When I’m wearing my graphic facilitator’s hat, I do not ignore my art therapy training. It enriches my process, and makes my work with clients easier. For example, when a meeting begins, I listen for symbols and metaphors expressed by the group members. As they see me begin to draw, it helps bring them psychologically into the room. It helps the group begin to focus and wonder what lies ahead for the meeting. It becomes a back and forth, between me and the group. I am a witness, facilitator, and guide to the group process. I am quiet and a bit physically distant. I may not talk very much. I want the group to unfold in its own way. I may describe what I have heard when I am drawing, and I often show curiosity for what I’m experiencing. Sometimes I show empathy for what the group is expressing, as it helps them to move into new directions. This usually flows naturally. If I am present and attuned to the needs and interactions of the group, my work resonates with them.
Unlike art therapy where the client drives the process through their own art-making, in this approach I describe, the graphic facilitator is the artist. We, as graphic facilitators, create the documenting mural and most importantly choose what to interpret in the mural; the creative process for group participants is not one of personal art-making. Rather, it is the graphic facilitator whose sensitivity and skills are essential, but are not unlike the sensitivity and skills of a good art therapist. Often overlooked by group members as they focus on the business of the meeting, the graphic facilitator can grab the varieties of content in the room and choose to portray them or not. I believe art makes a richer experience.
The created mural can be thrilling to group members; it opens to them a world of aesthetic visual meaning typically not “seen” through words alone. The creative artistry of the mural becomes an additional and exceptional group member who is willing to confront with honesty, to explore with directness, to illustrate what is said and to reveal what is unspoken. As I mature as a graphic facilitator, I get bolder about making interpretations of group dynamics in the murals. I dare to choose metaphors that may be confrontive. I think about how to convey tensions or conflicts. I experiment and check with the group to see if my thoughts or metaphors fit for any of them. If I am wrong, the group will tell me, and I ask them to tell me. If I am right, I push the group to move their conversations into new directions. Sometimes a few group members will resonate with my images and dare to openly discuss previously unnamed conflicts with the rest of the group.
Michelle Winkel • Sensemaking, Potential Space, and Art Therapy with Organizations
The mural is both documentation and a trigger for forward movement and change at the same time. The graphic facilitator publicly enacts a deeply creative and usually private process: On a two-dimensional surface, using colors, metaphors, symbols and words, she or he creates an intriguing world of feelings not usually seen with the “naked eye.” Like the art psychotherapist, the graphic facilitator creates an ambience of safety and structure for group participants. We also try to create enthusiasm, curiosity, and a sense of play resonating within the room and invite people to participate.
In my role as a graphic facilitator, I find it important to create a potential space in the meeting room, through the use of myself, and the drawing. To the group, I speak at the beginning of the day about my process and what group members can expect to see. I describe why it will add value to their day, deepen their experience, and promote inclusivity. I welcome jokes about how I choose to draw something. Sometimes the most important work is in the silent spaces. Murals give groups permission to leave the world of petty irritations with managers and co-workers and make space for newness. I create an environment of curiosity.
In addition to my graphic facilitation work with organizations in the public and private sectors, I co-direct an international art therapy training program in Tokyo and Bangkok. Most of our students are Japanese, Thai, and Philippine working professionals coming from human resources, organizational development, teaching, marketing, nursing, and other backgrounds. They want to learn art therapy skills to enrich their work or to develop new careers in non-profit and corporate environments at the organization level. We teach in English with simultaneous translation, which also provides incredible cultural learning for all of us. The high interest we’ve seen in our training programs indicates the desire for people to cross-train in art therapy, organizational development work, and graphic facilitation. As I described earlier, the overlapping principles of the professions inform each other, which registrants to our training programs find compelling. In our classes, we teach art therapy and graphic facilitation skills.
One of the challenges when teaching students from management-oriented backgrounds is to assist them to reframe and suspend some of the strategic, product-oriented goals they’ve been taught to work within. We help them learn skills to move toward a more therapeutic, process-oriented approach. As they mature in this process, they notice improvements in the quality of their work. They notice more success with their clients in organizations.
In addition to teaching theory, we teach and model art therapy techniques and graphic facilitation activities with the students. In role plays and enactments, they then practice these new skills with their fellow students. Gradually, they begin to implement their skills at work, modifying them to suit the participants at the employment site.
A student case study
One of our Japanese students, “Sonya,” works in the human resources department of a large corporation in Tokyo. After training with us for several months, she approached her managers at work, asking permission to set up a pilot program for employees at her worksite. The program invited anyone to “come and make sketches to relax” after work hours in a confidential environment. She created flyers and specifically advertised the group in departments she did not deal with for her human resources job, to reduce conflict of interest and increase anonymity. In Japan, this anonymity was incredibly important. Acknowledging the need for therapeutic assistance is not culturally accepted.
