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What journey are you on…

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and where are you on that journey?

Just recently, I began a new coaching relationship with a young woman from a country far from here/NY and a culture that I know very little about. It is exciting! 

While coaching in my practice is always an adventure, founded on co-creating the experience, this will be different. To borrow some of the language from my chaplaincy training, our

  • major life events
  • relationships
  • social location
  • cultural contexts
  • and social realities that impact our personal identities

have few similarities.

I have much to learn—by being particularly astute in my observing, listening, asking questions, pausing, and checking in… ensuring that nothing is assumed and time for reflection and conversation about the journey we are making together is a fit for her needs and wants. 

The more I think about it, the more I am reminded to be aware of false assumptions about similarities and perceived congruence with coaching clients who appear more like me (regarding the variables noted above).

My lens for all the work I do is Appreciative Inquiry. It is a path that provides a framework that is truly generative and in alignment with my vision of coaching relationships (and honestly, all the work that I do).

Similarly, last Thursday, I hosted two thoughtsketching sessions (a bikablo technique) for quite different groups of people mostly unfamiliar with visualizing/visual thinking: first for my colleagues, (known to me from my years at the American Management Association in my consultant roles as a speaker and instructional designer), and then for the AIF-NYC Facilitators Group, which attracted people from around the world, Vietnam the UK Belgium, the US, and Canada.

In all three instances (coaching + trainings), the majority of people joining the sessions were stepping on to a new path or in a new direction… whether tentatively or diving in with abandon.

In each encounter, my approach was Appreciative, engaging, and interactive in nature—

  • What is your foundation/what do you know about…?
  • What do you like about your work (what you are presenting that we are building on or what are you creating at the moment that you like/admire/are proud of)?
  • What do you believe to be your growing edge? (And, how will we keep your inner critic at bay? Focus on strengths.)
  • What more do you want to discover (about the topic, process, project) or… before moving forward?
  • What are you dreaming about?
  • What experiments do you want to design—to work and play with your new ideas?
  • How will you create what will be?

I am passionate about this work! If you’re curious to learn more about coaching with an Appreciative Inquiry approach, please reach out to me.

My curious mind wants to know…

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What do you think?

Over the past few weeks, I have attended a number of events and classes. These experiences have caused me to pause and wonder. I find that my descriptions or definitions of key terms in my field appear, at times, to be completely different than how others enact their roles. I wonder what they’re thinking and so I imagined this visual of me, sitting, wonder, pondering…

  • Have you had these thoughts?
  • Have/Are you experiencing any disconnects?

What do the smattering of terms, titles, and interactions bring up for you? How do you define them? Have you talked about any of them with your colleagues? What did you discover—congruence, misalignment, something in-between? I’d love to know.

(Of course, if you are curious about how the misalignment played out in the real world—I’m happy to share!)

Mmmmmotivation!

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Last Sunday I spoke at Brandy Agerbeck’s ENVISION event—it was fabulous and so much fun! Brandy had tasked with addressing, fully engaging with the topic of motivation. So, my question for you is…

What motivates you? 

Maybe the first question or the better first question is, what does motivation mean to you? 

How is it different from inspiration? 

And where do you “get” both of those things? 

Inspiration is exciting, it pulls me forward. I’m inspired/totally engaged in almost all my projects or endeavors. 

Motivation is the engine/energy that keeps me going because in most projects not only is there a beginning, middle, and end, there are also periods of excitement, immersion, flow, joy, and yet there are also those times of disappointment, feeling stuck, working through challenges, frustrations, making and learning from my mistakes and rising up again. 

 

One of the fabulous ideas from Brandy Agerbeck’s ENVISION 2021 Card Deck

So my question for you is, what keeps you moving forward (know that this is not a straight line) when it gets challenging?

For me, part of it is my philosophy of life. I’m steeped in the field of positive psychology and come from an Appreciative Inquiry perspective. In short, I endeavor to focus on the positive AND be realistic/acknowledge the things are difficult. Ultimately, I choose to focus my attention and energy on what’s going well, to amplify that, to work with the things that I perceive to be obstacles, concerns, or frustrations. 

So when I need motivation, I think about experiences I’ve had in the past that are similar. They/the learning and insights become the foundation to build on. And, I love turning to books, articles, websites, and, of course, my ever-growing network of colleagues and friends, who among them possess a vast amount of knowledge. Truth be told,  I’m also motivated by the deadline…

How about you?

I’d love to hear you’re strategies and tactics for generating and maintaining your motivation.

How are you growing?

