How Thought Leaders Can Leverage The Power Of Visual Thinking

How are you, Peter?

How you doing?

I am good. Then to think about, all right, what are some examples of when and how I do it, and what are some times where I might have been able to do it and I didn't, or see what other people are doing, right? So I break it down into 4 ways to think and communicate more visually. So the 4 ways are using imagery and drawing. The second one is using mental models and frameworks. The third one is using metaphor and analogy, and the fourth one is using storytelling, and bonus points for humor, right? Those are the 4 categories, right? So some people may say, oh, I'm in a meeting. It's intuitive for me to just jump up and start drawing on a flip chart like I'm playing Pictionary, right? Sketching something out, a mind map, a storyboard, right? Some people are great at that, and it's just instinct to do it. And then there are other people who say, oh, I can't draw, but I could paint a picture with words. I'm a good storyteller. I'm good at I could tell an anecdote well. I could— you could tell a story that is a cautionary tale, like don't ever let this happen to you, or a success story. You wouldn't believe what happened and how well we did, right?

Mm-hmm.

So, think about which of these most apply to you. Which are you most comfortable with? And the great thing is that these are all developable skills, right? You can learn to do— in fact, not only could learn, we have to learn how to do all of these things. And we all do them to different extents. So, one of the examples, the classic example, is if you ask a group of business people, how many of you can draw? Hardly anyone raises their hand. You ask a group of first graders, how many of you kids can draw? They all raise their hand, right? So have we lost our ability to draw or our confidence over the years, right? If you could draw a circle, square, and a triangle, you can draw enough to communicate an idea as if you're playing Pictionary. So I have tons of stories about that, but there's just a few ways to frame. And even the word framing, you know, so that's a way to frame visual thinking. We have a picture in our house that Neither my wife or I liked. Then she got a brand new frame for it. Now we love it, right? Same picture, but the frame changed everything about it, right? So if you take an idea or a message or an issue or problem, if you reframe it, you'll be able to see them differently and maybe see solutions that you didn't see before. So those are just a few off the top of my head examples of how we can and do already use visuals.

So, so what if you're not really sure Which style is most, you know, is right? I mean, some, to some people it's obviously, I, you know, put a marker in my hand and I'm Picasso or whatever, right? To others, they know it's, it's, it's through the use of words, right? What if you're not really sure or you're not really aware of where you're doing it or how well you're doing it or whatever? How might you be? Because it seemed like an awkward thing to have to sort of audit yourself on.

Yeah, well, one is if you read the book, And you see the different types. Each chapter has a questionnaire at the end, just a couple of brief questions. You could say, is this something I do? Is this something I'm good at? Is this something I'm comfortable with or not? Right? And when you break it down to the different types, again, some people are great verbally telling stories. Other people are good with images. And even if you can't draw, you could take a picture from a magazine. You could hold something up. Here's a real-life example, a couple of real-life examples. What's your, what's your first reaction when I hold this up? This is an image that none of us had ever seen before until a few months ago. First reaction.

Yes, right.

Right? So we see this thing. This is this invisible thing that's terrorizing the world. And you see it and it creates this visceral emotional reaction. Some people think about— you may know someone who got sick and even maybe even passed away from it. Other people think, oh, that's impacted— we're hunkering down because of this. Other people think this has cost me my business, right? So this one little molecule basically triggers these emotional reactions in a way that if you were just talking about it, it wouldn't. Another real-life example, a phrase that's part of our lexicon now, didn't exist until a few months ago, flatten the curve, right?

Yeah.

You know, you don't have to know anything about viruses or statistics to be able to use this frame and say, you know what, this framework and this model, which is a visual, it's a metaphor, right? If we do not flatten the curve, we're gonna overload the healthcare system, right? So just by doing this, this is the way to influence people's behavior and say, we need to wear masks, we need to social distance, or this is gonna happen to us, right?

Mm-hmm.

And another example, last one in my trilogy. Dr. Fauci said that with COVID it's not gonna be like flipping a switch, it's gonna be more like a dimmer, right? So just that visual metaphor, in what ways is this true, right? It's not like as of September 1st, COVID is over, we can all go back to work, flip the switch, we're done. It's a dimmer. We open things up and now we're going to have to dial it back and you're going to keep doing it until, you know, we figure this thing out. So right there, those are— because I just did a webinar on visual leadership in the world of COVID and those are 3 samples that I used from that. So I just figured I'd share it here. But all 3 of these examples did not exist 4 months ago, right? And now they're part of our common language.

So that's— I mean, that's an interesting point in terms of things that were not part of the lexicon now are. And that happens all the time. I mean, you're talking specifically around COVID, but things happen, things change, things whatever. I'm wondering sort of on the other side how you might need to audit the things that you're typically doing in terms of metaphors or analogies or whatever to make sure, because I was just thinking as you were talking, it used to be in every pitch meeting to a VC for a certain company, and here's how we're going to go viral, you know, like that's probably not a positive thing anymore.

Yeah.

When Twitter went viral, that was awesome for Twitter. When Facebook went viral, Now it's like, no, like, different word. I don't know what the replacement word is. But I would imagine we need a new word for that when trying to make the point of something spreading quickly without, you know, like, leaving us locked in our homes.

'Cause now there's this really negative association with going viral, right? So it's, right, so maybe there is, someone's gonna come up with a variation of that. But yeah, the metaphors we use. So for example, we're big baseball fans. I'm a big Yankee fan. I have my little helmet, my Carvel hat right over here. Right. Baseball analogies are great shortcuts and great ways to explain things, except for, for example, in my NYU class, I teach leadership in the Human Capital Management graduate program.

Right.

