Communication TwentyFourSeven
The Communication TwentyFourSeven podcast is a captivating and insightful show hosted by Jennifer Arvin Furlong, a communication expert and motivational speaker. With her warm and engaging style, Jen explores the fascinating world of effective communication, offering valuable tips, strategies, and stories that empower listeners to enhance their interpersonal relationships, professional interactions, and personal growth.
Communication TwentyFourSeven
Unlock Your Visual Thinking Superpower: Enhancing Connection with David Winkelman
What if unlocking your full potential for clear communication and connection was as simple as tapping into your visual thinking superpower? Join Jennifer Arvin Furlong for an insightful discussion with organizational development and change management expert David Winkelman, as we explore the powerful impact of digital visual literacy on the way we perceive and understand the world around us.
In this episode, we dive deep into the world of visual communication, sharing David's experience working with Ernst Young and their unique design sessions that encourage visual thinking. We'll reveal the one crucial question to ask in any conversation to ensure clarity and understanding - "What does that look like to you?" - and how this question can transform the way you communicate with others. You'll also hear an incredible story of how David applied his expertise to resolve a call center conflict in Tijuana, promoting understanding and up-scaling operations in mere minutes.
Discover the power of visualization and storytelling in communication, as we discuss the importance of mapping out our realities to create common understanding and rapport. Learn how digital tools can help you create a visual focus in virtual meetings, harnessing the power of your neurology to improve communication skills. Don't miss this fascinating conversation that's sure to change the way you approach your everyday interactions!
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that the way we think, what we remember, how we interpret, is so often unconscious, because we don't make it conscious. We don't talk about the role of clarity, we just presume it.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's so meta. We're not having those conversations at all. Would you be helpful if we did have those conversations?
Speaker 1:But how often do we either stress out or go into crisis or go into upset because we're not on the same page?
Speaker 2:That's just a little snippet of my conversation with David Winkleman, an expert in organizational development and change management, who is now doing some interesting work in the field of digital visual literacy. David describes how we can tap into our visual thinking capacity as a superpower that delivers clarity and connection. If you wanna learn the one question you can ask in any situation to get clarity, or if you wanna learn the four steps you can take to create a high-performing team, then keep listening. Welcome to the Communication 24-7 podcast, where we communicate about how we communicate. I'm your host, jennifer Furlong.
Speaker 2:I have a very special guest with us today, someone who is an expert in change facilitation and he's worked with all kinds of organizations, large and small teams, leadership managers.
Speaker 2:This guy, we are very lucky to have him on the show. So let me tell you a little something about him, his background, and then you'll know why I'm super excited to have him on the show. So I already mentioned change facilitation, but it's more than that, just so much more than that. He's a project manager, he is an author, he's a speaker, creative director. He designs and develops different learning programs, experiential learning programs. He's a certified trainer, so he's able to come in and talk to you about emotional and social intelligence and just all kinds of different workshops that he can bring to the table, and all of them are going to help you increase your productivity, they're gonna help you manage your stress levels and, in my humble opinion, most importantly, they're going to help improve your communication skills. That's why, after all, we are here. David, thank you so much for being on the show. It's an honor to have you here.
Speaker 1:Wow, an honor. Well, I'm all in favor of setting expectations, but I hope you didn't oversell me there, Jennifer. Absolutely not. It's good to laugh.
Speaker 2:Not an oversell.
Speaker 1:It's good to laugh and take one's own talents and abilities as lightly as possible.
Speaker 2:Why don't you share with our audience a little bit about yourself? What's your journey and how have you gotten to this moment in time? Where have you been and what have you been doing?
Speaker 1:It's all journey, jennifer. Oh yeah, it's all journey, it's all story. And the story of it is humble and it's been meandering and it's taken me into some great canyons and chasms and maces, probably the most formative of all the experiences I've had, because I've always been creative and artistic. But let's not talk about creative and artistic in any narrow sense of the word. Let's really open it up so that people can say to themselves I'm creative. I'm maybe not on it yet, but I know I'm creative, i know I can use my imagination, i know I can be expressive.