The first few weeks, she was disappointed but not surprised that very few people attended. However, gradually, more and more employees came, and kept coming week after week. Word spread that something interesting was happening every Tuesday. She noticed themes emerge: middle-aged men were especially attracted to the process, and wanted to explore their fear of pending retirement. What would they do after they left the company? Some of them had trouble naming any interests or hobbies; their work had taken priority, leaving little space for other things. Sonya’s training, the art materials she spread out in the room, the strength of the camaraderie, and the potential creative space growth and curiosity for the participants. This curiosity and enthusiasm, and for some an increased sense of self-esteem, trickled down to their daily job performance. Participants reported less depression and suicidal ideation. Ultimately, Sonya was making space for unspoken emotions and meanings for the participants, and within the company.
Michelle Winkel • Sensemaking, Potential Space, and Art Therapy with Organizations
Sonya does not label her now very popular group a “therapy” group (associations and stereotypes would hinder employees from attending), but she knows the power it holds to affect change in participants and the organization. She receives regular supervision to monitor her own progress. Her success as a manager in the human resources department at this company, however, played a big role in her success working as an art therapist. Her work in this organization could be considered an intersection between the two fields. Her ability to navigate the facets of the organization, including its hierarchy, culture, and staff expectations, along with the art therapeutic techniques, all contributed to the popularity of the group and its positive outcomes.
When working as a graphic facilitator with large or small organizations, participant experience is enhanced with the incorporation of art therapy techniques. As the relatively new field of graphic facilitation advances
and becomes more sophisticated, facilitators without these therapeutic skills will have trouble attuning to clients’ complex challenges. Let’s borrow some of the wisdom from the art therapy field while we navigate forward.
MICHELLE WINKEL co-authored Graphic Facilitation and Art Therapy: Imagery and Metaphor in Organizational Development with Dr. Maxine Junge. She is a trained organizational consultant, art therapist, and graphic facilitator with 20 years of experience working with groups, organizations, and individuals. Key clients include the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, the City of Los Angeles Housing Authority, Accenture, University of Victoria, RCMP, Public Works and Government Services Canada, The Vancouver Board of Trade, the California Mental Health Director’s Association, and the City of Sacramento. Details about visual planning at
www.unfoldingsolutions.com and art therapy at www.ciiatglobal.org.
Kinesthetic Modeling
Re-learning how to grope in the dark
John Ward
Dear Team,
For next week’s meeting please gather and bring 25 small ordinary objects in a bag. There should be no words, numbers, letters, or symbols on them, nor any institutional messaging. And do not include anything precious as these items will not be returned to you.
Please do this task yourself. Do not delegate it.
Your bag will be your boarding pass (required) for our session.
I’ll see you on Tuesday.
John Ward
What would you expect from a meeting that was preceded by an email like this?
I share six stories about smart people with the best of intentions. Overly conscious approaches have blocked their work. In each case, the usual solutions and incremental thinking had failed—original thinking was required.
In each story, I introduce Kinesthetic Modeling,1 an intuitive experiential facilitation method I’ve developed and used for nearly 20 years. Kinesthetic Modeling helps these groups and individuals deal with what every professional hates: being on the spot and in the dark about what to do next. On these occasions, people desperately want to make sense where there appears to be none. More critically, decisions need to be made. Kinesthetic Modeling grows from the need to shift habitual thinking patterns and move away from logical, linear sequential modes, while not blocking or clouding the intellect.
In the primal ignorance of infancy, you naturally groped. When you were a baby you tried things out, enjoying every minute of the process until something clicked. Then you incorporated it into your repertoire and mindsets. Groping at work, however, is not acceptable—yet it is the first skill you need to indulge when you are surrounded by unknowns, chaos, and insanity. It is time to reclaim one of the earliest proficiencies you ever mastered.
Kinesthetic Modeling relies first on the quirky fact that people invest great meaning in ordinary objects when they handle them. Second, because our hands and eyes are so intimately and vigorously connected to our brains, they think in concert. This psycho/physiological fact has lost currency as our media obsesses on the brain and pop-neuroscience. Sensory thinking modes open us up to what is known as embodied mind. This allows us to make new meaning out of what is constantly surprising us in our world. Kinesthetic Modeling is a playful approach that coaxes us to show up in our own fashion and releases us to do the original thinking for which we yearn.
John Ward • Kinesthetic Modeling
I. Twenty-five pieces of junk break the ice
Surprise interrupts habitual thinking patterns, making way for imagination and collaboration.
At the beginning of meetings, I act quickly to prompt some spontaneity. “OK everyone, you’ve all been wondering about that strange email I sent you last week. Let’s find out what’s behind it. Dump all your junk out onto the middle of the table.”