80% of my students are females from China, right? So for a 25-year-old female from China, telling a great Joe Torre-Derek Jeter story is not really going to connect with them, right? So you need to say what metaphors and analogies might. Something more universal. Dance. Theater. Nature. Nature is universal, right? So a lot of times I was using— I once asked a question and someone said— I said the same thing. I said, oh, I'm sounding like a broken record. Someone thought broken record meant to break an Olympic record, like winning a gold medal, because these millennials didn't have any experience with that vinyl LP with the needle stuck in the groove.

Skipping.

In fact, even when I listen to a song on Spotify, certain songs I wait for the song to get stuck at that point because that's where my album always got stuck, right?

Right.

So that's again, that's an auditory memory. But yeah, same, a lot of the— think about analogies and metaphors that we use that are now generic and archaic. I use some of my father's expressions. Like I'll say to my wife, oh, get that, you know, put that, you know, give me a— can you grab me a soda from the Frigidaire? You know, Frigidaire, it's like, what are you, my grandmother? It's like, who uses Frigidaire or Vellisa or Victrola? Those are words my father used, right? Those were brands from, you know, my parents' generation. You said that to someone, a millennial or Gen Z, they have no idea what you're talking about, right? So we need to change our language to resonate with our audience culturally, and especially in this world of diversity, inclusion, belonging, equity. We really need to modify the examples we use. We need to be more diverse in everything that we do, but that needs to be on our radar. We need to be more aware of it.

So I want to go meta for a second on, on your stuff, Todd, from a thought leadership perspective. Yeah. So here's what's As the thought leadership guy, what's cool about your stuff, you have a ton of models and methodologies and frameworks in the book, tons and tons and tons. Bill and I are model geeks, right?

Yes.

You're able to bring it to life in words and in pictures, which you're sort of eating your own dog food there. But when you and I first spoke a couple of months ago, I had this misperception of what the framework of the book is, because the book wasn't out yet. And I was thinking it was sort of the Graphic recording, these, you know, the visual people that you see. We've all been to these meetings and there's like Edward Scissorhands there with the 7 markers and they sort of record it. And so at first, that's the closest comparable I had in my mind to what you were talking about. So I sort of filed it there.

Yeah, here's an example from my book of a visual graphic recording that we had someone do from one of our workshops. So that's what a lot of people think of is what you're describing.

Yeah, and I've worked with a lot of those folks, talked with a lot of those folks. I love that stuff. I'm visual, so I'm just fascinated how somebody's brain can process 3 different speakers in a whole day and turn it into sort of the poster and it really captures the essence of it. That's not you. So one of the things was like, you and I talked about it, it's like, okay, it's not this, but there's elements of this that resonate with you. You love to see words turned into pictures, the complex made simple.

Yeah.

The, you know, something distilled down to something that the brain can process differently. So it took me a while to sort of get that. And now I'm really tuned into sort of what your, thought leadership lane is, right? And I think, you know, you, you clearly are as well. I want to just sort of open it up. Does anybody have any questions around either the, the getting the clarity around their lane of thought leadership and/or how to integrate visual thinking to be able to make your case be impactful, talk to more, more folks recently, more folks with more impact? Anyone? Maxine, there we go.

Yeah, I have lots of questions. I'm wondering, like, the flatten the curve imagery that you showed us really made me start to think about how policymakers and federal governments can use visual thinking to convey a message really quickly. And I'm wondering if that relationship is established as strong with big bodies like that. Are they looking to find the dim and the switch To again convey very broadly, especially now when we have to communicate kind of one challenge to all of our, you know, residents. Are you seeing this be applied that way?

Yeah, you know who did an amazing job with this was, if you've watched any of Andrew Cuomo's press conferences, the visual imagery he used, whoever did his slides did an amazing job. Like, for example, he was talking about this being a tsunami and they showed a picture of a tsunami and saying we're gonna be drowned by this if we don't harness this. So he's great with the— he's great with all 4 categories. He used visual imagery amazingly well, the pictures in the background. He used models, like some of the graphs and charts. And Bill Sherman's on the call, he's a master of models, and a MOM, M-O-M, master of models. So Cuomo did an amazing job with that. He was great with metaphor analogies like the tsunami, and also storytelling. He made it very personal. He talked about his mother, not wanting to get her sick. He talked about his brother, Chris Cuomo, who actually was really very sick with COVID So, that's a great example, almost a case study in a visual leader using all of these techniques to be effective. So, yeah, we're all trying to get people to see what we're saying and it's not used enough. Data visualization has caught on in recent years. How do you communicate numbers instead of an Excel spreadsheet?

Yeah.

Graph a chart. You know, USA Today started that years ago, right? When they started using colorful charts to indicate, to communicate data. And one of the things we talk about, numbers are meaningless outside of the context and the story that they tell, right? So, one of the examples I use is if I say I have a .250 average, it means nothing. If I say I have a .250 average in softball or baseball, it's mediocre. If I have a .250 average in bowling, that's pretty great, right? So, the number .250 means nothing outside of context. And the classic example is Steve Jobs. He held up the iPod and said, This has 5— holds 5 gigabytes of data means nothing. If you say this holds 1,000 songs in your pocket, that's unbelievable, right? So, we need to translate data and boring statistics into the story that it's telling. Well, I coach other faculty members at NYU. And one professor said to me, what I teach is really boring. So, this stuff doesn't apply to me. And I said, it's the exact opposite, right? If you're really boring, find a way to make it more interesting. Why do you find it interesting? Why do you have a passion for this? If you find it boring, imagine how your students are going to feel, right? So we need to find a way to be creative and inspire people through whatever we're doing.

So stay with that boring point for a minute. So for example, if we go back to Cuomo, one of the other things that was great about what he did is he knew who his target audience was. It's average Jane or Joe, right? This is not a PhD class in nuclear physics. He's got to hit probably, you know, 8th grade reading level or whatever, you know, it'd be the equivalent of a poster in the subway and not be patronizing, right? Not, not be intellectually offensive, not, not, you know, use a smiley face and a frown or something.