Speaker 1:That's one of the points we want to make that artistic ability isn't the same thing as creativity And the drive to be expressive and to get things clear and to be on the same page with people. you don't necessarily have to be quote unquote artistic to do that. And that's a really important thing that we want to broaden people's area of self-expression, particularly in those areas where we want to be most productive, like with our teams or at business. And so, talking about my background, which started out not even so much artistic as craft oriented right, some people say, well, that's not fine art, that's craft, right, but it's still aesthetics and self-expression and working with tools and communicating something, and that's what we're all doing all the time where we could in some way. The most formative thing to finally answer your point, your question is about five to six years of experience. I had working for a little company called Ernst Young.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just a tiny little company.
Speaker 1:Tiny little company. Ernst Young has an audit side, a CPA side, which everybody knows, but they also have a global management consulting division, or they did. And when I was working for them as a subcontractor, i was working with them through a tiny company that no one's practically ever heard of And that little tiny company had evolved a way of working. That's what it was called. We call it a way of working. It was called design sessions And it took place in a very specialized environment where people made everything visual.
Speaker 1:So a huge client of Ernst Young's would come into this environment like real brick and mortar, where every vertical surface was a giant whiteboard And you maintained full engagement and emotional action and interactivity because you knew where you were, you had the big picture and you could drill down with other people And all those whiteboards were big collective neutral spaces that were made for people collaborating. So in that space and in that time those teams were facilitated in accomplishing six to nine months work in the three days they were in that environment. So that was formative for me in understanding how in the world can you do that over and over, predictably? And these companies were betting on it. They were betting that their teams could come in and plan these giant corporate initiatives And by the time they were left, their finish line at the end of those three days was the point where that corporate initiative could be launched and would predictably succeed.
Speaker 2:So when you go into this area, right Well, envision a conference room And of course you know everybody's kind of sitting around the conference room and you have a few whiteboards that are up on the walls. When you say you know the larger bird's eye view of taking the company forward, whether it's through strategic planning, or if you take it down to a departmental level and you're looking at their particular strategic plan or doing some team building exercises, how exactly does the whiteboard help? Because I gotta tell you, i have been in my fair share of meetings and that was like the worst thing ever, and so I have a feeling you have a different way of using the whiteboard than is probably traditionally used, with a bunch of bullet points and you know all of those. So explain to the audience how you use the whiteboard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's try to create a picture that's entirely different than that one, or 97, 98% different. We'll start with the idea that it's not a few whiteboards and they're not even white. They're like a super light color of gray, like the wall behind you. That could be a white wall, but it looks gray to me, right. And so when you walk into this environment, there's an area for everybody to sit in that faces a half semicircle, a ring of whiteboard or grayboards. We call them work walls. Okay, so you get away from the idea of whiteboard. It's a work wall. Oh, work wall, huh. So imagine it's basically a wall, except that it's curved, and it curves two thirds of the way around the whole group that's sitting theater style in the middle of it, and there's even a sweet spot right in the middle of these seven giant boards that are all linked. Okay, it looks like one huge piece of furniture with little teeny scenes in between these work walls. These work walls are like eight feet. They're like giant sheets of picture, of giant sheet of plywood, and they're vertical and they're joined and they're gray and they're metallic, so that inside they're not metallic, they have steel inside them. So if you threw up a giant refrigerator magnet on this wall. It would stick. That's pretty cool, it's totally cool. It was an environment that was completely designed for creative collaboration. So you're surrounded by this semi-circle of boards And then, as soon as you go out beyond that, you see an environment where obviously much smaller groups are working And they have three to four to five boards within each smaller area.
Speaker 1:So the way the three-day strategic planning process unfolds is that as a group you have certain kind of conversations, but then you get an assignment and each group has a slightly different variation of that assignment, and that assignment has been custom written for your big group and for your specific group, and all the groups are then given two to three hours to go out in their pod areas and work on those assignments. Because they're real world, they're working on a very specific strategic planning sort of initiative, and then they all come back and they do report outs based on what they accomplished in the two to three hours. And the report outs are put onto these 11 by 17 refrigerator magnets which are magnetized on one side And there's a sticky surface like a 3M sticky note surface, so you can slap a piece of white paper on it and pull that paper on and off, and on and off, so they're endlessly usable. So a group would come up and they would do the report out, either with another whiteboard There weren't even any easels, no easels in this whole place, no flip chart pads.
