Meeting Support Institute

At an educational session during MPI’s PEC in Houston 2008, I witnessed the use of graphical facilitation. Sue Tinnish had invited a graphical facilitator who, during the course of the session, built a large visual representation of the discussion.
On a large piece of paper, about 1m  / 3ft high and 3m / 9ft wide, the graphical facilitator was drawing, writing and creating graphs of what was presented and discussed.
At the end of the session, all participants ware invited to add some of their own visual creations and some of us did.

I can imagine that this could work really well for a corporate meeting, especially because the result could be on display at a strategic location in the company building.

This kind of facilitation is clearly a Human ‘Tool’, the human being the person making the drawing. The result is a creative piece of Art, or if you wish, a few smaller pieces of artwork like posters.
When we agree the value of a meeting does not end after it ends, having such ‘tangible’ results is quite powerful. Most meetings don’t produce anything tangible, and this clearly is a remedy for that deficiency.

To take what we learned at a meeting and bring that to the level of application, is certainly supported by such powerful visual mementos. It prolongs the life of the (expensive) meeting at a relatively low cost. The graphic results can even be used as illustrations in emails, newsletters, websites, trainings, etc.