Right.

So I think he hit the right tone of taking very serious, very complex, data-driven stuff, boil it down to just the essence. Because, you know, your person said, well, my stuff's really complicated, really boring. That's actually lazy, you know, because eventually if you believe, well, the only way to teach, you know, calculus is to be boring and lazy, Okay, well, that's, you know, I think it's the challenge of how do I integrate something that is unknown to me, and I have to apply a beginner's mind to make it poignant and relevant and etc. I mean, anybody could come up with these, you know, graphs and try— we've all been through these horrible PowerPoint presentations where there's, you know, 2-point type and you look at it and you go, I don't even— my eyes don't even know where to land.

Right.

I can't make heads or tails of this versus I think a good visual, it's in support of a point, but, but you're also not having me think about how I have to think. You're actually somehow playing with the brain going, your eye knows naturally to go right there. Flatten the curve is like a good example. It's like, ah, this bad, this good, everything we're doing is about that. Like, that makes, that makes sense. There's no, wait, you know, is, is, are we sort of flattening it? No, we want to do it quickly. Like, right, the slope of the flat, you know, all that sort of stuff.

So—

Yeah, I think about the difference between a billboard on a highway and a print ad in a newspaper magazine.

Yeah.

A billboard on the highway is designed to be read at 60 to 80 miles an hour, right? You wouldn't put a magazine ad up on a billboard, right? So it's just like, what is the, you know, the medium is the message kind of thing. Marshall McLuhan said that, you know, back in the '60s. So you need to customize your content and your message to your audience, to your purpose, to the context and the situation. And sometimes you need an Excel spreadsheet with all the numbers, but that's the backup stuff. That's not what you put up on your screen. and bore people to death with, right? I've had professors say, oh, this is the boring part, just bear with me. It's like, no, we're not going to bear with you. And I say, would you want— would you have wanted to sit through your presentation? And people say no. It's like, well, why are you torturing— why are you using PowerPoint as a torture device instead of, you know, using it to inspire and to inform people?

So let's go a different way from the visual for a moment, from the physically visual, if that's a thing. Metaphors and analogies. I think people struggle with that. I think some people have a natural flair or whatever to speak sometimes to, to, to the point of annoyance in metaphors and analogies.

Yeah.

But when done well, it's an art. And then others just, they're either too literal or whatever it is. How might you coach someone to say, you know what, Peter, start to— we want you to start using some more metaphors. Here's, here's a way that one might think about that. Or because that seems like a capability, it's a muscle. That you need to learn to develop. So maybe—

Yeah, I mean, one thing, one thing is we use them all the time without even realizing it. And once it's on your radar, you notice it all the time. And you see good metaphors, analogies, and bad ones. So good ones make the invisible visible, make the unfamiliar familiar. But the bad one backfires on you. It actually makes things— instead of simplifying complexity, it may complexify simplicity, if that's a word, right? So we're trying to simple things but not dumb them down. We're trying to find You know, if you say, you know, my love is like a red, red rose, right? How is your love like a red, red rose, right? So you could talk about this. This is from the book The Inner Game of Tennis. Where you talk— wait, this little— this poem talks about how when you plant a seed in the ground, you don't say, oh, you're deficient in some way. You just say you're a seed. At this stage in your development, you're a seed. And then you're a stem, and then you sprout, and then you blossom, right? So same thing with someone's development. You don't criticize someone for being a seed. We all start as a seed, just as a rose starts as a seed, and eventually you'll become this, right? So, just using that as a visual metaphor, I could have told that without showing it, but the power of showing it— I saw everyone go like this, like lean into the screen, right?

Lean into the screen.

That's just human nature. My colleague Brian Talley, who's on the call, once got me a picture that he saw on the streets of New York of an iceberg. So, thank you for that, Brian. I carry— this is a different version of it, but I have both of them. So if you think about the iceberg, we use that expression all the time. This is just the tip of the iceberg, right? When you first meet someone, your first impression is just the tip of the iceberg. When someone's an overnight success, we only see the tip of the iceberg. We don't see the 30 years of pain, suffering, and failure that went into it, right? So if you just have that concept, that visual metaphor of the iceberg in your mind, it's what are we seeing versus what's beneath the surface that we're not seeing. And it's up to us to dive beneath the surface. So right there, That's using the iceberg as a visual metaphor. And similarly, you could say, you know, you could think of the iceberg as, you know, Titanic, right? What are the dangers that we could potentially crash into that can make us— our project sink if we don't, you know, look out for it, right? So you could use a metaphor or visual image in a variety of different ways. So I think that's the key thing. What are you interested in? What's your audience interested in?

I agree.

I think that's the key thing. Find metaphors and analogies. That resonate. I see JP just added one. That's spilled milk under the bridge. Yes. JP, by the way, wrote one of the chapters in my book. His Power, Way, and Impact model is featured in my book. So that was the only model that was not one of my originals. And so it's kind of the new version of vision, mission, and values. So I just want to give JP a little shout out because he's on the call.

Cool. Does anybody want to play sort of Stump Todd and talk to them about their content and thought leadership and see if he could, you know, the doctor is in, help you develop a— yeah, Dave, go for it. Mr. Summers.

Yeah, Todd, everything you said makes— I've lived every dream and I've suffered every nightmare that you talked about. Cross-cultural challenges with some of these metaphors is number one. Number 2 is the very last thing you said on your list of things, and that's bonus points for a sense of humor. That's like a minefield, isn't it? Don't you have to be like incredibly careful with that? Or, you know, just what are your thoughts on that on a high level?