Speaker 1:You had either a giant whiteboard or two, or you had these tileable magnets that you could cover a large portion of the board. The point I'm trying to make is oh, and all the boards in the whole place, everything was on wheels. There was nothing on walls. So it was a mobile, flexible, fluid environment And it often changed two or three times in the course of a day, depending on what the configuration of the work. So when people walked in they would often make a comment like what is this place? Is this like a Montessori classroom for adults? Right, because you knew something was gonna happen there that was not usual and customary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's what I like about it from a communication standpoint. When we think about typical meetings, when we think about typical workshops, you have somebody standing in front of you with a PowerPoint or there might be an easel, just one easel. When you think about, in communication, even the language that you're using you called it a work wall what a difference that makes, just in the mindset, as someone who's going into this environment.
Speaker 2:It really helps set the tone And then, at the end of the day, what you're talking about is being able to capture all of these conversations visually, right? So take us through how does one capture that? Because before we started recording, we had a really quick conversation about the differences between being creative and whether you consider yourself an artist, And that might be one thing. When we start talking about capturing something visually, we start thinking about oh man, am I gonna have to start drawing some stick figures? How am I going to capture everything that we talked about in a visual format, Keep it engaging while it stays true to what it is that we were talking about. So take us through that aspect of it what it is to visually capture these conversations.
Speaker 1:Let's just back up one half a step and let's entertain ourselves and educate ourselves and your listening audience by talking about visualization, the basic act of visualizing. What the heck is that We talk about it, but have we ever really thought to ask what is that and why don't we ask? Well, we don't ask because we've never. we've just taken it for granted. You know, think about our upbringing.
Speaker 1:If you went to public school in the United States and elsewhere, you came in knowing how to speak. You learned how to read. you learned how to write. It took almost 15 years. Most of what you did in school was learning how to read and write. You didn't even know how to speak, though. before you were three or four You had to learn how to speak And then, step by step, you learned ABCs and so forth. So by the time we got through high school, three quarters of our education was learning our native language. How much time did we so we developed verbal language skills? How much time did we spend in school developing visual language skills or visual thinking skills? Pretty close to.
Speaker 2:Just about zero, about zero.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It seems like it's such an abstract concept, when really it shouldn't be.
Speaker 1:Well, and the reason we didn't have to learn it through lessons or reading or being instructed was because we're wired for visual learning. That come, it's part of our equipment, it's part of our mind, but we don't necessarily know how everything in our mind works And in fact, what we do know is we all work a little bit differently. So how you learned to see and how I learned to see were very similar, yet they were different. Because when we say learning to see, we're interpreting, we're remembering, we're storing And, most importantly, we're ascribing meaning And we're learning how to see differently. Because I might just look at a whole landscape and go, yeah, that's not important to me, and you might say, oh, everything I see is important.
Speaker 2:And something is right.
Speaker 1:So how much detail we look at the patterns we see. We're basically innately pattern recognizers. We're learning to recognize patterns from the time our parents' faces were in, right here, and we're developing a different interpretation for a smile versus a frown, Right right.
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Speaker 2:I'd like to interject really quickly before you continue. This is so important to the communication process. You know, when you think about the things that we choose to pay attention to and the lens through which we see the world, right, it's gonna be shaded just slightly differently for everyone. So when you think about taking in all of these messages in a visual format and we're all seeing them just slightly differently And like what you were saying, how we view them, what we choose to focus on, how we decide to take in that data, and we're interpreting things differently We're each getting a different message from that, so of course that's gonna have an impact on how we communicate with one another. So I really love this conversation about just taking in things visually and how it impacts our perception. So I'm sorry, i got excited. I wanna do it.
Speaker 1:No, that's perfect, and you almost can't overstress that. And so the underlying foundation of the whole conversation is understanding that the way we think, what we remember, how we interpret, is so often unconscious because we don't make it conscious. We don't talk about the role of clarity, we just presume it.
Speaker 2:That's right. It's so meta. We're not having those conversations at all. But you would be helpful if we did have those conversations.
Speaker 1:But how often do we either stress out or go into crisis or go into upset because we're not on the same page That's right, because we've taken something for granted, or we've miscommunicated, or somebody thinks like they're gonna have to do it all or they're not gonna have to do but a little bit, when there's just so much room for miscommunication and misinterpretation of things, because we take clarity for granted and then we find out, oh, that person wasn't clear at all. I mean, you can sit and have a five minute explanation with somebody right And you can say okay, so did you understand.
