Here are reflections from our partner Hamish Taylor, outlining some powerful yet simple ways of using Visual Explorer, including digital collages.
"In the first instance, the challenge was to look at new ways of working in Global Virtual Teams. You can probably tell from the commonality of the images that the consensus view (i.e., the subset of common images that were selected by more than one syndicate group) was:

International – the stamps.
Required concerted involvement – the many hands.
Was currently fragile and to thrive would always need nurturing – the cradled feet.
Recognised the need for strong networking – rowing boat, interlinked and overlapped hands.
Acknowledged the need to pull in one direction whilst strengthening the interconnecting bonds from a diversity of thought.
Longed for the opportunity to celebrate and were seeking a new dawn!

Now when we look at the combination of factors, we start to see that hands is a common feature, linkages and connectivity are prominent. It is an organisation which thankfully is 100% equal opportunity, multi-cultural and practises strong gender-equality principles. It is actually a group that is not scared to be soft and understands Emotional Intelligence.

Now let’s look at a different use in which the CCL VE was used to understand the pillars of a leading brand.

Here the most obvious commonality was the craftsmanship, illustrated by the attention to hands and indeed craftsmen. There is also sensuality, taste and texture, all supported by a natural complexity and studied beauty.

Interestingly the brand also has a certain abstract quality and a subtlety that required that the respondents to this exercise, both very talented and experienced marketers, explained the hidden depths of their brand and its unique personality. I was later to discover, from a separate visit, that the depth of painstaking attention to detail was very much part of the company philosophy and indeed lay at the very heart of the brand.

In both instances, the exercise took less than 15 minutes to reveal a roadmap for me to explore later and it served to open up the eyes of the participants to new development pathways and opportunities for discussion. The second example only involved two people, the first had around 16 participants.

Elaborating further on the use of Visual Explorer as a one-on-one before progressing to workshop usage: Group leaders often have fears of what a new coach / consultant will reveal about their organisation and how it is functioning. Using the VE tool on a completely different question from that which will be later used with the group as a whole removes some of those fears. That step gives the group leaders an early insight that allows them to take fresh perspectives when they come to work with the tool properly in the workshop environment. The early exposure has indeed started them thinking. They recall the first round of one-to-one discussions and they engage more with the “live effort” without feeling threatened by what people “might say”.

I have really enjoyed the ease with which you can do a cut and paste from the image bank in order to make a single summary slide on PowerPoint - when you then have the images either on laptop screen or indeed on the big screen, you immediately see another degree of depth to them. Psychologically I think that this is because in daily business, we have become accustomed to taking things into account via the filter of our PC screen dimensions - therefore when you have several VE pictures together on the one screen, you start to identify patterns in terms of predominant colours, predominant moods, presence or absence of movement (some people tend to think in terms of still life, whereas others are more attracted to the images of movement) and the overall number of people in any given collage. I have found it quite compelling when you come across a particular syndicate group whose image selection is dominated by a selection of single people shots - this is very telling and as a coach, you start to probe on that point. Interestingly most often the collection of single people is the "current" and the "ideal" is the groups and team shots. I strongly believe that this is partially driven by the e-mail driven, teleconference facilitated virtual team environment in which more and more organisations are having to operate.

I've also found that by taking the images into the single composite, you get two bites at the feedback cherry - the first when people are talking through their selection of images (still the most powerful) and the second when as the coach/facilitator you run the review of the different syndicate groups on screen. This then leads to the wider audience commenting on each other's groups and I have found that you could almost vote on the composite of composites at that point. Both interactive stages are powerful, the composite exercise allows you to progress extremely rapidly.

As a coach, I have also found it useful to refer back to "representative images" later in the Workshop and use VE both as an energising ice-breaker and a powerful insights anchor. Moreover this use of the tool is something that I feel that CCL should teach as otherwise people will not be able to make full use of it (perhaps not everyone will be able to do so, however everyone could improve their EMPATHY skills through actively using VE).

Final feedback point before I head for bed on this side of the Pond - I get great value from playing the "numbers game" with Visual Explorer. I deliberately start by setting no limits - the syndicates almost always ask for a limiting number, I still don't give them one. You then get some groups who self-limit themselves (most often to 4 or 5 images) but for all groups, I then ask them to cut them down progressively - if they have gone for 7 or 8, I ask for 3; once they have done 3, I ask for 1 image only. This editing process helps distill out the values that are inherent to their image selection. The forced choice allows you to ask not only about the "Why that ONE?" but also the "Why did you cut out those ones at the first editing stage?". You can only do this if you do not force the groups to pick a limited number of images - once they have done their first selection and talked about them, you know that each image selected has a particular value to the overall task; therefore the editing process to 2nd Stage and 3rd Stage are effectively value-based prioritisations.

From: Hamish Taylor
www.shinergise.com

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

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 15:01:00 +0000

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

Create effective framing questions for Visual Explorer sessions

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 01:25:00 +0000

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.

The Artists' Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 22:12:00 +0000

Our colleague Steve Taylor created this fascinating slide show from notes and images after a Visual Explorer session at the University of Bath, at a workshop he did on the topic Artists' Mind.

Also, take a look at Steve's presentation on Creative Leadership given at Cranfield University, May 27th, 2008.

In this presentation, we will explore the possibility of approaching leadership as a creative or artistic process. I apply an action based conception of creativity (Sawyer, 2007; Sawyer, 2006) to the domain of leadership to develop the concept of creative leadership as a basis for an art of leadership (e.g. Duke, 1986; Grint, 2001; Hatch, Kostera, & Kozminski, 2004; Samier & Bates, 2006). Conceptually, this implies that the key facets of creative leadership are that it :1) requires double domain knowledge, 2) uses an artist's mind / approach, 3) is authentic, and 4) is participatory. -- Steven S. Taylor, Ph.D.

References

Duke, D. L. 1986. The aesthetics of leadership. Educational Administration Quarterly, 22(1): 7-27.
Grint, K. 2001. The arts of leadership. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hatch, M. J., Kostera, M., & Kozminski, A. K. 2004. The three faces of
leadership: Artist, manager, priest. London: Blackwell.
Samier, E. A., & Bates, R. J. (Eds.). 2006. Aesthetic dimensions of educational and administrative leadership. New York: Routledge.
Sawyer, K. 2007. Group Genius: The creative power of collaboration. New
York: Basic Books.
Sawyer, R. K. 2006. Explaining creativity: The science of human innovation.
New York: Oxford University Press.

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