Marcel van Hove
Trainer and Agile Coach
Trainer and Agile Coach
In everyday life, our brain processes picture all the time, for example when we see a car on the street. The brain will immediately connect it to all the information about how fast it is, which direction it is going and if it will be a threat or not. This is happening in pictures, not words and our brain processes visual information very effectively.
Drawing for yourself is a great way to create ideas and improve your memory. Most of us learn quicker if we visualise the content to be learnt. When recalling the information a picture comes up in your memory more easily than words.
Drawing also helps us to be creative. As my daughter said when asked why she would draw: “My brain creates new ideas”. That is absolutely right, drawing helps us to focus our mind and create new ideas. Or why do you doodle on the phone?
Drawing for your team is the next step. Brain science shows that about 25% of humans work mainly verbally. Another 30% work mainly visually and about 45% work best with both, words and pictures. So if you are addressing an audience you will only be able to reach 100% with a combination of words and pictures.
It is not about impressing the team with artistic masterpieces. Everyone can learn to communicate by drawing, there is no artistic talent required. It is about simple drawings that you use to explain what you mean.
Having to solve a problem? Drawing in meetings will start a conversation quicker. In the same way, as if you draw for yourself, you will create new ideas easily and you will identify more and more solutions. Having conflicts in a group? Draw the attention to the whiteboard and away from each other.
You become a leader of the conversation with a whiteboard marker. It brings a lot of focus and clarity into the discussion and helps to understand different points of view. The number of Aha! moments rises, people are much more engaged and it makes meetings much shorter and more effective.
If you have a complex problem to solve, I say you can probably save half of your meeting time just by drawing together. Take a photo of the whiteboard and every participant will be able to recall the meeting at one glance afterwards.
Think you can’t draw or a meeting on a whiteboard yet? We would like to invite you to come to our next bikablo® visual facilitation training and learn the simple drawing technique that so far more than 1000 people worldwide have learnt.
Marcel combines agile team coaching with visual thinking. Marcel believes that a group of people drawing together on a whiteboard can change the world. He loves high-performing teams and therefore coaches teams every day.