Speaker 1:And what do they say? Sure, sure, of course I understand. And then we're like wait, wouldn't that's so simple. And then a minute later or 30 seconds later, you can say okay.
Speaker 2:And it's clear They didn't understand. Tell me what you got.
Speaker 1:Or how would you explain that That's right? Or what will you tell the next person? Yeah, And it's like your listeners can't see the face I'm making and my body language. But there's a perfect example. You're the expert on communication. How much of our total communication is through other than the words we use?
Speaker 2:And not just the words that we choose to use and then how we choose to share those words and then the body language that goes along with that nonverbals, vocally as well as visually. I mean, it ain't an easy process this whole communication thing, and when you don't have the advantage of having the visuals to go along with it it puts more strain on you really do have to the listeners right now they're really having to pay attention to this conversation because they're not going to have the advantage of seeing this visually, and earlier we had a conversation So that was impacting how we were gonna go about having this conversation. So I can just see having that. The visual component, the visual element to it, is so incredibly important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it changes everything, it changes everything because when we started the conversation, you were coming at it from. Well, when you use visuals, it really gives you an advantage, to which I agreed, yeah, and what I would have your listeners understand is well, it's more than that It's. When you don't use visuals, you are enormously disadvantageing yourself, to the point where what's predictable is a mishap or miscommunication or something running counter to what you want. You're not giving yourself every advantage you need.
Speaker 2:One of the studies that I read, because the human animal is a terrible listener. We're just awful at it. We're just terrible listeners. And even when you're trying to pay attention, you're getting about half of what's coming at you 50%. So, yeah, we are tremendously disadvantaged when we're trying to. No wonder we get into arguments and have miscommunication.
Speaker 1:I mean the odds are against us anyway.
Speaker 1:Right, the foundational elements of what that experience that I was describing earlier in what they call the accelerated solutions environment because it really was an accelerated solutions environment The meaning of that, the value of that, the learning of that, for me is what, in a big way, i'm my collaborator, bart, who helped design the course that we offer. It's what we want people to understand is, from the start, have the mindset of looking for the visual. If you're in a conversation and there's not a visual component, mindset says wait, we need a visual component, wait, i need to understand what's on your page And you wanna understand what's on my page, right? So the most operative, simple, simple, seven word question, in whatever form you wanna ask it, is what does that look like to you? Which, if it's only seven words, you could put the emphasis on any of the words What does that look like to you? Or what does that look like to you? Or what does that look like to you?
Speaker 2:Or what does that look?
Speaker 1:like to you, because a lot of times people talk conceptually And because we're great with verbal, as we went to school for 15 years. I think that I understand what you mean by the term artistic, but I guarantee you we have different ideas. We have different pictures of what artistic means. So we allow ourselves to get pulled into the conversation and believe that we're clear because we can use the same words.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, what do I always? say The message you send may not necessarily be the message received. That's exactly what we're talking about here. What?
Speaker 1:will you bring in? So when you ask the question, what does that look like to you? This little moment of magic occurs, because what it says is that you value the other person's not just words, but you wanna know more than the words. You wanna know something of their reality formation. Where are they coming from? How much work have they done? What does it look like? Yeah, and then, if they don't have a really good answer for you, what does that tell you? Right?
Speaker 2:yeah.
Speaker 1:It tells you they don't have a very good picture of it. Exactly, yeah, it tells you that it's informed, it's just a concept, or let's not use the word just.
Speaker 1:It is a concept. It's not a plan, it's not a picture, it's not a vision. It's not worked out, it's a concept. That's a huge distinction to have in right here or right here, right close to you. That's a huge winning distinction to have no matter what conversation you're in with people. It's an empowering concept. It can be confronting too. If you ask somebody what does that look like to you And you get a, i don't know.
Speaker 2:Right, But you have to be prepared for that, right. I mean, you may have the clearest picture in your head of what you think it looks like, what the solution looks like, fill in the blank, whatever it is, you think you know what it looks like, or at least what it should look like, And you're having a conversation with somebody. If you ask that question and you've already been arguing over it and they're like well, I don't know, could be a little okay, it's revealing, But also it's an opportunity. We have to look at it for what it is. Now. This is an opportunity. Now we can kind of do some exploring.
