Drawn Together Through Visual Practice

by Brandy Agerbeck

  Francine needed a visual explanation to tackle two issues. First, she had spent years developing trust and relationships with partners to understand what was needed and design a systems approach to meet the needs. She was too close to see what someone on the “outside” saw and what they needed to understand to support the initiative. Second, to win a start-up grant in a funding competition, Francine needed to quickly explain the business model to potential funders so they could easily grasp what the new enterprise would do and where it would create value within the local food system.

  Being new to food system issues, I spent over two days reviewing documents in piecemeal and engaging in several long conversations and concept development sessions with Francine to uncover the salient points to communicate in the visual explanation. Many related storylines began to surface as we explored: what’s really at the heart of the problem, supports and assets, the pain points in the system, and how the new enterprise can relieve the pain or create new gains. We also explored how the various organizations in the food system are related, what relationships are missing, and where and when the money will be invested and why it is needed. We sketched and re-sketched concepts. We shuffled and re-shuffled a plethora of sticky notes. We talked, listened, asked questions, and challenged each other with a refreshing intensity until the mess of ideas gelled into a cohesive whole. We pared down the details to the bare essence and illustrated the flow of work and value.

  Jennifer Shepherd • Discovering Wisdom Within and Between

  Creating the visual explanation with me helped Francine to achieve her two goals. By clarifying her thinking along the way, she improved her ability to present her ideas coherently. She found the simple language she needed to explain a complex topic after seeing and hearing me explain how I saw and understood the problem and noticed what really wasn’t clear to me as an outsider. Francine transformed her complicated proposal that made sense to those on the inside of the project into a clear and concise funding request that made sense to everyone. As an added benefit, she came to understand the food insecurity problem better, even after years of dedicated focus on it.

  And although another organization ultimately won the grant, feedback on Francine’s presentation was positive. Other funders in the audience saw the value in the project and wanted to support it. In fact, three different funders in the audience funded the project within three months of the presentation! Another leader, who had been hearing about the problem and the proposed business model before, told me this was the clearest he had ever understood the problem and the project. Why did the visual explanation work?

  Let’s peer through the Johari Window, a model developed in 1955 by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham, to explore this together. Francine knew what she knew, but she didn’t know what others didn’t know. Our conversations helped us to create a new, shared understanding of the problem and express it in a way that neither of us could have done without tapping into each other’s knowledge, ignorance, and perspective. We explored blind spots that revealed what the other person knew but we didn’t know ourselves, hidden areas that revealed what we knew but the other person didn’t, and we made these invisible areas of knowledge visible to complete the picture of what we both knew. From this new place of shared understanding, we were able to clearly articulate Francine’s social enterprise concept to improve others’ understanding of how the various people, organizations, actions, and ideas involved fit together in a coherent whole to respond to the food insecurity puzzle.

  What do we do when knowledge doesn’t yet exist?

  Storyboards, portraits, and visual explanations excel at helping everyday leaders to access, organize, and illustrate what is known to help us make sense of the puzzles we wish to solve and see opportunities to coordinate action with others. As I walk my own path in this learning journey with you, I wonder: What is their role when knowledge doesn’t yet exist? How can they help us to sit in the great unknown and work across purposes, not at cross-purposes, to bridge the boundaries of relationship, purpose, or knowledge that divide us?

  Answer: to focus our attention on learning how to work together. As we develop storyboards, portraits, and visual explanations collaboratively, we can use the visually creative process:

  to nourish deeper conversations with each other and listen with empathy and compassion;

  to change the object of focus;

  to question existing practices; and

  to develop new practices and models that shift our approach to solve the puzzles we care about.

  My thinking on this topic has been deeply inspired by the work of Yrjö Engeström (2001). In applying the five core principles of activity theory, he introduced a new approach to expansive learning by exploring why, how, and what we learn as we work inter-organizationally on a common problem.

  Take, for example, the complex problem of remediating the health of Muskrat Lake in Ontario, Canada. Those of us who are working on this puzzle are not well connected with the other leaders, networks, and organizations who also care. It’s not clear who is ultimately responsible for stewarding this care or the lake’s health for the greater good. And despite good intentions, in the absence of these relationships and a process for coordinating our actions, we don’t have the means or capacity to inform others about what we notice, plan, and do. The lake is dying and its ecosystem will carry the burden until those of us who care enough or depend on it learn to solve this puzzle collectively.

