The first time someone used drawing to explain something to me was in my early days of product management. I was 21, without a university education, working at an Edtech company. I thought I’d never be able to navigate the work because I had none of the academic or technical jargon. But one of the developers sat me down and drew a diagram of how the product worked and I instantly felt at ease. Never in my entire education or work could I remember anyone else drawing what they were trying to explain - it was eye opening.
As I transitioned into facilitation work a few years later I naturally started to use drawing techniques as a way for people to articulate complex ideas in strategy and vision sessions. It was clear to me that a lot of the senior leaders I worked with raced to use big words that they did not fully comprehend, and nodded along to each other without understanding what was going on under the hood, which ultimately led to confusion further down the line. But if I’m honest I also just enjoyed the discomfort it created for people that were used to being able to communicate verbally. This was prior to my work within the Equity and Inclusion space and prior to my autism diagnosis but I knew that there was something inherently biased about the way the professionalised world operated that meant people that could articulate themselves with a certain tone and language dominated the conversations and decision-making.
But it wasn’t until quite a few years later that I got to experience a facilitator using drawing techniques with me and it clicked as to why that approach was so profound. Working at Collaborative Future alongside my co-founders Prisca and Sonia, we’d been struggling to make sense of tensions that were present for us on a youth programme we’d been running. Imani Clough asked us all to draw our experiences of the programme using shapes only, and then to talk each other through what we’d drawn. As soon as she set the task my brain lit up, stars and lines and squiggles filled my page. I hadn’t been able to order my thoughts to my team in words because every time they came out of my mouth they didn’t quite speak to what I felt in my body, and they caused responses that I wasn’t expecting. In return as my teammates talked me through their drawings I got to see the patterns that their brains honed in on. The differences in what we felt most viscerally and the layers that we each noticed in the work were clearer. Even the way we each structured our thoughts were different - and it made me realise that through trying to communicate in a shared language we’d each been missing each others nuances.
On the surface we all already knew all this. We’d each grown up in different cultures. We each had very different people and values in our lives. We each had very different brains and rhythms and needs. But this was the first time I truly felt its presence so clearly in our work. And through witnessing those differences in this way we could finally pinpoint the specific things that were causing conflict for us. All of that in a 20-minute exercise.
From that point onwards I became obsessed with drawing and shapes as a way of communicating for any layer of the work. When I’m mediating a conflict I’ll get each person to first draw their experience of that conflict before jumping into unpacking it verbally. People have remarked that this approach also allows them to de-personalise things. Comparing shapes on a page together is more connecting and grounding than speaking directly to another person or worse pointing fingers at them. When I want a team to explore the role they or their team play within the work they do I get them to draw their ideal day or draw how their work flows into the wider ecosystem and then to compare and contrast with other people’s drawings. Quite often verbal processing centres similarities, we seek to assimilate towards the dominant voice. But when we can visually see the differences in what we’ve noticed we can identify the exciting nuances between us and make more conscious choices around what to move towards. When I’m asking people to imagine possibilities for how their work could transform society I get them to use visual metaphors to expand their thinking and to express what doesn’t yet exist. Language can be quite constricting. It is also so shaped by patriarchal and colonial powers. As described by Minna Salami in Sensuous Knowledge “The bullet was the means of the physical subjugation. Language was the means of the spiritual subjugation”.
When I introduce people to drawing exercises as part of the holding space series a lot of retinence I hear from people about using this type of thing in the spaces they are part of is the discomfort it might create for people. Often what I say in response is that 9 times out of 10 the people that are uncomfortable with communicating in this way tend to be able to navigate the systems with some ease because they can speak the right words in the right way. It is okay to make them feel uncomfortable for a little while so that others can have a moment to communicate in a way that makes more sense to them. And even if people struggle to communicate their ideas visually, the act of slowing down with a pen and sitting with your thoughts for a moment generally means that what follows out of their mouth is more considered than it might’ve been otherwise.
Of course it is also worth remembering that some people might not have the dexterity or limbs required for drawing, or there might people that have perhaps been shamed in the past around their creative skills. For these people I’d suggest adaptations. Maybe you could bring glue and colourful shapes and pictures to collage with. Maybe you could ask people to work in pairs and play to their strengths. Or maybe just some people draw but it sparks new thinking for those who look at that drawing and see a new layer or pattern.
This is an excerpt from a new book I’m writing about facilitation, if you enjoyed reading this and would like to be part of the process of reviewing the content please email me on ray@and-breathe.org