Speaker 1:It's. It's very empowering, very enabling, because it's clarifying. You know, if you look at all the different kinds of power there are and I use power in a neutral sense clarity is a huge form of power. We are disempowered when we are not clear, either visa V, what somebody else's plans are, or our own plans or contingency things. I mean, there's a thought you could. You could just go off on a tangent here and say how many ways can be disempowered if we're not clear. Right, that could be a whole talking itself.
Speaker 1:So anytime you ask somebody, what does that look like to you? Or you know, how do you see that? Right? I mean, just take, just take a set of directions. Oftentimes people just say I'll meet you, you know here. And then when you ask, okay, can we be more specific about it? Well, if they, if they tell you they're going to meet you, you know, at the intersection of first and main and there's a Starbucks on the northeast corner. That's pretty clear. But on the other hand, some people will give you directions into a, an office park, yeah, and the addresses are not clear on the office park And there's all the office suites look the same, yeah, so you may or may not have a sweet number. But even sometimes, if you have a sweet number, they didn't tell you that it's in the back, around the corner and you have to go through the gate Get the description. What is that? Oh yeah, you have to come through this gate. Oh yeah, i have to give you a passcode.
Speaker 2:So when you go into organizations and you try to help them capture these ideas visually, you try to help them have these important conversations, whether it's one on one or as a team. Do you give them the opportunity to try to visually capture the conversations they're having or do you capture it for them? How does that work?
Speaker 1:That's the $64 million question, or a trillion dollar question, because you could do it in three ways. So what I teach, which is this broad scope of skills and tools and practices and a mindset called digital visual literacy primarily, it's visual literacy. How are we thinking? So you can do things for people, you can show people how to do it, you can teach them or you can do it with them Or some variation of that. It's really all three. Back in the day, when we were doing the design session work, we did all three. We taught them how to do it, we did certain things for them and we did certain things with them.
Speaker 1:And a really great scribe, somebody who's got all three levels of skills will always prefer to empower the person, because that's just the better way, right? So when we talk about capturing, it sounds like we're capturing a little thing and we're like transferring it, right, whereas the way I look at it is that's only one form of what we're doing, what we're really doing with all of this, and it opens it up. It just blows the door off. It's a giant portal. It's to see that the capture is at a certain time in a certain way.
Speaker 1:What we're really doing is we are continually in the process of connecting with people and visualizing, slash, clarifying. It's a constant form. Everything is in service of connecting and clarifying, because if we get connected enough and clear enough, we just keep moving the ball forward. The game just gets richer and richer because at some point then it moves into well, we're ready to take action, aren't we? We're clear enough, not just any action, we're clear enough to take effective action, and then that moves us into planning, and planning moves us into implementation. It's all about continual connecting and clarifying, and the capture is just one part or moment of the process. Does that make sense?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, because, like anything else in communication, it's all an ongoing process, so you really do have to. It forces you to be in the moment as well, which is something that I'm really a big fan of with what it is that you're describing is you really do have to be in the moment so that you can be a part of this conversation. It's not something you can passively be involved in.
Speaker 1:Correct, right. And so it's really fundamental to understand that. What you just said is intrinsic. It has to be an interactive process. Yeah, you need to be able to look and see. It's not necessarily something that I'm drawing It's. Maybe it's a spreadsheet, maybe I'm giving you a chart, maybe I'm giving you a timeline, maybe I'm giving you a checklist. The point is, am I giving you that checklist that you can interact, you can ask questions, you can say that shouldn't be on this checklist, let's delete that. And so now you're gonna interact with my checklist and you're gonna draw a line through it and I'm gonna see that line and I'm gonna say, yeah, i agree with you, that shouldn't be on it, right? That is visual communication.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, or give you an opportunity to explain why you think that does belong on there, correct?
Speaker 1:Because as soon as we're interacting with all this invisible stuff, now we're accomplishing something, now we're getting into the meat of it, because there's so much that's invisible in our world, in our reality, that until we're showing each other, we're missing out on all that stuff that's invisible that we somehow take for granted. I believe that you know what's going on back here that neither one of us can actually see.