Yeah, you don't have to be Jerry Seinfeld to incorporate humor into your presentation. I'm not talking about jokes. I've seen people start off with, hey, 3 guys walk into a bar. And that has nothing to do with what you're talking about. It's just to make people laugh. That's not what we're saying. But if you could find the humor in a situation, if you could, you know, again, I always talk about putting the humanity back in human resources, right, in the programs I teach. In a lot of companies, human resources people are seen as the company police or, you know, whatever.

Yeah.

Be quiet, HR's in the house, right? So it's like, if you lighten it up, if you humanize yourself, if you tell stories, if you use humor, As a manager, for example, you could teach someone how to do something and say, do this and don't do this. Or you could say, you wouldn't believe what happened to me my first week on the job. This is—

Yeah.

A bonehead mistake. It humanizes you, makes you vulnerable, makes you relatable, and it kind of like lowers the bar so the person knows they don't expect you to be perfect and whatever. I tell a story that's in my book about my boss at C— I won't mention what TV network I was working at, but it has a C, a B, and an S in the title. I don't want to out the company or my boss. But I was sitting at my desk and I hear her door flinging open. Open and I feel something whiz by my head and she threw a box of pens at me because they were the wrong ones. She wanted fine point. These were medium point, right? So I could talk about, you know, my psycho bosses, but just the visual imagery of that story, I'm sure you're picturing it in your mind, what it'd be like to be sitting at your desk and have a box thrown at your head. So it's very funny now in retrospect. It wasn't so funny at the time when I was working for, for a psycho boss. But I think that's the key thing to answer Dave's question. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. Humor humanizes us. But again, it's not about jokes. It's about finding the subtle humor in everything. Even in the age of COVID Andrew Cuomo used some levity. I think we have to lighten the mood sometimes. And again, it doesn't have to be laugh-out-loud funny, but I think it's just, again, finding the funny side of life that helps us to kind of navigate crisis situations. And so—

Yeah.

Also, humor resonates with people and is memorable, right? So that's another thing I talked about— 3 things: attention, comprehension, and retention. When you use visual thinking and visual communication, it captures people's attention, gets them to focus, helps them to understand comprehension, and helps them to remember. So a good story, especially with humor, will do all 3 of those things.

Well, and I think to the point— I'll get to one second— the point with humor, Todd, is, yeah, your goal is not to be You know, Eddie Murphy, you know, like that's not the goal. But it just sets a tone and sets a mood as you can sort of get over yourself a little bit and have those conversations. And I think there's different degrees, right? You know, self-deprecating is usually fairly safe because you're putting yourself at risk, right?

Right.

Oh, he's making fun of his own quirkiness versus—

Well, I think be Don Rickles, right?

I mean, that's— Going after attack mode, right? Oh my God, those glasses ridiculous, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Probably not, not so good.

Not at all.

Yeah, a question.

Yeah, uh, well, uh, I just would like to thank you for this seminar and also the book and everything, because, uh, I share a little bit of experience of using these sort of approaches, and I was so, so excited that a couple of months ago that I saw the title of such a book and such a, such a thinking, because I'm A very, very visual person, and I started teaching to cohorts, to big cohorts that do not have any work experience, very, very complex issues in projects. And it was like from 10 years ago, it was a nightmare to explain to people who hasn't been into workplace, explaining what politics mean in the workplace. Or what the challenges or how you have to make sense or what you should see. So basically, throughout the years, a combination of whatever you said—examples, metaphors, and things—and of course, in different across the different cultures, it's very difficult for them to understand some metaphors. So you have to work and test them. Some of them test them until you could develop that sort of language. But it has been doing magic. I had to kill myself in a couple of lectures to explain what complexity means and how you understand complexity.

Mm-hmm.

Now I have just one slide, one picture, and taking this picture with me from the first semester to the second semester, whenever I'm going to explain something very complex, it's interesting that all the students without any sort of experience, without even proper skills, language skills, they would understand and they remember that even after a couple of years. And interestingly, I've tried this sort of method with, uh, chill— with kids from 5 years old to 10, 12, 14, and I compared the results. And I used that with CEOs as well, and it's, it's just interesting that how this communication would be facilitated and you could transfer the complex stuff to them. So yeah, I can't wait to read the whole book.

Thank you, Ramesh. Yeah, I was gonna ask, as Ramesh was talking, how many of us, as you know, in the consulting part of our lives have sort of our magic slides? Like, we— it used to take us an hour to get a client to see something, and then one day you did whatever, you sort of threw something up on a whiteboard or were fiddling around in PowerPoint, you're like, Ah, that's it. And then it makes your life so much easier to show a client, see, this is like, there's a matrix, you're in this quadrant, you need to be here. I mean, I think we've all on the creator side as well as the receiving side have had those, you know, they almost become your go-tos. Like, oh, the only way for me to describe something like this is let me throw this up and I know in 5 seconds you've got it. And it's sort of your magic moment slides. Anybody have that experience?

I was gonna say, sometimes we draw it out physically, but you can also describe, you know, picture a 4-box matrix like time, The time management matrix. I use— if I say to someone like Brian Talley, oh, I'm spending Friday in quadrant 2, he knows exactly what I mean, right? So like, you know them, you know, without even the reference, quadrant 2 means that not urgent but important, right? So that's a shorthand. As soon as you say that, you visualize that 4-box matrix without seeing it. That's the thing. The first 2 that I talked about, the imagery and the models, those tend to be viewed or taken in through the physical eye. They are tangible. While metaphor and storytelling tend to be intangible and are taken in through the mind's eye or created in the mind's eye. So we can mix them. You can have a visual image that you tell a story that's metaphorical. You can have a model that's accompanied by a story. So when you use them in combination, it's even more powerful. So I just wanted to mention that these are not mutually exclusive or in silos. We do this all the time. And now it's just with a heightened state of awareness. And it's almost like you can piece this together. This image, what's it— sometimes I'll change the story. It's like, I'm tired of telling the same story about this model.