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As we wind down from summer and gear up for fall there’s a lot to be thinking about!

What are you reading? 

That was the question from my buddy in Tasmania as we chatted over the weekend. I’d like to take that question and run with it.

What are the resources that you are currently working with and expanding on? What’s new and exciting in your world?

For me, the past few weeks have been chock full of new experiences, new resources, and using existing resources in new ways. 

The bikablo + IPEVO Meet Up two weeks ago was brilliant! I say that because we—the bikablo team and the participants—were using existing tools (document cameras, markers, and paper), and collaborating in new and different ways. 

 

 

The Graphic Medicine UnConvention was fantastic! I wrote about it on LinkedIn in August and just this past week here.

As a result of presenting and participating in the GM UnConvention, I have read Rosalie Lightning, by Tom Hart. It is an incredible graphic memoir. Truth be told, I have also signed up for the Graphic Memoir course offered by Sequential Artists Workshop and the Graphic Memoir Working Group. I believe that aspects of the internship I started last week will become a graphic memoir.

And, I have this stack of books to dive into—just some of the books suggested in the second lesson of SAW’s Graphic Memoir course—I’ll be working my way through them starting this weekend. 

Finally, my schedule and the Visual Thinkers Society monthly meeting are in sync—I can’t wait to join the meeting on Saturday morning!

Next week, I will start the bikablo Sketchnoting train-the-trainer course… it’s going to be great to learn from Amelie Vesper once again and join my colleagues in this training. I’ll be offering this course soon too!

Lastly, I am expanding my digital drawing capabilities by learning Concepts, a vector-based app… More to tell about the project that will support soon!

Upon reflection, the themes I am noticing now are, self-education through books, videos, podcasts, and direct instruction from colleagues, focused practice, and the beauty of collaborations with colleagues.

What are you noticing about your world?

What’s new in your world? Please ping me and let me know!

Bikablo + IPEVO = So much Fun & Learning

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Yesterday, I was part of a grand experiment. Honestly, I don’t do that a lot. 

I do a lot of training, facilitation, and coaching. It’s true, I do a lot of experimentation within those events but it’s qualitatively different than what we engaged in yesterday. The experiments that I design within my practice are planned—you might even say controlled experiments, in that they are designed, implemented, and evaluated according to the objectives to be achieved and the criteria I develop (although perhaps the acronym DIE isn’t the most cheerful). I mean, that’s what you would expect from a curriculum designer, right?

Yesterday was different in so many ways: 

  • I was a collaborator instead of a designer
  • we dove into the creation of the experience with the mindset that it was an adventure and an experiment 
  • we knew that people would enjoy it, learn something new during our time together, and meet people from around the world and interact with them. 

I have to admit that I was on pins and needles about how it was all going to come together. We were a team of six people coming together from Germany Spain, China, the US, and Taiwan.

In these days of video conferencing, folks getting together from around the world is not exactly a big deal but it turned out we were not only managing time zones, but we were also managing weather patterns which almost disrupted our entire plan as there was bad weather in Spain affecting the connection of our colleague Elena. And then, of course, there was the tech piece—not only were we all using document cameras but we were seeking to use them in new in different ways. While we had two tech sessions and practiced before the event too, I still had a tech glitch then made it challenging for me to participate as effectively as I wanted to, and yet I was still able to contribute. 

Perhaps it is one of the things I love best about working with my bikablo buddies. We are transparent about how things are going, we support each other to do the best we can, and we learn every time we get together in an environment of good cheer. 

The session was a total blast! We had over 100 people attending of the 200 signed up. We did an extraordinary number of activities in a relatively short period of time, with varying results — and that was OK! Frank, Elena, Xiaoli, and I had a choreographed piece that included movement on all four screens simultaneously. When we first started practicing it, I called it synchronized swimming—it was really just like it. It was so cool! We also 

  • drew together across the four screens to demonstrate how to combine simple shapes to make icons
  • did an exercise in which we added to the previous person’s drawing
  • used the bikablo “iconizer” /a random generator of icons to draw together
  • told a story, in four parts—dreaming up the next stage as we took turns on the screen—that used the cut-outs from our previous exercise
  • concluded by drawing a face across the four screens—while she was a bit Picassoesque—she was fabulous!

People were delighted to meet in small groups to practice with the technology, or if they didn’t have it, to find other ways to be involved in the activities. Everyone had a chance to post their work on Padlet—to see the work from around the world and to read their comments was exhilarating!

It was a truly amazing experience—one that’s never been done before and no doubt will now be done in the same way and also improved upon—around the world.