Give me a wall, a piece of paper and a marker and I’ll draw your story. But ask me if I’m an artist, and I can give you 100 reasons why I’m not: they’re just sketches, I’m not trained, this isn’t real art, and the list goes on.

I’ve spent my career collecting reasons I’m not an artist, whether in the form of my incredibly talented colleagues like Emily and Nevada, or the books, seminars, workshops that seem to only underscore my lack of artistic talent. And yet, at the end of every session, I am approached by someone blown away by my artistic “talent”, “your work is incredible!” they’ll say, “I wish I was an artist”.

But here’s the thing: I’m not an artist. 

Art, in my mind, exists as something beautiful, captivating, or thought-provoking on its own. Art is the Mona Lisa, Starry Night, American Gothic — not my quickly drawn star-person.

The art in my sessions is produced by the teams themselves. The captivating beauty, drama, humor, and joy is discovered and created through the team’s journey, I only capture it. So when a manager approaches me and points to the pictures on the wall and says that she is so glad she hired me, I can promise you that she isn’t looking at my cartoon elephant — she’s looking beyond the elephant, to the story of frustration that put the elephant on my wall and allowed someone else to say “me too!”, and finally the group to, for the first time, say “let’s fix this”.

That is art.

So I’m not an artist, not in the pictures I draw anyway. If you want to call me an artist go ahead, but please point to the groups I help transform into something excited, passionate and engaged before you point to my cartoon elephant.

We can help.  We partner with internal teams—internal consultants, change groups, communications teams—as a collaborator and process design partner.  Together, we can create great processes, fantastic visuals and amazing events that will make you look fabulous.

The results of our work together will speak for themselves:  people move from skepticism and cynicism to commitment and engagement.  People feel part of a bigger picture within the organization.  All of this results in cost savings, harmony and retention for the business.

And someone engaged with both their head AND their heart will lead to meaningful change.

The basis for my research was a model put forward by Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner, who co-wrote The Leadership Challenge. After some interesting conversations with friends, I decided to revisit the topic in their recent webinar series.

Jim began sharing quotes with 2 very different perspectives on the impact of leadership. He shared a moving story of how the success of a leader lies in their use of the skills we all have inside: intelligence, heart and courage.

More notably, however, they pointed out the relationship between one’s own values and our workplace behavior. In other words, if someone has strong values personally, they are more likely to commit to an organization with similar values. Conversely, if they are clear on the organization’s values but not their own, they are likely to give a C- effort.

The most impactful subject, however, was the importance of learning– it is absolutely critical that leaders seek learning opportunities in order to become better leaders.

He shared that you must practice something 2 hours a day if you want to stay the same (think about this in relation to things you do for fun, like tennis) and more, of course, if you want to improve.

What stuck with me was Jim’s assertion that encouragement does not only matter, but make a notable difference.

I facilitate many meetings where leaders say “I don’t know what they want; I certainly don’t need a pat on the back to do my work.” And yet, the research shows that when you get encouragement, it does help you perform at a higher level. The magic ratio, it seems is 3:1 positive to negative, and it has to be done on a regular basis and has to be genuine.

Though it’s been a few years since I’ve written my master’s thesis, the theory that inspired me rings true. I suppose, in a way, I’m still learning from the same authors who inspired my journey so long ago (hey! not that long!).

What can you do to be a better leader?

What if you could see the information literally come alive on large wall templates as the presenters speak? What if the ideas of each event participant were also documented real-time? Shouldn’t keynotes and breakout sessions be captured visually so they can be referred to later?

Let’s not stop there.

Following the event, we work with you to make the information available to those who were not in attendance, so engagement remains high among the entire team. Or, if you have a new strategy that needs to be rolled out company-wide so people both understand and align with it, we can create a visual toolkit that will make that process productive and fun.

We know how to make concepts and ideas come alive in a way that makes them memorable, clear and actionable.

And isn’t that the point anyway?

To name just a few characteristics critical to both an effective conversation, meeting or engagement session:

• INTIMACY is a form of breaking down the distance between leaders and employees—institutional, attitudinal and sometimes spacial. Very similar to my own distinction in the way I have tried to use conversations as a way to allow employees to ask and have leaders answer questions in an open forum rather than a formal, top-down manner. The visual process allows this to happen in a playful yet directed way, using templates to guide the process.
• INTERACTIVITY suggests that employees and leaders need to be engaged in a dialogue rather than the monologue that typically occurs in a PowerPoint presentation.  Sadly, PowerPoint has become such a destructive tool to organizational learning, killing conversation and allowing presenters to simply read from slides rather than engage their audience.  The visual mapping process, on the other hand, allows participants to build on ideas and see the bigger ideas behind their thinking.
• INCLUSION allows for democratic participation: everyone participates and therefore owns the conversation and its outcome.  In the old model, leaders could control content and what employees heard, but particularly through the process of Graphic Facilitation, every member of a team is given the opportunity to be heard. I often allow time at the end of a strategic session to let people talk about what the session themes and key messages were so that they can consistently carry back messages to the organization.
• INTENTIONALITY means there is a purpose to the conversation, rather than a meandering, casual conversation. There is a purpose to the conversation that is clear to everyone involved.  When I design activities into a meeting, they serve a strategic purpose rather than just acting as “team building for team building sake.”

How do you use conversations as a way to involve employees?