I'm going to tell a different story.

just so I keep fresh, right? Or one that more resonates with this particular audience.

And Todd, do you have any thoughts or rules of thumb on the right mix? Like, okay, you should actually be self-aware enough to know, oh, I gravitate more to, you know, metaphors than frameworks or models. Like, force yourself to try a little bit of the other? Because I would imagine there's some magic Formula mix of a little bit of each type to make sure everybody gets it.

Yeah, I always say, you know, what, which ones are you good at? I have a model in the book called the passion skill matrix, 4-box matrix, from I'm terrible at it to I'm great at it, and I hate it to I love it, right? So if you really love something, upper right quadrant, I love it and I'm great at it, that's what you gravitate towards. The upper left quadrant, your growth zone, is I like it but I'm not great at it yet, I'm going to work at it. Default zone, lower right, is I'm good at it but I don't love it. Lower left is failure zone. I'm terrible at it and I don't like it. I need to get it right. So just— I just drew you a picture of this Four Bots Matrix verbally, right? And then I could say, think about what you're good at, what you like to do, and those are the things you should gravitate towards. But also think about what's in your growth zone. Which are some things that you want to be better at? You can improve your drawing. You can improve your storytelling. You could take a class. You could practice. Right. So none of us were born with these skills. They were all developed. So I think it's about self-awareness and what's going to help you, you know, it's solution finding, right? What's the problem and what— I have all these tools in my toolkit. Which one can I take out to help solve this particular problem in this situation, right? The more tools you have, and one of the analogies I use is you go to Home Depot, you buy a toolkit, you could either say, oh, I have this cool new toolkit, what can I build? Or you can look around your house and say, what do I— what needs fixing? And which tools will I use to do that? So you could take it either way. You could say, you know, what do I already do well and what are some things I want to get better at? So that's just another way of framing it.

Great stuff. Questions, anyone? Anybody want to— Mark, and then we'll get to you, Brian.

Mark Levine coming to us from Maui.

Awesome.

Thank you. Someone needs to. First-time caller, long-time listener. I tend not to be as visual a thinker. I'm more of a kinesthetic or auditory person. Ideas just pop in. So when I have an idea and it feels cloudy, I'm going to teach a new, new workshop. Let's say I'm teaching a workshop on coaching and I'm trying to put together the modules and I— they're all a big jumble in my head. How can I start to use visual thinking to help me get Clarity.

So I just want to point out, so Mark, who's a friend of mine, and we've talked about this, that he's not a visual thinker. He just used cloudy, the metaphor of cloudy, and you also said it's a big jumble. So you just use 2 metaphors to communicate an idea, right? So similarly, one of my models is your— what's your leadership weather report? When you walk into a room, are you a cloud of doom and gloom? Are you a ray of sunshine? Right? Right there, that's a metaphor that everyone can relate to. So similarly, when Marc is saying, you know, this is cloudy to me, my job as a writer, teacher, trainer, coach is how can I break through those clouds to make it more clear, right?

Right.

So you may say, Marc may say, I'm not comfortable picking up a pen, but Marc is actually an improv specialist, right? How can I incorporate improv into what I do, right? Which he does in his training and coaching, his sales training, customer service, right? So find what works for you. Don't force it. If it's something— if you literally can't draw, then don't make that your go-to. You know, you go to some of the other things. So that's the nice thing. It's like there's a whole menu of different ways of doing it. Start with what you're comfortable and what you're already good at, and then just incrementally build from there. So that would be my quick answer. And Mark has said, because we've talked about it, you've become more visually and more visual and more visually aware over time, even though this is not your default.

Right. But let me, let me ask you a clarifying question on that, Todd. From what I took from Mark's question is he's also, he's creating something new, so there's less familiarity. It's not as quite as crisp or tight in his mind as something that he's taught 20 times before. Wouldn't it be harder to sort of layer in the visual, visual sort of thinking at that point before you're really tight, or does it help tighten it? Or is it a chicken and an egg?

I think it's both. I think, first of all, it's just the awareness. Like, I noticed the metaphors that Mark used because that's on my radar. I'm always looking for that. So if we start to look at that, think if— let's say you're meeting with a client. Here's a real-life example. You're meeting with a client and they're using certain language. If you pick up on their language, they're going to be— and Brian and I use this example all the time, and I do this in my NYU class. If you're— let's say you're trying to sell training services to a doctor's office, right? You may say, we're going to come in and we're going to help diagnose the problematic causes and we're going to prescribe a solution that will help to build a healthier office, right? I just used a number of phrases that a doctor would relate to and which makes the person think, hey, this person gets me. He speaks my language, right? So that's just one simple example. That's an example of using visual language and visual thinking. I didn't draw anything. I didn't whip out any models. I just used language That the audience or the listener can relate to, right? So that's just one simple example. So I'd say—

Can I add something that Todd has taught me, Peter? Which I think is—

Yeah, yeah.

Which has helped me. So as you said, it's not clear yet and I'm trying to pull out the pieces. So I have used the napkin technique where you just pull out a napkin and I start to think about what do I know? And I put it into boxes. And it's very basic, right? But it does help to organize my thinking. And that's something I've learned from Todd. And I realized that he was talking— I now use that in the last month and a half to help me go into a new area.

Great. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, one of the phrases I use is, you know, we all say we need to think outside the box. When I talk about the magic of mental models, I say we need to think inside the box because that helps us to see more clearly, as Mark is describing. And then we take it outside the box, we think outside the box, we do stuff outside the box. But we need to start with the box. We need to put the stuff in the box and then process it. And then, so again, that's a great metaphor. There is no physical box, right? But we all know what we're talking about when we say think inside or outside the box.

