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Visualise to be more productive

February 8, 2018 by Brenda 1 Comment

Do you feel overwhelmed - as though you are not achieving enough? As a leader you most probably experience the outside world as being volatile, uncertain, complex and as ambiguous (VUCA). Volatility and uncertainly make it more difficult to make decisions as variables are changing so fast that there often isn’t time to collect all the relevant information.

External forces create an environment of complexity and ambiguity. This applies in the world of work, too. New trends and challenges mean that we can no longer automatically continue to use the practices and tactics that worked in the past. The influence of Millennials makes it important to dislodge much of our traditional way of thinking. Disruption is essential in order to take advantage of opportunities for the future. The rapid advances in technology bring about many of the other changes to which leaders and other executives need to adapt. There are a multitude of other changes taking place in the workplace, too. In the real world, the practical application of the empowerment of women remains a challenge as does taking advantage of diversity.

External global and regional influences and emerging trends in the workplace result in increasing stress levels in leaders. This affects their ability to react or respond appropriately. When coaching leaders and other executives, I find that managing the present often consumes their time and energy. They find it difficult to allocate time to strategic issues, leading to the future.

These were some of my findings in my research study on ‘The role of coaching in developing character strengths in leaders’. This was part of my M Phil degree (Management Coaching) through the University of Stellenbosch Business School (2017).  As a practicing executive coach I became increasingly interested in a gap in knowledge. Why wasn’t coaching being used more effectively, in general, in developing leaders in global organisations? And what coaching approaches, programmes, models and other techniques would result in outcomes which would help clients to shift their ‘way of being’ and thus cope better? This was with specific reference to coaching leaders in global organisations. I continued testing my coaching model which I streamlined for that purpose, and continue to adjust as I gain new insights. This has helped to refine my topic and model for a potential PhD study.

But how do I, in simple terms, describe the complexity of how the model works? This has been a challenge as I need to be able to address an academic audience and also potential clients. I found that my content was too abstract and I was having a problem connecting my thoughts to something concrete. I battled. But I was very excited to find a solution during Prof Sebastian Kernbach’s outstanding course, ‘The Productive PhD’ presented at the African Doctoral Academy in January 2018. My core question when doing this exercise was, ‘how do I explain what happens to leaders during the coaching programme?’

I’m sharing the process I followed in order to demonstrate how visualising can help to take thoughts and assumptions which are implicit and convert them to explicit visuals. In other words, we can take complex messages and simplify in order to make it easier for us to explain to others and also more interesting for the audience to understand. These principles apply in academic contexts and also help us to become more productive as executives, leaders or in any other areas where we need to organise and express our thoughts. In fact, they apply to any person who wants to get their point across.

For the exercise that I’m outlining, Prof Kernbach stressed that we needed to rapidly prototype and iterate. Our aim should not be perfection or beauty in our drawings but rather on creating meaning. According to Ben Schneiderman:
‘The purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures. It is not about aesthetics.’

In other words, by working speedily and roughly, the focus is on the message rather than on the detail in the drawing.

My first attempts at depicting how my model works when coaching leaders in global organisations appeared sterile. (Please see below.) However, we had been advised to value our failures, accepting them as part of the process, so I kept this series of rapid iterations and am sharing this version with you:

A rough drawing trying to show what coaching might do

This visualisation did not achieve the desired outcome. It was not inspiring and it was hard to use this visual representation to explain the nuances of the changes that might occur in the leader as a result of being coached using an effective coaching programme. In the figure above I showed the external world (red) and the world of work (green) having an influence on the leader. These remained dominant influences during the coaching process. Moving from left to right, it showed how I visualised how the leader’s inner world (blue) was stifled but grew bigger through coaching.

But I realised that this diagram would not capture the listener’s attention through bringing the story to life. I was stuck!

I asked for help and Prof Kernbach came over to my table. As he listened, he quickly captured my message in visual format. As he proceeded, at each step he did a reality check, confirmed with me that he was understanding and on the right track. In less than five minutes, including a number of rough drawings, he arrived at the representation shown below.