Speaker 2:And the invisible. it gives a lot of opportunity to fill in the blanks with your assumptions And that's like the exact opposite of clarity. right there, talk about something that is gonna cause some miscommunication, and that happens all the time. That's always going on. So I really love this idea of being able to use this as a way to underscore and find clarity and make sure that there's opportunity to have the discussion, the back and forth, by having that something visual in front of you. Talking about visual literacy, have you ever used this as a way to try to help with conflict management or conflict resolution in the workplace?
Speaker 1:Because we know how to get the breeding ground for people to just get upset with each other.
Speaker 1:Absolutely one of the best stories I can tell has to do with a labor negotiation or mediation, really, that I was called in to do with about one night's sleep, so I had no chance to do any preparation. It was just like we've got a bad situation, very negative. It's spiraling out of control. This large company that was my client I had done a couple of seminars for them and my friend was a coach with them And he was a coach to several of the executives, including the CEO and his right hand VP, and they had contracted with a call center. I'm in San Diego and the call center was in Tijuana, which is common. There's always factories And this company had contracted with a division of a call center.
Speaker 1:So they have like 20, 30 employees working in a call center that was down in Tijuana And this company hired a manager to go down there and manage these 20 or 30 Mexican workers inside this call center.
Speaker 1:And this manager, this professional manager, she got into like a tussle with one of their call center employees And that call center employee, who was a long standing employee there, got a lot of animosity and hostility generated because he knew all the people in the call center.
Speaker 1:She was coming in as a new manager And they had a really gnarly situation that now they were bringing to the attention of the corporate office and the people who ran, who owned the call center, were coming to the corporate office the next day with their attorney to do something with this manager. And I was called in to make this situation go away And within the first 15 minutes of the meeting, not only did we disappear that situation, we transformed it into a five and a half hour meeting where we completely upscaled the whole operation of the call center, because that experience of making their difficult situation go away in 10, 15 minutes it was actually less So alive in them and awakened them and like picked up their spirits that they didn't have to deal anymore with this giant headache They were immediately catapulted into. Well, what do we do now?
Speaker 2:And everybody was like and their joys and sorrows were Yeah, because it really takes when you think about in conflict, it's really difficult to help people get away from blame and looking at the other person as the problem rather than just looking at the problem as the problem And I can see how coming in with this goal of okay, like the question you asked, what does this look like? And being able to just have a way to focus in, really focus in on the issue and be able to describe it, put words to it visually, just try to look at it in a different way I can see how that could be incredibly helpful. What a useful tool in situations like that.
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Speaker 1:Well, i like to tell people, whether they are able to like instantly grasp it or not, if they're thinking about transforming a situation, they need to do exactly what you just said, which is, they need to look at it differently. They need to have a perceptual shift. And what happened was we were waiting for the manager, the VP, to come in. She was gonna be like the senior person in the room. She was on a call. I'm stuck in this room with these two people from the call center and their lawyer and this professional manager, and we're like what do we do? We're waiting for this senior VP to come in, and so I'm just introducing myself and what I do. It was very light, very we weren't engaged, and I'm showing them a portfolio of all these different visual things that I created. And I come to this one chart, and this one chart has like a little four step ladder of effective communication, something you could immediately relate to, and the four steps were rapport, effective communication, trust and alignment, and that would lead to high-performing groups or high-performing teamwork Report, effective communication, trust, alignment. Oh, that's pretty basic, you know? You know what I'm talking about. You don't listen to us. Well, so this woman who is the manager. The three of them are looking at my little portfolio and I'm just trying to kill some time before this other VP comes in And she says what's this chart?
Speaker 1:And I explained it to her and she starts tearing up. She starts literally crying. I said whatever, let's say, her name is Margarita. I said Margarita, why are you crying? She said because I recognize what I did. I didn't even have adequate rapport created with this team of people and this guy, and because I wasn't part of them and this guy's got his cultural differences and he doesn't want a woman managing him and blah, blah, blah. It just fell apart and he just took advantage of the fact that I didn't know any of his peers. He knew all of his peers and he just made a bet. And so I said, okay, great.