Yeah.

Just part of our lexicon.

Brian, you had a question earlier that I don't think we got.

Yeah, I think it still ties in here. A lot of the things we're talking about, about getting better, about metaphors, and about, you know, stepping up your visual game. Todd's helped me a lot because I had that passion for it. I heard about it and stuff, and I would try it when I'm standing in front of the room, try to make up a new metaphor analogy. And a lot of times, that's not the time for it. So the point is that you can become more visual, but it's in that Even those magic slides you mentioned, Peter, when I've come up with those, I've done those the day before. And you reveal them in a meeting.

Right.

You reveal them when you're standing in front of the room. The key for me was stop— don't just try to be more visual in the moment. When you're planning it, take out the stuff that's wordy, find a way to be a little more visual. And typically when I'm doing that, I'll have a terrible analogy first. And I'll think about it like, no, it's not like a pizza. No, okay. Oh no, it's more like a roller coaster. And then you land on the right one. So preparation is key.

Thanks, Brian. That's great. I think Bill wants to— oh, sorry. Go ahead.

Bill, you got something, Bill?

Yeah. So I want to build on what Brian said and also go back to Todd about the boxes, right? So there's a great quote by a statistician. His name was George Box. Okay. And his quote is, all models are wrong. But some of them are useful. Okay. And when you understand what the box is itself and the assumptions are, the edges of that box, it becomes easier to see what's inside and what's outside. So sometimes understanding the box itself is part of the process of understanding.

Yeah, that's the problem identification part before you get to the solution part of finding and the decision-making. But if you don't— if you're not clear about the question, you're not going to find the right solution or the best solution. So I have a model. One of my models I use is called the feedback sandwich. You know, start with the— you know, I didn't invent it, but I used— I built on that metaphor. And then Adam Grant, who, you know, of Wharton, wrote, stop serving this feedback sandwich. He wrote a whole post on it, did a video on it.

Yeah.

So I responded to that. And over the years, we've gone back and forth, back and forth. He read my book and he said, I still disagree and here's why. And what I— what's great is kind of like Bill is saying, here's when it's useful. There's no one-size-fits-all tool for anything, right? Sometimes, you know, you have a hammer. Sometimes you need a sledgehammer. Sometimes you need a little tapping one, right? So to use the feedback sandwich for all occasions is wrong or not, not useful. But sometimes it is useful. So that's part of the art. We always talk about having the mindset, the toolset, and the skillset, right? You have to have the mindset to think through things, the tools in your toolkit, and the skills to use those tools. And along with that, the skill and the knowledge and the experience to know when to use which ones, right? So to discount the feedback sandwich, saying never use it, to me is doing a disservice for those times. Like if my wife says to me, you always leave dishes in the sink. I'm not going to respond to that. If she says, thank you for putting the dishes in the sink. If you could do me a favor, put them in the dishwasher next time, I'd really appreciate it. Love you. Which one's going to get— be more likely to get me to put the dishes in the dishwasher? The first one of, here's the meat of the message, you're always leaving dishes in the sink, versus the feedback sandwich, right? So If you use that metaphor, you can have a whole conversation about when to use it, when not to use it, but you're starting with that model as the foundation, and then let's talk about it from there.

Interesting. Any other questions on— there's a thought leadership— yeah, Verity, and then we'll get to Phyllis. Hey, Verity.

I was just wondering, in terms of embedding visual leadership, I guess, in others within your team or across a firm, for example, do you have exercises or good ways of getting other people to think similarly, getting other people to look at different ways of using visual thinking?

Yeah, thank you very much. Yeah, I use it again in my NYU and Columbia classes, with my corporate clients. Real-life example. One of my clients, all of the business development people, a lot of them were— some were more successful than others. What I had them do is we gathered in a room, 20 people, we put up flip charts, And we had everyone draw what you— what do you say to the people? Draw the metaphor, the analogy, the model, whatever you use when you're with a client behind closed doors. We're going to ask you to deliver that to us in 5 or 10 minutes. So people sketched it out regardless of your drawing skills. And it was so eye-opening because we found that some of the metaphors and analogies that people were using were so wrong. The examples they were using were so inaccurate and not only inaccurate, but actually the opposite of what the company preached, the opposite of what they did. But no one knew that until everyone saw what everyone else was saying behind closed doors. After that, they talked about it and they said, here are 3 approved metaphors to explain what we do and what we're selling. And you could come up with whatever stories you want, but we want to hear them first so we know what's going on. And again, you can always improvise. But until they did that exercise, they had no clue what was going on. And that explained why a number of the sales business development people were so unsuccessful, or why they were causing more confusion among potential clients than clarity is because they were just telling the wrong story, right? But they didn't know that until we did this exercise. So that's the many examples, but that's just one off the top of my head of how I used it with a corporate client to get everyone on the same page.

So let me ask you something about that, Todd, because I think most people develop their metaphors, their analogies, their tools independently and use them, right? And I think what you just said was a key point. Like, wait a minute, if you're in a rut, you know, something's working, it's working, right? Every time I take out the magic slide and they go, wow, wow, wow, you know, you know you had them at hello. But maybe if there's a rut, having somebody coach you, hey, let me tell you what I use, because there's one thing to say, you know, how do you talk about your products or offerings or service or whatever? But, you know, that's an unpleasant metaphor. Actually, the way you draw that confuses me more rather than less.

Yeah.

I never thought of actually sort of partnering with someone else and say, hey, you know, what do you think about it?

