Seven Power Tools for Vivid Visual Communication

My team and I seem to be using more and more words, yet communicating less and less. 

Today more than ever, we live in a visual society. Especially in the online world, everyone relies on the power of photos and engagement of video.

While researching a project recently, I was struck by three surprising data points from visual communicator Dan Roam:

  • Research from IBM found that 90% of all data collected in history has been generated in the last two years.
  • Research from Cisco found that 90% of all data transmitted online today is visual.
  • Roam’s experience indicates that 90% of leaders have no idea how to effectively use visuals in their business.

90%-90%-90%. We’re generating more data than ever, that data is overwhelmingly visual, and most of us don’t know how to use images. No matter what business you’re in, the future of your business is visual.

As a church leader, it is incumbent that you get better at using visual images in your communication.

Whether drawing them, looking at them, or talking about them, visual communication adds enormously to your listener’s ability to think, to remember, and to do.

Visual imagery is, in itself, another whole language. Being fluent in that language gives us mind-boggling power to articulate thoughts, communicate those thoughts, and solve problems in ways we otherwise wouldn’t be able to.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Visual Leaders, by David Sibbet

Visual Leaders explores how leaders can support visioning and strategy formation, planning and management, and organizational change through the application of visual meeting and visual team methodologies organization wide—literally “trans-forming” communications and people’s sense of what is possible. It describes seven essential tools for visual leaders—mental models, visual meetings, graphic templates, decision theaters, roadmaps, Storymaps, and virtual visuals—and examples of methods for implementation throughout an organization.

  • Written for all levels of leadership in organizations, from department heads through directors, heads of strategic business units, and “C” level executives
  • Explores how communications has become interactive and graphic and how these tools can be used to shape direction and align people for implementation
  • Brings tools, methods and frameworks to life with stories of real organizations modeling these practices

Visual Leaders answers the question of how design thinking and visual literacy can help to orient leaders to the complexity of contemporary organizations in the private, non-profit, and public sectors.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

The power of an iterative, creative process that maximizes the use of visuals cannot be overstated. People learn, grow, and contribute when they “get” the dynamics of complex issues from a variety of perspectives, and they get it best when they can visually see it.

As a result, to most effectively lead, regardless of our organization’s life stage or current issues, we must consistently build skills to facilitate using different visual tools and formats.

To master a new way of thinking you will need to do a lot of visual note taking and playing around with ideas. But it is possible to “reprogram” your brain. Writing, drawing, diagramming, and visualizing are direct ways to do that. There are seven tools which can help lead to new levels of awareness and upgraded mental models, and then to more effective responses to situations.

Seven Essential Power Tools for Visual Leaders

Metaphors and Models – Connecting your vision with compelling imagery and mental models that leaders can use to keep their organizations focused on the big picture while working on the details.

Visual Meetings – Engage people and create an environment where your people feel comfortable working visually.

Graphic Templates – Providing light, intellectual scaffolding for critical planning meetings, reports, and other visual communications gives visual leaders a chance to guide the attention of the organization in productive ways without having to draw themselves.

Decision Rooms –When decisions need aligned commitment it helps to have everyone understand the big picture as well as the choices being made. Staging panoramic meetings is a direct path, online as well.

Roadmaps and Visual Plans – Visual time lines are as useful in organizational work as itineraries are on vacations. People need to know the big milestones and channels of activity.

Graphic Storymaps – Leaders who show up and communicate authentically are the drivers of effective, aligned organizations. Visual maps and murals make it much easier to do this and provide ways you can stand out from the deluge of information everyone is trying to deal with in contemporary organizations. Storymaps uniquely link plans to culture.

Video and Virtual Visuals – Video is as common as email for younger people and many organizations that are keeping pace with technology. This and other communication tools are allowing organizations to work effectively in distributed formats.

David Sibbet, Visual Leaders

A NEXT STEP

During your next leadership team meeting, identify one church-wide challenge or opportunity that has the potential to radically impact the future.

Step 1: Have team members work individually and take 15 minutes to reflect on the phrases, metaphors, and stories (include Scriptures that come to mind). Consider phrases and stories from the history, creation story, or ongoing interactions of your church that might highlight the vivid future behind this challenge or opportunity.

Step 2: Place individuals in teams for sharing of their top two entries for each of the Treasure Chest columns.

