Digital Visual Literacy

Bart
Welcome to the Core Concept podcast and welcome to the conversation with David Winkelman about what we call digital visual literacy, which is the skill of supporting conversations and remote calls with visuals. David has an established change manager and meeting facilitator who shares with me some of his magic that he uses to get people to work productively together.

I know David for years now, during COVID, we both recognise that all our remote conversations could be better supported with visuals. So we design an online course to help people out. We talk about that course during our conversation, among other topics such as eel recognise impact of visuals in communication, our human need for clarity, building trust among participants in meetings, and importance of humour. Together with David, I share a deep passion for tools and methods that empower people. I hope that our conversation proves that. By the way, we have used explain everything whiteboards to collaboratively exchange visuals during our talk. Therefore, for those only listening to this episode, I strongly suggest watching it instead on YouTube or another platform.

And now, I bring your mind discussion with David.

Bart:
Hi, I’m here with David Winkelman. Welcome to the podcast. Good evening, Bart. It’s always excellent to be with you. Although I should say it’s not a regular podcast, because as an expert in visual communication, and visual facilitation, you might probably want to show us a thing or two.

Yeah, yeah. David, there are few things I’d like to discuss today with you. Well, first of all, we’d like to learn from you how communication can be enhanced with the use of visuals. And this cause How can this be done remotely remote calls like this one. And that the and perhaps we could speak some more about what we have created together. But why don’t we begin from you introducing yourself, together with your background, shall we?

David:
I have been a management consultant to change management consultants in particular, and a visual facilitator for a number of years. And visual facilitation means that I can on a board or a surface of some kind, I can capture what people are saying what’s coming out of their mouth, and I can make it visual, I can create a visual tapestry in real time, so they can instantly see that I’m hearing and if we’re doing it in a group setting, everybody can see that whatever the thoughts and ideas are being captured, with nothing being lost, and then we can all work with those elements on a neutral shared a surface. So we can greatly accelerate and enhance almost any conversation or discussion. Because we have visual elements and to maintain a visual focus. I need to step back and unpack something for people because it’s not something that we normally discuss. And that is the very nature of being human beings and being thinking, conscious, often unconsciously operating creatures. So if we take a look at all the tools are that are available to us as modern human beings, tools, they’re inside us, and everything that we’ve created outside us. I would say what we start with is our mind, right? That’s like the basic tool. And so we are blessed to have two minds. One is a conscious mind. Okay, consciously pour things into. And the other one is our unconscious mind. That’s just filling up that we’re drawing from and it’s really the unconscious mind is, as most of us know, that does most of the heavy lifting. There’s so much in life that we don’t have to think about because we have unconscious minds. It’s it’s trained, you know, it’s all of our automatic, habitual functioning, all of our conditioned responses that’s automatic. You don’t have to think when we’re riding a bicycle. Our bodies just know what to do. So take the idea of these two minds and how they’re wired, how they’re set up. What we see is that our whole reality is based on being clear about what health what and how things are we and we are taking in most of our information visually, right? When we go to school, we don’t ever have to be taught how to see, or how to interpret a filter that just comes naturally. On the other hand, everything else, even speaking, certainly reading and writing, we go to school for for 15 years. So there’s a giant difference between this mechanism of seeing and the other forms of knowing, right. And so as part of being clarity seeking creatures, I think we have basically three ways of seeing things. Well, one is we see through the mechanism of our eyeballs in our sight. And, you know, light photon images are portrayed on the back of our eyes, and then we, we create meaning. The second way, is that we can visualise with things like this. We have symbols, we have words, and we have the ability to interact, and people suggest things and we design and we draw, so visualisation via representation is a huge way that we see in form reality. And then the third thing that has we have going for us as visual creatures, is that we have imagination, so we can create a thin air, there’s been a tremendous amount of research on the fact that we are clarity seeking creatures, and we need, we need those visuals, they’re essential, they’re critical to our operation. There’s some research that suggests that 75% of our reality comes in through our eyes, and is then, you know, interpreted categorised put into classifications, and our ability to see patterns which we’ve been cultivating since we opened our eyes and started looking at facial expressions. We have incredible ability to see patterns, to see details to pick out key details and to notice anomalies, for instance.