Professor Kernbach’s understanding of my message. (Diagram used with the kind permission of Professor Kernbach)

He captured my intention in a fluid, flexible way. His emphasis was how the leader came into the coaching programme as a ‘frigid’ (rectangular) individual. (Seen on the left). His mouth was down and he was surrounded by the tough worlds pressing in around him. As the coaching proceeded, he was no longer a rectangle, but became a smiley resilient person. The leader has removed himself further from those oppressive worlds around him. They are still there, but in the last picture on the right (after 8 coaching sessions!) he is deflecting the demands of the external worlds.

Professor Kernbach’s interpretation inspired me to presevere and below is one of my later rough visualizations. This new series of drawings, is still ‘work in progress’ and will have further refinements, but has helped me to clarify my thoughts.

Remembering that it is neither the quality of the drawing that counts, nor how beautiful it is, but rather the ability of the presenter to clarify and express his thoughts, I quickly developed the visualization below. It needed to make it easier for me to explain my thoughts.

Brenda’s later version depicting what might happen to the leader during the coaching programme

Let me explain my rough drawing above: At the beginning of the programme, shown on the left, the leader is ‘frigid’, almost paralysed through stress. He is inflexible. I have depicted him as a blue rectangle and his mouth is down and he is not looking ahead. The external world (brown) is not separated from him. He cannot distance himself. The same applies to his life in the workplace here drawn with a green pen. In both cases, the lines inward show the pressure or expectations of both worlds and how he is absorbing all the negative energy.

As the 8-stage coaching programme proceeds, moving towards the right, the leader becomes more and more flexible, more fluid and more able to adapt. After the eighth session he has grown, wears a big smile and is looking ahead. The external (VUCA) world remains the same size, but the leader is managing to distance himself from influences that could impact negatively on him. The same happens with the world of work. In both cases, because the leader has become more resilient, he is able to deflect the influences of both worlds and this is shown in the brown and green arrows.

You may ask: ‘Where does coaching show up in the diagram?’ A good coach remains flexible and ‘in the moment’ meets the person ‘where they are at’ at that time. So the red line between the beginning sessions is straight epitomising the need to match the coaching with the needs of the rectangular leader. Towards the end of the programme, as the coaching proceeds, the client benefits, becomes more receptive and the red line becomes more wavy signifying that the coaching has also been adapted to suits the person’s needs and the coach’s approach is thus much more fluid.

As you can see, what began as a difficult task for me mellowed into a fun, thought-provoking exercise. Before the visualization exercise, I battled to explain what the coaching programme seems to achieve and even in my first set of drawings, I did not appear to be gaining positive results. However, in the final series my thoughts are clearer and I’m able to more effectively describe the likely effects of the coaching programme.

I have shared just one example a visualization exercise. Examples are everywhere… in movies, maps, pie-charts, posters etc. I’m extremely grateful to Dr Kernbach and look forward to using different learnings from his course in my own self-development running parallel to my continuous progress as a coach and researcher. In addition, others will benefit either through being coached or when I mentor other coaches.

My message is that you can cope with feelings of overwhelm by becoming more productive. Make your thoughts explicit and easier to communicate to others. For example, as a leader or other executive use visualising in doing presentations. As a researcher one of the benefits will be that you will find it easier to get your message across. Use visual thinking to your benefit when thinking, communicating and writing and there will be benefits to those you influence. By becoming more productive you’ll be helping your organisation and its people to flourish.

Use these principles and you can more easily organise your thoughts, add meaning and make them explicit thus enabling you to share with others through communicating clearly. You can become more productive!

Please contact the following for more information on:

  • Leadership development or executive coaching - Brenda Eckstein through www.strategy-leadership.com or brenda@146.66.90.172
  • Visualization workshops - Professor Sebastian Kernbach through www.vicola.org
  • The University of Stellenbosch Summer or Winter Schools: The African Doctoral Academy (ADA) - http://www0.sun.ac.za/ada/

Theoretical background
The following is intended for those who are interested in the theoretical background to the above example of a visual thinking exercise:

There is a need for a new working intelligence (Kernbach, 2018). When we engage in activities like this, Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Human Intelligence (reference) is relevant as we are using three types of intelligence which he refers to as ‘analytical intelligence’, ‘creative intelligence’ and ‘practical intelligence’. We are using analytical intelligence for abstract thinking and logical reasoning. Creative intelligence comes into play allowing divergent thinking in novel situations. We are also using his third kind of intelligence, practical intelligence, in order to apply the knowledge to the real world and shape our environment. This requires methods, tools and resources.

