Making our mark! Drawing together to enhance collaboration

About this Hands-On

Co-creating drawings helps teams enhance their systems thinking abilities by really seeing the big picture. A group of people talking around a whiteboard is an effective way to share ideas across a team. Imagine how much richer the conversation is when everyone on the team has a marker in their hand and is actively contributing!

Graphic visualisation is an important tool for talking about new ideas, generating insights and developing shared understanding. In a team context, drawing is a thinking tool rather than an artistic endeavour. When everyone participates in creating drawings, all team members can see how things fit together and what mental models are at play in defining the situation. And, by drawing together, the team is collaboratively creating meaningful records that are being validated and updated.

Join Ellen and Sue for an adventure into how teams can collaboratively visualise ideas and make sure that everyone at the table has a voice. In this workshop, we will warm up with some basic doodling skills practice.

No drawing experience is required to take part in this session: if you can hold a marker, we can teach you the skills needed to put your ideas on paper. Together we'll consider the ways that collaborative drawing can be used to enhance group work, and we will share practical activities that you can take back to use with your team for setting the stage, gathering information and sharing stories.

About the Speakers

Ellen Grove

Ellen Grove is a business agility coach, trainer and organisational change agent with Agile Partnership. Based in Ottawa, Canada, Ellen works with organisations of all sizes to help them put agile thinking and being into action throughout the organisation.

Whether working with C-suite leaders or managers or delivery teams, Ellen favours experiential approaches for getting people to talk to each other about the things that really matter so that they can do great work together. She organises agile events locally and internationally, and she presents frequently at agile conferences around the world.

Ellen is a Certified Scrum Professional, an Open Space facilitator, a StrategicPlay certified facilitator in using LEGO SERIOUS PLAY methods and a Training from the Back of the Room trainer. Visit www.agilepartnership.com to learn more about what shiny thing Ellen is interested in this week.

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Sue Johnston

Sue Johnston helps people talk so people listen, listen so people talk, and change the world one conversation at a time. After a career as a news reporter, she moved to corporate communication, where she was involved in large-scale change initiatives and technology implementations at 2 of Canada's financial services giants.

She came to believe the crucial communication in organisations is the interaction between people. A professional coach and trainer, Sue's agile fundamentals, coaching and facilitation workshops are accredited by the International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile).

Based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, she is the author of Talk To Me: Workplace Conversations That Work, the founder of It's Understood Communication and a partner in Leanintuit. She has many letters after her name, but what really matters are letters like this: "Sue is the coach you want to learn from!". You can learn more about Sue and her work at itsunderstood.com.

 itsunderstood