Hundreds of nondescript, even ugly items tumble out. Nonetheless, a palpable glee emerges. Folks can’t help themselves as they reach for something and exclaim about how cool it is. In many groups, this initiates an animated round of comparing and sharing. I listen and watch. The less I direct the proceedings, the more people will open up. Even those participants who hold back and only watch become valuable, if skeptical, observers.
“Pick up three things that catch your eye...
...and place them on the table in front of you.”
Next, I ask them what they see in each other’s choices. Usually they are already having that excited discussion. Following their momentum, I listen for images, feelings, ideas, stories, explanations, and analysis.
I name them for the group’s benefit, sometimes charting them on paper at the front of the room. We often return to these distinctions throughout the modeling process.
An ice breaker, with almost no rules, is unfolding. Intact teams come to know each other more intimately; and strangers get valuable impromptu first impressions.
Before we move into the meeting, I point out how many images have surfaced, and how expressive everyone is in their choices and arrangements. I also point out the crucial distinctions between images and ideas.
What’s going on here?
The absurd email invitation a week before the session cracks open the wondering mind. What has this got to do with our issue? I’d better be ready for anything. Or more problematically, I’m not going to go along with this kind of nonsense!
John Ward • Kinesthetic Modeling
Habit cuts two ways. Survival and prosperity require that we form categories and routine responses to the deluge of inputs we face. Normally, in business-as-usual situations, this is smart, effective, and efficient. But those habits blind us when our environment changes in unfamiliar ways or there are hidden forces at work. At times like these, surprise opens minds and buys a grace period to do some original thinking.
Without symbols or messages, we project more of what is going on in our minds onto ordinary objects. These benign physical items shift us away from verbal, quantitative conventions. Handling, inspecting, and arranging them introduces valuable kinesthetic, visual, nonverbal thinking modes.
Miniatures charm us—Coaxing imaginative stories out, inviting us to play.
Ideas and explanations tend to lock us into a single notion. They invoke preconceptions and established structures that may be holding us hostage. On the other hand, images are sensory, visceral, and emotional. They open us up to exploration and multiple possibilities needed to forge new understandings.
Graphic facilitation supports Kinesthetic Modeling seamlessly as it routinely integrates words and images.
As a standalone icebreaker, this activity is followed by the question, “What has happened here that will enable us to have a better meeting?”
As a prelude to a day of more involved kinesthetic modeling, it shows people that they can express themselves, recognize what others are thinking, and be creative. Later when I ask them to build a model of a complex situation or issue, they sense that it is something they can do.
II. Tower of Babel
In this story, a small group with almost no planning is going to build a single model of their situation… in silence.
A tight-knit team of high-performing executives came to my studio for a year-end recap and planning session. The Northern California leader brought her five regional office directors. The East Coast-based company honored them with its Top Performing Region Award for forging new territory in their industry—four years running! This team did not lack for original thinking; but they had a huge problem. Corporate did not have a clue as to the huge significance of this team’s work. While prospering for the past 30 years, the company was smothering my clients with rigid bureaucracy. While they were allowed to do whatever they wanted to innovate and earn their yearly trophy, this team was not allowed to skimp on the stringent systems compliance. The six people in my studio were dra
ined and dispirited.
These folks knew their situation inside and out. They’d fretted and talked it to death. So we plunged right in and built a model of it. It’s important to start KM quickly with a minimum of talk. Discussion and planning at this point will reinforce preconceptions; conversely, silence during the modeling activity keeps them at bay. People are incredulous that this could work; but I cheerfully remind them that most meetings would proceed more effectively if people just didn’t talk.
Through repeated cycles of silent building and verbal debriefs, the group relived all the trials and triumphs they’d experienced becoming a team. They built a jerry-rigged rickety tower that would have blown over had we left the studio door open. It reached the heights they aspired to, but it was a hairball of epic proportions.
“You see,” they moaned, “this is what we told you about when we arrived.” They took a long lunch in town, bought some holiday cards and gifts, and returned reluctantly after two hours.
I proposed another round of work, suggesting that they needed to model through their situation. Four of the six people, including the director, would have none of it.
“This is our boondoggle and we’re stuck with it. Let’s just buckle down to making plans and action items.” Pushing back, I asked if the four reluctant participants would be up for watching while their other two colleagues gave it a go.
“Why not?” they said. The two stalwarts silently prowled my big industrial office. The exec from faraway Sacramento toyed with a ball of string. He tied one end to the top of the tower; and the other to a nail on a rafter up near the ceiling. His colleague from San Jose mirrored his moves. In an instant, everyone was on their feet. Strings reached out to every part of the Bay Area. My entire studio had become a map of their territory. The holiday cards and ornaments came out of their bags to be hung on the strings and draped from strong points on their decrepit tower. At nearly four o’clock, our witching hour, the whole group was abuzz and I asked, “What are you so excited about? Talk to me. I’ll capture everything on the wall!”
Drawn Together Through Visual Practice Page 19