During the course we captured our message in ‘one eye-span’, a term coined by Edward Tufte whose work was based on Cognitive Load Theory (Clark, Nguyen Sweller and Baddeley, 2006). Thus, our message needed to fit on one page so that we didn’t have to turn our heads. If you can see everything at once, you are able to make sense of information more easily as, for example, you don’t have to remember what was on the previous page. Visualisation extends the brain’s capacity through Distributed Cognition to help us make our implicit thought explicit and thus available to others. The use of shape colour, space and size are used to create visual representations of our messages.

The process here demonstrates aspects of Dual Coding Theory. Processing information through two channels, here imagery and verbal, and using them together increases engagement, attention and recall. The work of Barbara Tversky is relevant in her work on ‘picture superiority’.

References

  • Black, A. (1992). Envisioning information: Edward Tufte, Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 126 pp. ISBN 0 961 3921 1 8.
  • Clark, R. C., Nguyen, F., Sweller, J., & Baddeley, M. (2006). Efficiency in learning: Evidence‐based guidelines to manage cognitive load. Performance Improvement, 45(9), 46-47.
  • Kernbach, S. (2018). The Productive PhD. African Doctoral Academy
  • Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current status. Canadian Journal of Psychology/Revue canadienne de psychologie, 45(3), 255.
  • Sadoski, M., & Paivio, A. (2013). Imagery and text: A dual coding theory of reading and writing. Routledge.
    Shneiderman, B. (2008, June). Extreme visualization: squeezing a billion records into a million pixels. In Proceedings of the 2008 ACM SIGMOD international conference on Management of data (pp. 3-12). ACM.
    Sternberg, R. J. (1985). Beyond IQ: A triarchic theory of human intelligence. CUP Archive.
  • Tversky, B., Morrison, J. B., & Betrancourt, M. (2002). Animation: can it facilitate?. International journal of human-computer studies, 57(4), 247-262.

Use your low-energy times productively

January 31, 2018 by Brenda 3 Comments

Last week while attending the African Doctoral Academy at Stellenbosch University in the Western Cape, South Africa  I had many great insights which I’d like to share with you over the next few articles.  These ‘aha moments’ occurred during an outstanding 5-day course, ‘The Productive PhD’ presented by Dr Sebastian Kernbach of the University of St Gallen, Switzerland.  He also presents a similar course at Stanford University in the USA and other leading educational institutions globally.

Professor Sebastian Kernbach and Brenda Eckstein – January 2018

This course covered fascinating, researched ways in which we can become more productive.  I came away with a new ‘toolbox’ of simple and effective visualisation methods and ways of creating awareness of energy levels and using each state more productively.  These topics are broad and in this article I focus only on creating awareness and using low-energy times more productively. 

Our facilitator articulated and demonstrated his message clearly:  we can be more productive through structuring our days according to our energy levels.  Although his approach referred primarily to flourishing during a PhD, this approach would apply equally in most people’s business or professional lives, too.

In order to focus on the ‘lows’ let’s look at the pattern of an average day in most people’s lives:

Permission to use the above slide was kindly granted by Professor Kernbach

Professor Kernbach’s message was clear.  We should not try to erase those times.  The result would be lessening  the energy level of our following prime or high-energy periods each of which usually lasts two to three hours.  So we should rather engage in mental, emotional and physical activities found to be most effective during low-energy periods.

From a mental perspective, during these times we have better access to creative and holistic thinking and intuition.  Emotionally we have an improved perception of our own moods and are more empathetic.  Physically that is a good time to have a snack, exercise or take a cat-nap. 