  Jennifer Shepherd • Discovering Wisdom Within and Between

  Moreover, though we all depend on the lake’s health, we may not all know about or respect how our different interests are interdependent. Some people want to drink the water, eat the fish, and swim in the lake. Others wish to earn a living, produce food, maintain property values and shoreline use, permit new development, and enjoy recreation and tourism assets. Still others wish to preserve habitat for flora and fauna, assess and monitor the lake’s health, and better conditions in the watershed as a whole.

  As we gather facts about the lake and debate what’s making it sick and who’s to blame, we can create portraits that show us mired down in our separateness and reinforce the divisive boundaries of what we currently know and understand. Alternatively, we can use the visually creative process to listen to each other with empathy and give voice to and make room for our multiple perspectives. A portrait developed in this way can reveal what connects us and help us choose to take shared responsibility for communal stewardship.

  As we open ourselves to see the lake’s health through multiple viewpoints and through the context of history, we begin to create shared understanding of the lake’s situation and the conditions that create lake health. Instead of focusing on what divides us, we can now focus our attention on what unites us: learning what will make the lake healthy. When we ask what each other knows and sees, we make our respective blind spots and hidden areas of knowing visible. In the process of creating a visual explanation of what is making the lake sick, we deepen our knowledge of interconnected dynamics and begin to reflect on our own contribution to the lake’s impending demise. As our shared understanding of the situation grows, we can begin to question existing practices—including our own.

  Armed with two tangible points of reference about our shared purpose, we’re now well primed to notice and map contradictions between current practices and conditions that create lake health. The act of identifying and noticing such contradictions inspires us to change and drives us to develop different ways of being and acting. Now we can create a storyboard that reveals tensions between current practices and the vision for lake health. By exploring these tensions, we begin to identify and make sense of entry points for change.

  Others have written about the power of visual practice to nourish innovation and design prototypes, so I won’t say more about that here. We know that visualization helps us to look at and se
e situations from different perspectives, imagine what is possible, and show and share our ideas with others. Images we create through such processes can help us to reflect on and realign practices and consolidate what works.

  In summary, we can turn to storyboards, portraits, and visual explanations to gain clarity about our purpose, our relationships with one another, our communities, and the complex problem of lake health remediation. We can also use the visually creative process to help us learn how to be in this work together.

  Opening to the power of not knowing

  As we work with others on complex problems, it is helpful to explore our learning stance. When making visually descriptive objects like storyboards, portraits, and visual explanations, we are called to be with our vulnerability and open to the power of not knowing. We need to attend to what we are sensing in our body—not just what we are thinking—to begin to see and touch the essence of wisdom awaiting birth.

  Have you ever been part of a gathering and had a feeling that something “big” is developing in the room but you can’t quite put your finger on it? Staying with that energy, following it, and inviting it to speak through you is part of the process. The images we draw—or that others draw for us—can be messy because we’re just starting to get a sense of what is emerging. When we allow that messiness to be as it is without judgment, we create space for new, shared wisdom to grow in the space between us and discover what we can learn from it collectively.

  In these times, we are all called to be visual practitioners—whether we hold the pen or not. Through our presence and attention to what we notice arising inside and between us, we form an energetic container to hold the essence of wisdom as it begins to emerge. We must open to it, voice it, and begin to give it just enough form that we can work with it and come to understand it together. Co-created messy drawings are good examples of “form”; they show ideas in development and help us to see the big picture of our shared work and make sense of what is ours to do.

  Jennifer Shepherd • Discovering Wisdom Within and Between

  Conclusion

  As everyday leaders, we are on a learning journey to solve the complex puzzles of our time. When our path or destination is not clear, we can surface the hidden wisdom within and between us to quench our thirst for clarity and understanding. We do this by creating visually descriptive storyboards, portraits, and explanations with others. These objects reveal patterns in what we collectively know and don’t know. They become a shared point of reference as we explore: our calling, personal connections, community relations, and next steps to take with coherence of identity and purpose. We live in a relational world. By working with others to make the invisible visible, we can navigate through unknown waters and find our way.

  JENNIFER SHEPHERD makes it easy for everyday leaders to clarify what matters, discover new possibilities, and intuitively make their next move. She believes individuals, organizations, and communities can achieve great things when they tap into the latent wisdom within and between them. Jennifer inspires leaders like you to access this wisdom and use it to generate insight and collaborate well. Jennifer is the Principal of Living Tapestries, a consulting practice based in Ottawa, Canada. She holds a Master of Arts in Human Systems Intervention and is an IAF Certified Professional Facilitator. www.livingtapestries.ca Copyright © 2016

  Reference

  Engeström, Yrjö. (2001). “Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization.” Journal of Education and Work, Vol. 14, No. 1.

