ABCs for Managers Who Lead – V is for Visualize

“What the eyes have seen, the heart cannot forget” – African Proverb
“A picture is worth a thousand words.” – Proverb attributed a variety of cultures and languages.

Visualizing, or having a picture of something, is powerful because it can take an abstract concept and convey it in a way that is tangible and easily understood. An actual picture, metaphor or story can all be ways of visualizing a concept.

What concepts do you want to convey in your work? Let’s try visualizing each of these approaches to making a concept “real” to the viewer/listener.

Reputation of our organization – A metaphor might be “we are the life-giving sun to children living with HIV/AIDS in Southern Africa” or “We are the trusted advisor to the government for people living with HIV/AIDS.”

Impact of what we do (delivering health services) – We make sick children well.

Quality of our services – A short story might be “A young woman with TB came to our clinic two weeks ago for her DOTS treatment. Since we take seriously our role as an integrated health facility, we also tested her for HIV. Then when we found that she was HIV positive, we were there to provide counseling and life-giving medication. This story is repeated many times a month and demonstrates the value of our services to our community.”

Can you see each one of these? Do they make the concepts come alive for you?

We are talking here about simple representations of words we use everyday. In an earlier blog we used the expression that “words make worlds.” We make meaning from the words we use. This is, in part, because when we say words the person who hears us makes a mental model of what we mean. If we say the word “house,” a person who lives in the rural area of Liberia may have a very different image than someone who lives in central London, or even in Monrovia.

This is why to make sure that everyone we speak with has the same mental model, it is important to provide an image that gives further meaning to our words.

Now you give it a try.

• First, list some of the words or concepts you use to explain what you do, how you do it, your impact or reputation, etc. You and your colleagues may understand what these words mean in your context, but others outside of the organization may not. Such words as ownership, sustainability, stakeholder, teamwork or team spirit, organizational culture, and dream or vision can be subject to many interpretations.
• Second, make sure that the meaning of your words in your context is clear to you and your colleagues to make sure that there is alignment.
• Third, ask yourself and your colleagues to reflect on what you see when you say these words. One way is to close your eyes and let your imagination go with no advance thought.
• Then ask each person to draw what they saw or describe in detail what they saw. Since we are focusing on visualizing, reinforce that it is what they saw, not what they thought, believed, or felt.
• Finally, compare images and decide on the best way to communicate those images – photos, pictures, a metaphor or a short story.

Following this exercise, one or two people can follow up and create the image and take it back to the group for comments, suggestions and/or approval. You are then ready to disseminate the visualization both inside and outside the organization to communicate the meanings of the words clearly and quickly.

This exercise is flexible and your team may decide to revise some of your thoughts about the word based on the vision and the exercise can be repeated on a regular basis depending on staffing changes, new projects, or simply to update the way you envision and express what you do.

Visualizing well

1. You and the people you are communicating with must see a picture; it must be visual or you will not have achieved the leadership skill of visualization.
2. Your picture must be powerful or it will not stay in the hearts or minds of those who see it.
3. You must communicate your image at every opportunity. Repetition is critical to set the concept and, yet, variety, especially in photos and stories give the “viewer” examples that reinforce each other.
4. Keep your images up to date as your services, projects and results change. You don’t want to be in a situation where you have to explain that your image is of something you used to do, but don’t do any more.

See for yourself

Got a wicked problem? First, tell me how you make toast – Tom Wujec
The best stats you’ve ever seen – Hans Rosling
The beauty of data visualization – David McCandless

The internet is full of other visualization techniques for everything from creating a life you love and are passionate about to visualizing physics, data, the rays of the sun, music as color, and processes, such as becoming sustainable, thinking about how systems work, teaching people to read, and developing strategic plans. There are also articles and videos on how the brain works to interpret visual information and create mental models. Finally, there are a large number of technological tools to assist teams and individuals and teams develop complex models of data and translate them to visual representations and interpret them.