Bart
I think, that research finds is that we find things more memorable if we if we take them in through our eyes. There’s the just, it’s beyond comparison, even if you take verbal input, right, or any other in comparison to what you can pick in through your own eyes.

David
Absolutely. And there’s been further research done that suggests that when we see things, as well as when we use things, we literally have what’s called a forgetting curve, that if that if that image isn’t reinforced in some way, or we haven’t seen it, we’ll forget things in a matter of minutes.

And so you were talking about complexity earlier. And part of complexity is that we start with things that are general and conceptual and nonspecific, often invisible. And we cover a lot of this in our course. And it’s and because they’re nonspecific, or they’re invisible, or they’re conceptual, it makes it harder to visualise, if not impossible, so we have, we can attach a verbal label. But if we’re not spinning that around, and applying specific pictures to it, that conceptualization can break down in a matter of minutes. 

Bart
Was that the trick you’ve been using during those large meetings you were facilitating in the past? 

David
Absolutely. And when you say large meetings, I’m going to show you a picture, okay? Because these meetings featured a variety of methodologies and techniques with large groups of people that made it possible for these teams of people from one company. And typically they were from Fortune 100 or 500 companies to come in with the aim of developing or designing a strategic plan over a three day period, and I’m talking 50 6080 people coming together. So their time together had to be enormously valuable and have a big result. These these design sessions, as we used to call them, were very, very expensive, and sometimes they were betting the company on this group of people being able to accomplish their mission. And so the promise was that these techniques and this is

asembly could effectively accomplish six to nine months worth of work in a week’s time, or even less than a week’s time. And probably the key to that was making everything as visual as possible. So that people were always on the same page, they always have the ability to, to zoom in or out to look at the big picture, and focus in on details as well. 

Bart
I see a lot of clarity seeking creatures on that on that photo. But it gets me wonder what you mentioned before,  that your role was to lay those ideas on the board as pictures, right? Did it happen often that you asked participants to come to the board and represent something by themselves without them being scared of, you know, putting a picture on the board by themselves without your support.

David
After a while it happened. But initially, people were reticent. And that’s why they had a set of people who were skilled, so that our team of visualizers could be there on hand to do what was needed proficiently. But after a while, people got up and did it by themselves. And it was, of course, very empowering. And I think people will always remember that their first experience inside what we call an Accelerated Solutions Environment. 

Bart
Yeah, because I can imagine that’s scary to many, you know, to come to the board, just recreate something with a simple drawing. How do you deal with this? anxiety and fear?

David
Well, if you’re if you’ve got the spark of motivation in you, then you realise that it’s really critical to see this question as an empowering question. How do you see this right? Or what does this look like to you? And it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a pretty drawing, and, and or beautiful. What, what matters is that you represent something authentically for another person.

Bart
Right. But then again, people can push back and I can imagine them saying: no, I don’t do drawings!

David 
Anybody can do this. And we all know that anybody can do that. And the magic of that visual brain that I was describing earlier, is that that visual brain instantly. And of course, recognises that as a human being. So we can either leave it at that, or we can start to you know, embellish it. Yeah, it represents it symbolises a person. But again, it’s not about being an artist, right? Not at all. No, not at all. It’s about coming from here to hear that other people can share it, and interact with it, and then modify it or ask questions about it. That’s the important thing is that we’re looking at something. And that is that becomes a shared common experience. 

Bart
What is important is that this community gets created during a workshop or a meeting, where people want to share and want to participate contribute to the board, right.

David
Yeah, I think that, that requires a certain safety zone, right, that requires a certain experience or expectation that people feel safe doing that.

Bart
And so let’s talk about that, that safety factor for a moment now. Because eventually what I’d like us to do is to arrive at conditions that are essential for creating this, you know, engagement and meaningful interaction between participants.

David
It’s really psychological and emotional safety, which is social. Right? Right. So if we, if we, if we break that down and look at what makes that possible, I think sort of three things make that possible.

The first thing is that who’s  at the table? (Draws on the whiteboard) that’s very sloppy. I’m sorry.

