IFVP 2016

Every year, I get to spend four days with visual practitioners from all over the world. It's my time to reconnect with old friends, make new connections, learn more skills, and deepen my thinking on the work that we do. I was inspired by colleagues, a new organizational development track, and external speakers like Scott McCloud and Lisa Key Solomon that took us beyond our field. And this year, I put my markers down and focused on deeply listening, connecting, and experiencing. Following our closing circle activity, here are words that I heard from the week that will make a huge impact on my work. This year, I was excited to lead two workshops at IFVP 2016 in Washington, D.C. with long-time friend and thinking partner, Lynn Carruthers.

Tackling Our Mindset has been a listening/self-reflection model I've been working on for the past year. Deeply influenced by Otto Scharmer's Theory U, Kelvy Bird's whole listening approach, and the leadership/generative dialogue work of the Trium Group , the model provides a way to understand and focus our listening filters as graphic facilitators. Are we aware of our dominant listening filters? How can we be more intentional about the filters we use? And then, how do we develop our listening filters into our competency? In the next week, I'll post a more detailed summary of the session walking through the model and how to use it for yourself.

Designing Visual Templates was a workshop Lynn and I designed for facilitators five years ago. In any shape or form, templates are a tool to guide participants through a process or conversation. During the session, we displayed a gallery of templates from The Grove, Neuland, and ones we've designed ourselves. We got into Lynn's head as she walks through her thinking process from the moment a client asks for a template to the delivery of the template. And then we walked through some bad templates and demonstrated how it can be made more effective. Participants shared their own client challenges where templates could benefit from a group process and then designed their own. Here's Laura Green's graphic recording of our session.

What were your highlights to this year's conference? Looking forward to continuing the conversation throughout the year!

Space Has Meaning

Listening = Context + Choice

Design Visual Templates That Work