Yeah, one of my clients in Denver, a new client, I was supposed to go out to Denver and do this whole keynote and workshop for them back in April. Unfortunately, it was canceled because of COVID Good thing I got paid in advance beforehand. So that's— so it's rescheduled for next spring. But it's all— it was all on the art of storytelling. And you think, what kind of company is this? It's an insurance company. And like, why does an insurance company care about the art of storytelling so much? that they bought 80 copies of my book and they are—

Right.

Want everyone trained in this because when they're out there in the field, they are telling stories. They are telling stories to clients, success stories, cautionary tales, failure stories, this don't let this happen to you stories. So we want to get them better at that storytelling, right? So in fact, I just use that expression, you know, when they're out in the field. My father was an IRS agent, and when I was growing up, he would come home and say, oh, I'm working out in the field this week. I pictured my father sitting in a big cornfield With, you know, with all his paperwork and his, you know, his tax manuals. So like, you know, as a kid out there in the field, that's what you envision, right? So that was just— that popped into my head. So again, we always— again, that's that visual thinking. That's common language that we don't even realize it until we realize it.

Excellent. Questions from anyone? Other questions, thoughts? Oh, Phyllis. I'm sorry.

Yeah. Don, you know, I'm going to try a metaphor, which is in London, you know, mind the gap.

Yeah.

And I'm trying— I'm feeling like I'm trying to leap over that gap because I've taught school and workshops for 30 years with people, so I could test your principles by watching their faces and watching their reaction to it. And now I'm trying to do those tests virtually in a screen like this where I can see your teeny tiny faces. Yeah, I'm not quite sure. What the reaction is to the tools that I'm using. Any tips for that?

Yeah, I mean, that's a long conversation, but literally I was teaching my NYU class. It's 14 sessions once a week for 14 weeks. Week 7, we got notification we're going virtual online through Zoom starting next Tuesday. So I— not next Tuesday, tomorrow. So I literally had 24 hours to figure out how to use Zoom, how to use the chat box. Whiteboard, breakout sessions. So my challenge was how do I replicate— because my class is highly experiential— my challenge was how do I replicate that experiential learning in an online setting? Some things translated perfectly, other things did not work at all. Like one of the exercises I use involves a puzzle, a jigsaw puzzle that teams have to compete against each other. There was no replacement for that that I had because that was a physical exercise. I had to come up with something on the fly that was the equivalent Achieve that objective, but a completely different exercise. So, I think that's what we have to think about. What are the things that translate directly through technology? And what are the things that we need to kind of figure out a whole new way of doing things? So, it's not easy, but it's something that we're all wrestling with, right? We're all living in this Zoom world. What translates and what doesn't?

I'm not alone in that.

Yes, not at all. No. In fact, I wrote a paper on my 5 core competencies of an effective instructor. If you want to email me or connect on LinkedIn, I'm happy to send you that white paper and that might help. And then I can answer any other questions that you have.

Excellent. Thank you. Robert, I think you had your hand up there. You're on mute. What? You're on mute, Robert. There we go.

Todd, what did you come up with to replace the puzzle? Luckily, we had already done that session. So I have time until September starts to come up with a new version. So that one I did not have to. But one of the things that we did was social styles, which is kind of like DiSC or Myers-Briggs. We always did that by having people fill out the questionnaires. They would— sorry, they would get up into the 4 corners of the room, come up with the pros and cons. We just had to replicate that online. So we created breakout rooms. We had to get people's results in advance so we knew how to break them up when the time came. So we had to just be a little more proactive and strategic and say, What would be— we can't do this, but what would be the next best thing? So I think that's where we really need to just, you know, use visual thinking. Say, picture this is how it works in the classroom. How can we envision this working? It may not be 100% as effective, but if it's 90%, they won't— that's good enough, right? So I think that's what I would say is we need to come up with those substitutions. How did the student evaluations from that course that was half classroom and half online compare to your class that was 14 sessions live? It really went great. I was really happy with how— you know, one of the things was it was not just the learning and the content, but the emotional experience that the students were going through, because they went from a very social environment with their classmates to all being in isolation in their dorm rooms or whatever. They welcomed— they couldn't wait to get to the class. They couldn't wait to turn their cameras on and their mics on and engage with us. So They loved it. And they appreciated the fact that I co-teach with another guy, Jeff Schwarzman. They appreciated that we were doing this for the first time. So, there were some things we didn't know how to do. And I said, does anyone know how to use the annotate feature? And one of the students said, oh, I know how to do it. Right? So, it became like this— we're all in this together. What's gonna be interesting is if we teach online again in September, how that's gonna be different. We had a chance to bond together as a group and then go online. So, we just saw that we all went through this thing together. Yeah.

Yeah.

Starting from scratch online is going to be a very different experience. And also some of the students had to go back to China. So we had students— we're doing this class at 6 PM. There it's 6 AM the next morning for the students in China and Taiwan. So we— you have to acknowledge that. We spent the first half hour of the class just talking about how is everyone feeling and what are some leadership lessons you've seen from the coronavirus situation that we talked about in class. So we made everything a teachable moment, a learning experience. I think that's We can't pretend it's business as usual. We're living in this VUCA world— volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous— more than ever. I think we need to address that, confront that brutal truth, as they talk about in Good to Great. We need to address it, confront it, and then use it. You know, I always say we bring the outside world into the classroom or the workshop and then figure out what we're doing there and then take what we learned back out there into the real world. As long as you keep it real and make it relevant, People are gonna be on board. If you're teaching something that's not relatable, not relevant in today's climate, then you're going to lose people. So we need to talk more about diversity, inclusion, and belonging and equity. When I talk about the eye on the COVID of my book, I've been talking about the phrase flipping the eye. So we need to— so when we talk about visual leadership, we usually talk about how do you make your vision a reality. Flipping the eye is about one, looking inward at yourself, who you are and what you believe. And secondly, looking at things from the viewpoint of others, people different from us, right? So whether we're talking about Black Lives Matter or coronavirus or the economic crisis, we need to see things through the lens of other people. And that's one of the concepts that's really resonated with people, that concept of flipping the I and that leadership is not all about you. It's all about everyone, almost everyone but you, right? To be an effective leader and making other people feel like they're leaders too and helping them realize their visions. That's a conversation that needs to be had today. It's not just talking about our projections and our quarterly whatever, right?