Step 3: Ask each group to put their top three vivid descriptions on a flip chart and then present to the rest of the group.

Step 4: Decide and Commit on the most powerful imagery to use in your next communication piece.

Raise your team’s awareness of metaphors by: having each member listen for metaphors used in their ministries, drawing sketches of metaphors, underlining in leadership articles, and clipping strong imagery from other magazines.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 55-2, December 2016


 

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

VRcurator

VRcurator

Bob Adams is Auxano's Vision Room Curator. His background includes over 23 years as an associate/executive pastor as well as 8 years as the Lead Consultant for a church design build company. He joined Auxano in 2012.

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What say you? Leave a comment!

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
— Scott Michael Whitley
 

Clarity Process

Three effective ways to start moving toward clarity right now.

Reaching Today’s Culture Requires Your Church to BE VISUAL

The Lindisfarne Gospels, a 1,300-year-old manuscript, is revered to this day as the oldest surviving English version of the Gospels. Lindisfarne is a small island just off the Northumberland coast of England. It is often referred to as Holy Island. Tidal waters cut it off from the rest of the world for several hours every day, adding to its mystique as a spiritual pilgrimage.

Produced around AD 715 in honor of St. Cuthbert, largely by a man named Eadfrith, the Bishop of Lindisfarne, the Lindisfarne Gospels presents a copy of the four Gospels of the New Testament. But it isn’t revered simply for its age. Its pages reveal curvy, embellished letters, strange creatures, and spiraling symbols of exquisite precision and beauty. During the eighth century, pilgrims flocked to St. Cuthbert’s shrine where it was housed, making the Lindisfarne manuscript one of the most visited and seen books of its day. Its artwork and symbols helped convey its message to those who could not read.

Professor Richard Gameson from Durham University sees it as a precursor to modern multimedia because it was designed to be a visual, sensual and artistic experience for its audience. Michelle Brown from the University of London notes that the book’s impact was similar to those of films and electronic media today. As Gameson adds, “The emphasis was to reach as many people as possible.”

There are many strategies needed for the church to have an open “front door” – to help those who were previously unchurched to come, and feel not only welcomed but to feel connected. In reaching the culture today it is clear that the church needs to be focused on a key element of this: be visual.

I have written in other places that there are striking parallels between our day and that of the Middle Ages. But if we are entering a new era that is similar to the earlier medieval era, what does that mean? If we are following the medieval pattern – and I believe that in many ways we are – there will be at least five dynamics:

  1. widespread spiritual illiteracy
  2. indiscriminate spiritual openness
  3. deep need for visual communication
  4. attraction to spiritual experience
  5. widespread ethos of amorality

That is why the term neomedieval, first offered by Umberto Eco in regard to Western society, seems appropriate.

But it is the visual element that churches neglect to their peril. Over the last twenty years, we have decisively moved to a visually based world. The most formative influences are not books, theater, or even music.

They are films.

Throw in videos and the rise of YouTube, and you have the essence of a cultural revolution – not to mention something of a return to the medieval. For example, during the Middle Ages, there was widespread spiritual illiteracy, as well as actual illiteracy. People couldn’t read. This is why pilgrimages mattered so much to the pilgrims. Beyond the relics and holy places they thought might bestow grace, usually the cathedrals they visited held relics that told the story of faith through a medium they could understand: stained glass, pictures.

So while people couldn’t, or didn’t, read, they couldn’t help but see, and from seeing, understand.

It’s no different today.

We are spiritually illiterate and are visually oriented and visually informed. Only now, instead of stained glass, we have film. At Mecklenburg Community Church, the church where I serve as senior pastor, there is very little we don’t try to convey visually, whether it’s a song during worship or a point during a message.

It’s simply how people best receive information and meaning, content and context.

And because it part of the arts, it has a way of sneaking past the defenses of the heart.

Read more from James.


 Would you like to learn more about the importance of being visual in your church? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Emery White

James Emery White

James Emery White is the founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, NC, and the ranked adjunctive professor of theology and culture at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which he also served as their fourth president. He is the founder of Serious Times and this blog was originally posted at his website www.churchandculture.org.

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COMMENTS

What say you? Leave a comment!

Recent Comments
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
— Scott Michael Whitley
 

Clarity Process

Three effective ways to start moving toward clarity right now.