Reflection - Visualization

Challenge & Selection

Visualization is a powerful tool that allows us to convey our ideas beyond the confines of words  or language. It allows us to impart to others, the thoughts and ideas we have in our heads. At  the same time, it enables our minds to associate these ideas to images, which will make it a lot  easier for memory recall in the future. I am currently a college student working as a consultant  for youth organizations. With this being said, as a consultant, I often deal with a wide variety of  different problems and challenges, it could go from a leadership training seminar, all the way to  constitutional development.

I was posed with the challenge of creating a training module that highlighted being a  transformational leader through empathy, which was a transition to another topic chosen by  another fellow team member . This particular organization was having a problem with member  burnout. The goal in my particular module was to be a transition that remained memorable  enough to follow through to the next module, as well as impactful that allowed the participants to  engage in discourse with one another. This is why I chose visualization as one of the key  components of my module, that was present in both the lecture and activity phases.  Visualization allows my ideas and the information that I have culminated through research to be  brought into light of my participants in a digestible manner.

Application

As I said prior, I chose visualization to enable my participants to engage amongst themselves as  well as create retention with their memory, since the goal of any leadership training seminar is to  impart wisdom for them to use on their organization in the future. With this being said my plan to  apply visualization came in two parts. The first part being the activity, in which I gave my  participants a template to create a a four sided pyramid. With this being said, each side of the  pyramid would be filled up by answering a couple of specific questions that I have designated  for them. These questions would vary, such as “What kind of leader do you want to become for  your organization?”. In essence, these questions centered around what they believe to be their  ideal leader. After writing their answers, they are then given the chance to share their thoughts  and feelings concerning the questions that were posed to them. Finally, I asked them what they  believe is one characteristic that a leader should embody at the base of their pyramid and  share. As a big reveal, I rationalized to them how any great leader, needs a good base and  foundation, like the pyramid, and this base should be accompanied with empathy, especially  given their specific context. Which seemed to hit the mark in terms of retention for memory, all  the while allowing them to gain insights from each other through their conversations about their  “ideal leader”.

The second part was a lecture. Again, I elected to use visualization with my lecture to allow the  participants to have a more comprehensive understanding of the topic. I used simple shapes as  well as icons in order to associate certain key words to images, in the hopes of ensuring  memorability of my lecture. I also put a small quiz to see if their association of these icons with  certain key words worked. At the end, it seemed like I was able to keep their attention longer,  and even retain the important aspects of my lecture.

Insight and Approach

At the end of the session with the participants, I would say that the biggest insight I gained was  that visualization can be, and should be used in a lot of different scenarios. I have come to  understand that visualization, aside from being able to gain a consensus between the group at a

faster pace, it also allows us to think deeper. This was particularly seen with how I observed the  conversation with my participants, who dug deep to communicate what they believed to be their  ideal leader.

In the end, visualization proved to be both a useful and versatile tool. From my experience, I  would like to explore mind mapping, as I feel this may be where visualization falls short. Mind  mapping, accesses both visualization, but also enables us to comprehensively see the  relationships between different elements. Basing on what I learned from this course, mind  mapping allows us to better understand complex ideas, problems, thoughts, etc.