We were interested to hear that research has shown that this is not a beneficial time to drink coffee.  For many of us, that was contrary to the way we instinctively have a cup of good, strong coffee (or other stimulant) to lift our energy.  Does that sound familiar?  Yet, evidently, although that will help us to feel more ‘awake’ during the low-energy time, it also reduces the level of the following ‘high’ thus not enabling us to take maximum advantage of the activities we could most productively engage in during those high-energy times.  In other words, drinking coffee during a ‘low’ will mean that our low is not so low, but in addition, it will reduce the level of the following ‘high’. The coffee-drinking time most conducive to using our energy levels most productively is at the start of an upward curve in our energy cycle.

So how do you and I apply this information in a practical way?  First let me show you what I discovered during the course.  I’ll use my own example to demonstrate my ‘findings’ and this is the process I followed:

  1. I drew my own energy map showing my perceived energy levels on an average day. This can be seen in the black curve in the rough diagram below.  Yes, I could easily show the alpha time, prime time and high time.  And yes, my own main low lasted about 2 to 3 hours as did the two high-energy times. 
  2. However, that was on an ‘average day’. But what would happen to my energy levels on a day, for want of a better term, I have called an ‘excited day’?  So I drew the curve in green.  There were significant differences.  There I woke up earlier, eager to start on a project that inspired me.  My energy was higher from a much earlier time and although there were variations, stayed higher in the evening, too. 
  3. I was the determined to look at another kind of day, the days where I wake up exhausted and battle to get going. There my energy is lower all day and trails off in the evening.   (Please see the red curve.)

Rough diagram: Brenda’s energy levels on three different kinds of days

By looking at three different ways in which I could divide the kinds of days I have (from an energy perspective) and superimposing those three simple graphs, it was astonishing to become aware that, regardless of the kind of day I’m experiencing, all three curves have a similar ‘low-energy’ period in common.  This insight is profound as it means I should change my habits in order to take greater advantage of that time.

I went back to the drawing-board and explored the activities that I should allocate to those 2 or 3 hours in the middle of the day.  One great insight was that this was the best time for me to attend to e-mails!  To be most productive I should not allow this time-consuming activity to interrupt my higher-energy times which can be used more productively for other activities such as problem-solving or higher level strategy thinking.

It is taking a great amount of discipline to break my former habit of getting my e-mails out the way as early in the day as possible.  However, I’m already experiencing the benefits.  This has practical implications for the clients whom I coach.  Most are high-level leaders in executive positions and resent the amount of time they need in order to attend to e-mails and do other routine tasks effectively.  It reduces their time for more strategic activities.  Thus, although this form of communication is highly effective, it may deplete our emotional energy.

In executive coaching programmes I have tried various tactics with different clients, crafting programmes to suit their needs.  An example may be limiting their attending to e-mails to a specific blocked-off period on workdays.  This time would be chosen to suit that person’s perceived needs.  A few of the leaders have chosen 4pm to 6pm as the only time they allow themselves to look at or work on e-mails and this has benefitted them, but only in a limited fashion.  However, it has helped to free the early part of the day for more strategic endeavours.

So, what is the relevance or significance of sharing this insight regarding my own energy levels?  It means that, in order for anyone to maximise their low-energy periods, it would be an advantage for them to know when those times occur and plan to do routine admin tasks (including e-mails) or even have a cat-nap during those times.  This would enhance the quality of the ensuing high-energy period. 

Regardless of whether you are trying to be more productive in your academic endeavours, business or professional work, map your energy levels, plan your more routine tasks during low-energy periods and you will benefit through being more productive.  Try it and let me know how you find this exercise.  Thank you!

For more information on executive coaching programmes (conducted either ‘in person’ or via Skye – so location doesn’t matter!) or personal strategy, please contact brenda@146.66.90.172, Website:  www.strategy-leadership.com

Please also visit Professor Kernbach’s websites in order to learn more about the work he does:  https://mcm.unisg.ch/en/transfer/beratung/visual-collaboration-lab

Details of the July 2018 African Doctoral Academy Winter School will soon be available:  http://www0.sun.ac.za/ada/

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