Speaker 1:And at that point the VP was coming in. She was like whoa, what's going on here? And I said, margarita, could you just go to that whiteboard and here's a pen and just tell us in your simple, simple way, step by step, what happened with this employee? It's called the Gustavo. I said, just for each step of the way, each conversation, just draw a step. So like, well, first this happened and then this happened, so she gets to like the third step in the progression of this breakdown. And the call center owner, who's sitting right there like, flips back in his chair and goes I get it, i know what happened, i know this guy, i get it, and that's what made the whole thing go away. Those two examples of being able to see it from the other person's point of view.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's so powerful, it does so powerful, providing that, just that tool to be able to visualize And then, through that visualization, it helps you verbalize what it is. It helps you just explain in a different way, get to the core of what the issue was And quickly and effectively, without everybody getting their feelings hurt, without somebody being the bad person. Right, nobody has to be the villain in this situation. I noticed on your website you also talk about developing emotional skills, being able to identify, and I guess maybe your emotional intelligence just trying to.
Speaker 2:How would you apply this to that type of a scenario as well? Could you see somebody?
Speaker 1:using this as a way. Okay, yeah, Yeah. When we're talking about our emotions, we're talking about all this invisible stuff, Some of which appears. It appears in our expression, but it also shows up in our life.
Speaker 1:It shows up in our behavior, but it's what's inside of us. So I create reality boards, reality pictures, or I help other people map their own reality which, let's face it, everything's constantly changing. Some parts of our reality are more stable than others, but there's a lot in flux And so, the more you can represent You know, we're never. I'm not trying to pull apart words and pictures. I'm saying they belong together. Our verbal language and our visual language and then, and thus our kinesthetic language, they all go together, right, arc.
Speaker 1:When I talk about a state of clarity, jennifer, or when I talk about clarity, what I really mean is a state of clarity which is visual, verbal, so that you understand the concept, everything that goes with the concept, the when, the where, the why, the how, so that you have some words with for that. But there's also an emotional and a physiological state where, when you're really clear about something, you feel a certain way. That's right And that precedes your ability to act, even if you're not fully clear. A lot of times people think they're clear And so they're at least confident enough to take a first step, even if that first step isn't really, hasn't been fully worked out or planned.
Speaker 2:And, like you said, the clarity pieces, you might take a step forward and then something else becomes fuzzy. So you got to kind of take your time there and recalibrate at some point. It's all a long doing process.
Speaker 1:So absolutely, and guess what? That is why storytelling is such a major, major part of our reality. formation of our clarification of our common rapport, building of conveyance of things is through stories.
Speaker 2:Is it not?
Speaker 1:Yeah, because when we tell people stories, they make pictures in their mind, even if we can't show them the picture through their eyes and optic nerve. It's so much a part of our lives that we're all in a story, we're sharing stories, we live in cross stories, you and I. You're sharing your story with me through your podcasts and your personality and your work. I'm sharing mine with you. So now our stories are overlapping And now we have themes and issues within our story that are even overlapping.
Speaker 2:That's right, and even if you are sharing your story and I may not have had the exact type of experience, but by being able to connect with that emotionally, that's going to be a connection. That's what really forms these relationships. That's really how the building, the rapport aspect that you were talking about earlier how do you build rapport? Let's share some stories, let me get to hear about you and where you've come from and what have your experiences been and what has that been like for you, and then vice versa. That's kind of step one in building any type of relationship. So I just love that, this system that you're talking about. like you said earlier, it's not an either or thing. to use this together with the, it helps enhance the storytelling. It really does.
Speaker 2:Absolutely It helps the person be able to get inside your head as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's why my collaborator, bart, and I did this course. It's on my website, dvlexpert. There's no comment that It'sexpert And I had never met Bart. We had no physical interaction. I just called them out of the blue. We started to talk about his software, which we use in our course. We designed this, we did this whole course over the 18 months without meeting each other physically in person ever, because we use the tools that are available today, And you and I really didn't talk about that, but it's about using the tools that are available today. In addition to this tool, i'm pointing to my mind's eye deep in my skull, and we learn nothing about our mind's eye.
Speaker 2:We don't know how it works, we just use it, But when you were, you talked about dvl meaning digital visual literacy, right Literacy. Yes, And kind of taking it back to where we were at the beginning, when you were talking about the work walls Yes. Or if you have like a vision board, if you will whatever we call it now, bringing it into the digital space. It's something that could be useful for a variety of reasons for so many people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're sitting in a Zoom call and there isn't a visual focus of some kind in my book, you're missing the boat. You're wasting all that neurology, all that human neurology and the power of that. You're totally not utilizing it. Yeah Right, because you're not. You're listening. All you're doing is using words. You're not even using the what we like to call the superpower that we're built in with. We're so built in with it that we don't even have to go to school to learn it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hello. So it's probably a good idea to ask yourself the question if you're going to address someone on your team, or whether it's actually in person or online. How can I visually represent this in a way that is going to enhance the overall message, so that they can get what it is that I'm trying to get them to get? Because, again, the message we send may not necessarily be the message received.