Bart
That’s fine, we have talked about this,  it’s just-in-time drawing, that’s fine. Yes. We’re not artists here, that’s not about it. Right? 

David
Right, we have a certain amount of rapport, or things in common, we may be from the same place, or we have the same aims or goals or intended outcomes, that we share the same overall context, we’ll come back to that later. So that’s, that’s one really important thing is that we have enough rapport between us. And the second thing I would say is that is do we have a certain amount of respect for each other, okay. Which means that we mutually think, well, that person has a right to be here, or I know why that person is here. Maybe I respect your skills, and you respect my skills, or respect each other’s time, there has to be that mutuality. Because that’s going to lead moment by moment by moment, layer by layer, action by action to the third, the third piece, which is trust, which is as, as we know, it’s a very delicate, fragile condition, trust, we, we do build that moment, by moment, and it can be erased in moments. And so I think the thing that we want to be aware of is the thing that erases trust or that undermines trust, is something we could call judgement, or specifically negative judgement. Which is, you know, criticising, making something wrong, dismissing it, not not being accepting of it. And when it comes to people representing things on the board, on a common space, or in a common Canvas, we need to be very open and very fluid and very non judgmental and accepting of whatever people do to encourage that trust, and therefore, that social and psychological safety. And there’s a lot of ways to do that. I have to laugh at myself a lot. That also is an element of creating trust and psychological safety is that we’re willing to be human, and make mistakes, and laugh at ourselves and be spontaneous, and not be constrained and rigid, because that’s not going to help you at all. But she uses humour a lot, right? During those meetings, also to help yourself building this safety. 

Bart
Tell us some more how you do that? 

David
Well, I think it’s sometimes humour but not necessarily making a joke. It’s being light. It’s being spontaneous. It’s being in the moment, you know, fluid with people so that you can grab a moment when it occurs. And Lighten up, you know, who doesn’t appreciate laughter?

We even have a diagram. Yes, that comes out of a book. And you know that diagram by heart? 

Bart
I can try to recreate it quickly. So it’s that you have an I’m going to do that with just my finger. Right? On the opposite side, you have the anchor, which represents the forces of gravity, and on the other side, you have a balloon, which represents what we call lightness, lightness, the levity. So you can offset the weight of the world, and what have you, with a bit of sense of humour that we call levity. And it’s actually a diagram that we took from the book “Humor, seriously”. . It’s a good one, isn’t it? Yes.

David
And I love how you got the movement in here as well. It shows how phenomenal these these tools are. 

Bart

Let’s talk about it. Because so far, we spoke about the importance of visuals during regular meetings. But what about those remote conversations like the one we have now? 

David
I think it’s always appropriate to start with a big picture or to seven context. Make this big picture. more clear. Yeah. When we start with a big picture, particularly because everybody understands a map, we understand the destination. And if we start using the tools right away, and we get into the visualisation, then it leaves less to wonder about because we know where people are going, and where they’re coming from. We don’t have to do such a huge job of interpreting and wondering, why is this meaningful to me? Why how is this relevant? How am I going to use this? We can get to those key questions faster when we show people the big picture, and we show them what our destination is in that big picture. 

Bart
So in a way, you’re creating a map for a conversation, right?

David
Yeah, because we, we all understand maps, they’re part of the toolset, right? As clarity seeking creatures. And whether it’s a map, or a spreadsheet, or a diagram, we can make sense of something faster. Because of our pattern recognition rock and make sense of something faster, we can retain it more meaningfully, we can classify we can do so much more, when things are in visual form. Right. And that isn’t to exclude anything verbal. I mean, I always need somebody to tell me, you know, here we are over here. Because it could take a while to find out. But if somebody says we’re over here, or that’s our destination, and here’s where we’re coming from, then I can zoom right in. I mean, sometimes figuratively, sometimes, literally. And I could see all the detail in between. And that builds credibility and trust. And it helps people move, get forward faster. Well, a lot more momentum can be built that way. 

Bart
Being devil’s advocate, I’d say you know, you’re a pro, and you know how to use those tools, and you’re very proficient, creating or recreating something on the board during a call like this, but others might not be so good with their computers or tablets they’re using during the conversation, and how do you engage them? So they’re not only passively taking in information during the call, but also contribute to the board?