  Sensemaking, Potential Space,

  and Art Therapy

  with Organizations

  Moving beyond language

  Michelle Winkel, MA, ATR

  Art-making is a deeply personal process. As artists, we may begin drawing lines or forms on a blank page without knowing how the image will evolve. We initiate the potential space of the paper or canvas. At some point, most of us become concerned with the final product of our creation. We may even consider who will view the piece, and how, when it’s done. Will our viewer find it meaningful and valuable in some way? Will they construct a story for themselves about what they see?

  I am an artist and an art therapist. When I step out of my artist role and into my art therapist role, I look at client artwork from a viewer’s perspective. I invite the client to project their internal experience onto the blank page, and make meaning for themselves as they work. We look at the final product together. I am a witness. I am not making the art but rather participating in the creative process silently by holding a frame to support the art maker. It becomes a collaborative and co-created potential space that differs from the space I create alone in my studio. The space is full of possibilities, a psychological vessel for innovation and creativity.

  The creative process in art therapy has a structure that facilitates interpretation and healing. The art therapist and client can respond to the images, giving room to digest the conscious and unconscious content safely. Visual interpretation is also a key principle in graphic facilitation. While graphic facilitation is not art therapy, I write this chapter from my cross-disciplinary perspective. Although these roles differ and usually involve separate client groups, I will speak about the overlapping concepts of the professions and how each informs the other for me.

  Graphic facilitation is often conducted with, and for, organizations. Based primarily in systems thinking, they have structures and goals that differ from therapy of any kind. However, organizations have a psychology, much like an individual or a family system, which is expressed through behavioral dynamics. This shared assumption makes well-trained art therapists very skilled at interpreting and understanding organizational dynamics. Translating these dynamics into visual imagery is the graphic facilitator’s arena.

  Some graphic facilitators use images and words in their work, but they describe it differently from my interpretation of graphic facilitation; they often add words and diagrams to help elaborate on the content of the material. Increasingly, facilitators are knowledgeable and sensitive to visual learners in a group and want to capture their attention. They know that imagery can add an important dimension so that more of the group will engage with the material.

  However, some facilitators and graphic facilitators do not, or cannot, address the latent and unspoken material which emerges through the group process. For example, novice graphic recorders usually respond to the overtly stated requests of their clients exclusively, such as drawing the conference or event content they hear. They are unable to listen to and hear the equally important story underneath the manifest, some or all of which may be unconscious material. Or they may sense the real story and be hesitant to represent it on paper without following the client’s lead. However, I have found that this expression is always beneficial to the growth of the group. In my experience as both a therapist and an organizational consultant, I would argue that we add significant value to the process by naming emotional content in the room with our markers and our imagery.

  Michelle Winkel • Sensemaking, Potential Space, and Art Therapy with Organizations

  Like making art within the safely held space created by an art therapist, effective visual practice moves beyond language. The decision-making process from moment to moment must quiet unnecessary noise on the drawing or, as art therapists sometimes call it, the mural. The choice of which images and words are scribed helps the group members find and explore nuggets of honesty essential to meaning-making and change. Sometimes it feels like stirring the pot, which is often the first step to helping a group make change. How many times have you been hired to help an organization solve a problem when in fact, the stated problem turned out to be covering up another, more complex issue? Sometimes, as the consultant, our role is to rename or redefine the problem so it can be adequately dealt with. Organizations act a bit like family systems. Often their failures are a result
of human relationship challenges within the system.

  Graphic facilitators can help organizations adapt to the unpredictable effects of change, not unlike the ways art therapists help families and individuals. Without guiding structures, such as those created by graphic facilitation, discussions may not thrive. If we simply draw the verbal content, we are missing much of what is exciting in the group process.

  An organizational event can be viewed as a creative, living entity as it grows and unfolds in front of the participants and in front of the visual practitioner in the meeting room. It holds within it the seeds of change and action, which can lead to a desirable future for the organization. Language alone cannot tap these multiple aspects of an event. How the experience is interpreted and made visible by the facilitator creates a reality, which is permanent over time and manifests group meaning. A visual map can illuminate potential cultural and organizational change.

  While training to practice art therapy, the therapist develops skills to help others translate emotional material into imagery, in order to enable in-depth discussion. In an organization, the interchange back and forth between the group’s words and the drawings on the wall creates a rich and engrossing dialogical dynamic. The graphic facilitator reflects voices and metaphors back to the group members, validating their experience and preventing them from forgetting the vital nuggets that have now been made manifest on the paper’s surface. Group participants are able to see a reflection of their process on the mural, which typically generates confidence and the capacity to go deeper. The created mural affirms and validates a direction that simple conversation may not. It pushes boundaries by encouraging exploration.