Speaker 1:The professional communicators all know this. Yeah, professional communicators all know this. That's what you turn on television. you're going to see, in prime time, the best of the best commercials, because they have honed and refined and designed the images with the words that they can get you to take action.
Speaker 2:Keep your audience in mind. Who is your target audience? It all goes back to the same thing, right? I hate it that we have to cut our time short, because I feel like I could talk with you all day about this stuff, because you know I'm kind of like a nerd like that, But hey, so we'll just have to do this again. I would call this part one. Oh yeah, this is part one. You're right.
Speaker 1:It's part one, because part two is how do we make this practical? How do we use this? How can people hire me, for instance? How can they hire you? How could we work jointly with somebody to enormously accelerate what they're working on their material? because it's all about application. You know that as well. Yeah, I don't really get that far talking about this in a sort of a theoretical vacuum. You've got to start applying it to people's real world situations immediately. So I would love to do a part two and have that be all about application.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think we're going to have to do that. I think this is enough to get people excited. Think about it in a different way. Think about how you're conducting your meetings. Think about how you're having conversations when you're having to manage conflict. Think about how you're having conversations with yourself when you're having to deal with some type of crisis that's going on. So, i think a part two how we can bring all of this together and apply it.
Speaker 2:I think that's absolutely the next thing that we're going to have to do, because, personally, that's one of the most important things that I want people to be able to get out of this podcast is truly give them some skills, some tools that they can use in order to help them become better at this thing we call communication. Even if it's just like a teeny, tiny little tweak that they can make, that's going to help their life get a little bit easier, whether it's personal or professional. That's always the goal here. David, i have absolutely loved having this conversation with you and just listening to you describe the work that you do and some of the positive things that have come out of this stuff that you're doing. Let the audience know. how can we get in contact with you. I know you gave your website earlier. If you could just repeat that again, maybe your social media, if you're out there, give us that contact and then I'll make sure that all of that is also in the show notes.
Speaker 1:You can find me really easily on LinkedIn. All my contact information is on my LinkedIn page. I don't know if there's any other. David Winkleman's ELMAN. The website is three lettersexpert D for digital, v for visual, l for literacy. You can have it be learning if you want, but it's bigger than learning. It's literacy. That's right.
Speaker 2:So dvlexpert.
Speaker 1:My phone number is easily accessible. I would love to hear from people. Next time, if you have listeners, have people formulate a question about something specifically that's challenging them and we will answer it. We'll get writing the material like a Dear Abby or a Dear Phil.
Speaker 2:I love it. That's something that I think that might be a good opportunity for a live stream as well. We'll get those questions in and then we can answer those questions in a live format on LinkedIn, okay.
Speaker 1:Because I just want to say one more thing. Everybody's already doing digital. They're already practicing digital visual literacy to some degree. If you're using a smartphone and a computer and or a tablet, you're already digitally visually literate to some degree. If people are sending you pictures and you're sending people pictures, then you're digitally visually literate at least a little already.
Speaker 2:That's right. So this isn't such a foreign concept that it's not doable. We've got the foundation there, just learning how to hone it and focus it just a little bit to have some big rewards.
Speaker 1:The foundation has been made.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's solid.
Speaker 1:You've already got the foundation.
Speaker 2:Thanks again, David. so much for your time and for sharing all of this. You're a wealth of knowledge on this stuff. I've really enjoyed our conversation and I know the listeners are going to get a lot out of this, and I know that they're going to wait for part two, So you and I will be in contact.
Speaker 1:We will definitely make sure to make that happen, because I know the questions will come in Good. Keep it rolling, all right, absolutely. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you, david. Everyone, i hope you enjoyed this episode talking about digital visual literacy More to come soon. Hope you all have a great rest of your day. Take care now. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it with others, watch about it on social media or leave a rating and a review.