Excellent. Ramesh, you had a question.

Well, I just find, because I also use puzzles quite a lot, or the metaphors of puzzles, not a perfect solution, but what I have done for now is I have ordered some puzzles for myself to make them to take some pictures when I'm doing the puzzle. So because I normally could not find perfect pictures that shows the process of making a puzzle, so I'm going to substitute those experiences with this next year until I see. But I just was thinking the other day that probably there should be some game over the internet if I search. But yeah.

Yes, that's a great example. Yeah, we need to be creative, right? We need to find other ways of doing things. And in some ways it sparks— if you've been doing the same thing the same way, the same keynotes, whatever, for a long time, we're kind of forced to like think differently and come up with new stories, examples that are current and relevant. So, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? So it's like we need to be more relevant and we need to be, you know, more aware of what's going on. So it kind of forces us to Find some creativity and innovative solutions. I think, Paul, were you holding something up that you wanted to— oh, okay, okay. I saw you holding something up. I didn't know if it was a show and tell kind of thing you wanted to say. I was just holding up my—

I'm taking wonderful notes.

I really appreciate the session and I'm just kind of visualizing it all in my notes. Great, great. But that's a perfect example. So I'm seeing all heads, but as soon as Paul held up this thing, my eyes were drawn for him and he got my attention, right? So that's a perfect example of the power of visuals. One of the things I found also in my NYU class, some of the students who are more quiet in class became more vocal on Zoom. Because everyone had this little 2-inch by 1, you know, 2-inch box or whatever the dimensions are. It levels the playing field. Everyone has the same position. And with everyone's cameras on, everyone's mics on, it's not as difficult as raising your hand. So a lot of the students, when I asked them, why were you so quiet in class and so vocal here? Some of the students said, I didn't feel comfortable raising my hand. So here there was no raising your hand. It was just a dialogue and everyone got a turn. So it's just interesting how that dynamic changed people's behavior.

Interesting. Yeah. So as we start to wrap, this has been great, Todd. Thank you so much. As we start to wrap, no pressure, but, but final pearls of wisdom, maybe 2 or 3 things to throw at folks to think about before their next article presentation. Use of their thought leadership to convey, to try to communicate something different with a client?

Yeah, I mean, one is just be more self-aware of visuals, visual communication, visual thinking. And again, it's not just, oh, do I paint pictures with words or do I just draw? It's all of these things. Think about— so one is if you have a heightened state of awareness, notice what other people are doing. If someone's really effective, watch TED Talks, right? Watch, you know, be on these Zoom calls, notice what people are doing and saying. And say, what are some of those things I can replicate or some of those things that people do that are effective, right? Even on a Zoom call, some people have their cameras on, some people have their cameras off for, you know, for technical reasons.

Yeah.

But turning your camera on gives you more— I always talk about 3 Vs: visibility, voice, and value. As a thought leader, as a person, as a business professional, it's about are you seen and how are you seen? Are you heard and how are you heard? And are you seen as being a contributor? who adds value, right? If you want to increase your visibility, voice, and value, one of the ways to do that is to be more visual and more auditory and then to make contributions. So speak up, speak out. But look for opportunities to say— and you don't have to change everything you do overnight— but say, what am I doing that's effective? What can I do differently or more of? Almost a stop-start-continue, right? The traffic light— red light, yellow light, green light. Yeah. What are the things I'm doing that work? What are the things that are not working I need to change? And what are the things that maybe I could start doing? Just pick one thing that you haven't done, one idea that was sparked by today's conversation. Say, I'm just going to try this. I'm going to come up with a new metaphor. I'm going to sketch something out like Mark was describing and put things in boxes. So that's what I'd say. Just start small. Do one thing different, and then it becomes a habit, and you get— and like any skill, you just get better at it.

Well, what I've started to do, and I'm, um, which has been helpful, is when there's something I enjoy, because I'm always watching TED Talks and all that other stuff, After I sort of process it, I'm like, well, what about it? You know, is it just a message? Or, you know, like, why did I like that? Like, was, was it because it was innovative, creative, or whatever? The style? Sometimes it's the style. And sometimes you don't even realize, like, oh, well, actually it was the use of the analogy or the use of the metaphor, the use of— but I wouldn't have been aware enough to realize it in the moment that that, like, hit a dopamine charge or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We become more hyper— if it's on your radar, you just become more hyper-aware and you notice those things like Peter's describing. And then you just say, what are one or two things that I could start doing, you know, that will help to make me more effective? So I think that's what it's all about.

Cool. Well, this has been great. I thank you for your time. It's a shame you couldn't bring any passion or enthusiasm to it.

Well, I'm in Fairfield, Connecticut instead of New York. When I'm in New York, I talk twice as fast or 10 times as fast and pack in 10 times as much. So I apologize. I keep this shell on my— my wife gave me this seashell to remind— it's actually like supposed to be a snail that's supposed to remind me to slow down, pause, and breathe. But it doesn't work. So I just, I keep it there. My intentions are good. It just doesn't work. So that's something I'm working out.

All right, well, go put the dishes away because she's gonna call.

Peter, can I ask Todd a quick question? I missed something before.

Attention, comprehension, and what was third? Retention.

Retention.

See, you didn't retain it, but hopefully now you will. Thank you, Robert. I got it. Thank you. Cool.