I have a passion for supporting clients in creating and revising processes and approaches for better effectiveness; clearer communication, higher awareness, and a polished ability to cut through the noise of everyday demands, challenges, and stressors.

Often, I find that simple and approachable solutions are the best we have if we’re ever going to try something new or difficult. One behaviour I believe a lot of leaders and organizations can start to develop is actively bringing challenges and concerns from the audible space to the visual space.

When we are using our voice to communicate our competing demands, where a certain phase of a project is at, or what our latest roadblock is, there are several challenges at play:

• The words we use have points of reference that we comprehend at one level, but that level may be different from the individual we are speaking to.
• The other person must be listening to what we are saying. Listening is a skill; it’s a vulnerable skill. I know I’m truly listening to someone when I’m placing greater value on what they are saying than what I’m thinking. It’s vulnerable for a variety of reasons: they may be wrong, they may be influencing others to a less accurate point, they may be wasting our time—the list goes on and on.
• The other person may not value what we’re saying, but behaviourally they can nod, look us in the eyes, and say, “Yes, that sounds like a great plan.” This is often where I encourage leaders to learn to “listen to behaviour, not words.” Trust is built when behaviour and words have alignment.
• It can be easy for the listener to perceive the speaker is overwhelmed, juggling too much, stressed, or even derailing.

Often, this leads to conflict; projections and misunderstandings become a reality. It’s never been easier to say the right thing at the right time to the right person. Talk is cheap and easy; behaviour is everything.

So where does this take us? In my coaching and consulting practice, I try to help clients understand the concepts of serial processing and parallel processing—concepts found in many disciplines but most often seen within computing. I use our audible system as an example of serial processing and our visual system as an example of parallel processing.

Think of serial processing as a linear process, much like the one you’re engaged in right now to read this article. If you were to select a paragraph at random and read the article that way, it wouldn’t make much sense. However, when it comes to our brain’s ability to synthesize and comprehend visual information, there is almost no comparing the processing power. It’s as if our visual system can comprehend many different smaller components at once compared to our audible system. In addition, we do not control someone else’s visual system the same way we can control what we say. This is an added benefit when creating effective visuals, as the other person we’re communicating with has control over what they look at and how they prioritize the data.

What does this boil down to? If I have an intelligent visual of where I am at with my projects, tasks, responsibilities, resources, people, supports, delegations, statuses, and next steps, I can trust that the person I’m trying to communicate with will be able to absorb much more information from that visual. They will have much greater confidence in our ability to be mindful and accountable to many different, complicated moving pieces within a workplace.

It creates a medium or context where two individuals can tackle a problem together instead of tackling each other.

What things would go into your intelligent visual? How would you keep it succinct? Remember that the visual is created by you, but it’s intended to be effective for other people, so ensure you are considering the audience you are communicating with. What would they value in our visual? Labels are meaningful—does my audience understand the label enough that it’s effective?

There is one more benefit to this habit of getting into the visual space that’s harder to describe. It has to do with what Carl Jung identified regarding sensing and intuition. These are two distinct ways in which people have a preference for taking in and processing information.

Often, someone who is higher in sensing is focused on details, specifics, what’s measurable and predictable. It’s about the trees we can see and understand. Someone who is higher in the intuitive side is more focused on bigger-picture thinking, the interconnectedness of cause and effect, potential, and what might not be immediately obvious. It’s about the forest, not just the trees. (This is the way I have come to describe these things, not necessarily how Jung may have).

When one person has a strong intuitive function and one has a stronger sensing function, I have found that the sooner they are able to “draw out the problem,” the better the interaction can become. The drawing process and visual created slow the intuitive person down enough so they aren’t getting too far ahead of themselves or too excited about the potential. It also creates a more linear thought process for the sensing person to follow.

In addition, it can allow the individual stronger in the sensing function to zoom out slightly, while being able to drill down on specifics within the image that the intuitive individual may not have considered. Lastly, if that individual with a stronger sensing function had asked their “dream killer question” halfway through an intuitive spewing, they may have been perceived as shutting that person down and never hearing the end of their journey or point (which, while painful to sift through, may end up having benefits to the organization or team).

It’s simple, effective, and actually a lot of fun as we get more effective in exchanging ideas without having to work as hard.