Using Visuals in Coaching

24/01/2023

Why and how it all began

In 1999, I started drawing because I believed that I could make visuals more appealing than the clip art that was available at that time. Turns out, I was right! Participants in my training courses loved the charts that I developed while working with them because they were well-organized, colorful, and engaging. I began this adventure with the book Beyond Words, by Millie Sonneman, and never looked back. In the years that followed, I studied with Christina Merkley and read books by David Sibbett and Brandy Agerbeck. My work progressed from flip charts in training programs to visual note-making/graphic recording of client meetings to templates for strategic planning conversations with my clients and my visual coaching program, How to Major in You and find the right college.

What really propelled me…

Fast forward to 2012, when I learned that the International Forum of Visual Practitioners would be holding its annual conference in Pittsburgh. The gathering offered the opportunity to showcase books written and drawn by visual practitioners. Back in 2009, I developed a coaching program for teens beginning the college admissions process, based on my daughter’s good (though not great) experience with the process. At that point in time, coaching was over the telephone or Skype, with documents shared over email. I loved the work, yet with my background in curriculum development, I knew I wanted to create a richer experience for my students.

The IFVP conference was all the incentive I needed to reimagine my coaching program from primarily an auditory one to a visual, auditory, and kinesthetic experience! I shifted my coaching conversations into even deeper experiences as the result of students completing readings and exercises in the book, and using templates to gather and share information about themselves—their strengths, learning needs, interests, dreams, and goals. I created the questions and spaces in which students discovered more about themselves. They were able to develop agency in mapping their own journeys and choosing their ultimate destinations.

Why visuals elevate all of my work

What began as a tactic to increase engagement in training programs became a way to bring all of my work to the next level.

Since 2012, I have expanded the use of visuals into every aspect of my professional and personal lives, such as:

ideation tools
templates for strategy sessions with potential clients
agendas for all my sessions
visioning tools in my Points-of-You workshops
storytelling frameworks
focal points for collaboration on Miro
note-making devices
feedback tools for my training and facilitation sessions
advance organizers in my personal agendas/planners

These formats have become resources that enable me to explore, ideate, create, revise, collaborate, share, and more.

Pivotal to the ever-increasing breadth and depth of my work (and play) with visuals have been my journey with bikablo. It began with attending two sessions led by Frank Wesseler and Stefan Boker at the 2016 IFVP conference in Washington DC, then hosting the bikablo Basic training by Frank and Carola Keitel in NYC in 2017, and coming on board as the US member of the bikablo Certified Global Trainer Team in 2018. I have since extended my horizons to include digital recording and coaching those who wish to add that medium to their repertoire.

Without question, I imagine, think, learn, remember, plan, and reflect more broadly and deeply with a marker and paper, or iPad and Apple pencil in my hand.