David
Well, if we start with, you know, we start with that, that question of what does that look like to you? Right? That encourages people to either represent something for themselves, even if it’s simple as as, as writing a word. Because we all can do that, right? And we can all create a circle, right? We can all create a triangle, when we put these things together, we can all draw a line.

With these basics, we continue to ask the question, what does that look like to you? Okay, what’s your big picture? What are the elements that make up what you think of are the conditions for this journey, let’s say, right, you know, part of what makes us human going back to clarity seeking creatures that we are, we’d love to tell stories, we love to make things up, we love to provide ourselves with explanations. And to that degree, we need those stories. They help explain our, our world and our behaviour and what’s happening when we can’t always see what’s happening. So we can fill a board very, very fast once we operate on the basis of I want to hear from everybody, we need to hear from everybody, even if all you’re doing is highlighting a word and saying yeah, I agree with that. It’s easier to do.

Bart
So when you are with someone in the same room and you’re using a napkin it’s easier than using computers or tablets. With them it’s a little bit more difficult. So how those skills can be learned telling me, Davi?

David
I think you’re hinting at the course that we created, called, called Visual Supercharge

Bart
Yes, yes, we did. So tell us about it? 

David
Well, this course is only four and a half hours long, roughly in length. It’s divided into 17 really easy to watch episodes. And it’s a it’s a demonstration and exploration, something like what people saw here today, of all these concepts and the tools and the skills and various situations that we suggest the tools and skills can be applied to because really it’s all about application. You know, the tools by themselves won’t do anything for you. The skills have to be applied to real world challenging situations like how can our meetings be more engaging, more productive, more, more fun, more creative. Those are real challenges, because we’re all annoyed, frustrated by a meeting or a conversation, even that is unproductive, and doesn’t really allow a deeper authentic connection, where we’re just maybe going through the motions and throwing out a lot of terminology and a lot of concepts. And we’re not fully tracking with each other. And that, you know, that that ability to follow along and get somewhere is really important.

And if we don’t feel that at the end of a conversation, we say to ourselves, Well, that was a waste of time. Yeah. And when we do start someplace and end up in a different place, and we feel like we’ve made progress, we think, and we feel that was great.

Bart
What I like about the course is that it was created remotely. The entire course we it’s, it’s something we recorded over the course of a few months, without even meet each other. 

David
We certainly didn’t share our geography. We clearly aren’t the same age, you speak three languages I speak one. There were a lot of things that were fortunately we shared English. And I appreciate the fact that English is your third round 

Bart
And we share language of visuals. 

David
That’s what we shared, we share this deep passion for for using visuals, but I think was I think it’s also a deep passion for and I’m just gonna write that word. Uh huh. For empowering people. We can look at the visuals but  I think it’s the empowerment that comes to people when they use this ability that we have — our ability to see to visualise and to imagine amounts to almost a superpower. It is under utilised. And I think we both feel that. 

Bart
And  I think you’re right, and that the report is the key word here. So yes, we just decided at some point that we need to do this, we need to share what we know about the techniques, the tools, the ways methods and record that for others to use. So here’s the address — dvl.expert

If you’d like if you’re interested in the course that DVL dot expert for you the courses. That’s the title visual supercharge online course. Because as you just said, we think of using visuals as a form of super power. 

David 
Yeah. So join us, share a canvas, let that spark come into you. Because that spark, when you’re empowered, will probably change your ability to become even more effective influencer. 

Bart
Right, David, thanks for sharing your thoughts on that topic. And it was great not only to listen to you, but also to see your thoughts laid out on this board. So thank you one more time. 

David
Well, you’re welcome 

Bart 
It was great to work with you on that course. 

David 
For us it’s play. And that’s really what we want. Everyone listening to feel like this power is meant to be explored and experimented with and, and, and use as much as possible. 

Bart
But shouldn’t conversation really be more playful? It’s easier to convey your points that way don’t you to think. Yeah, so we encourage you trying that and let us know what you think. But for the time being. Thanks, David, for sharing your thoughts with us. 

David
You’re entirely welcome

Here are the resources we discussed during our conversation: