How visual thinking can make you a better agile coach
Learn how applying visual thinking methods to the job of an agile coach can take make you a better professional and bring more meaning to your day to day life
Discalimer. I don’t think I am a better agile coach than others. I am on a journey. But visual thinking does help me get better and better version of myself, a small bit every day. And it can help you get better in your job too.
I have been recently interviewed by Mike Rohde for his Sketchnote Army podcast and we talked many things visual thinking and one of his questions was about how do I personally apply the methods of visual thinking to my agile coach job. I hear this question often from other people too — they want to know how they could apply to their work, and the best way to relate to something is to learn how one is using that thing.
Listen to the entire conversation with Mike here:
UPDATE — Since the time the article had been written, I was honored to talk about my ways of agile coaching with Ian Gill for his wonderful podcast on the topic. In our conversation we inevitably ventured into the topic of visual thinking and you can listen to the full conversation here:
UPDATE — There has been another conversation with Gerd-Jan van Gils & Maarten Tomassen from the Coach Labs Podcast where we discussed the application of visual thinking to agile coaching:
And here is my story.
As an agile coach, I go through a lot of activities on a daily basis. I am just a participant in some meetings, I facilitate some of them, and sometimes I train. I engage in coaching and mentoring sessions, I engage in problem-solving and brainstorming activities. Alone or in a group, sometimes in the capacity of a team member.
And here is how visual thinking is supporting me in these activities.
Visual note-taking
My usual day has check-in meetings, sometimes people call them dailies. In those, we would share updates and offer our help to each other, outline problems that stand in our ways. In these meetings I always take notes. In fact, I take notes in all types of meetings. I take notes on paper, as I am carrying my notebook around with me:
Some time ago I have started taking notes digitally on my iPad Pro:
I experiment with different applications and so far I prefer using Procreate and Concepts. And I am eager to learn other tools too.
Sometimes when I forget to take a notebook with me or iPad is discharged, I make do with whatever is available at the desk or in a meeting room. In these situations, I like to use sticky notes. The way it works is I start writing things down on the first sticky note and then I do not stack another one on top of the previous one, but I rather arrange them on a table as an ever-growing canvas. Then I take a photo of the final result and keep the digital copy of it. Sometimes I take the stickies with action points with me to follow up:
As a summary, visual note-taking plays a large role in supporting my daily activity. I do it unconsciously, it is a natural part of how I work. And I do not lean toward any particular medium or technique. I like to experiment constantly and look for easier and more effective ways to capture the conversation.
Visual note-taking helps me:
- Stay engaged in a meeting.
- Connect with the information on a deeper level.
- Have an artifact that is easy to share with others — by simply sending an email with a picture of my notes.
- Have more fun and inspire others.
Problem-solving activities
As an agile coach, I am either a part of a workgroup tasked to solve a certain problem or I support teams and leaders in their daily work, which is all about solving challenges of creating great products and services that positively impact the lives of customers.
Naturally, visual thinking plays an important role in problem-solving sessions. During those we align on our understanding about a problem or a task, we share our expertise and insight, we explore options and navigate possible solutions and we make decisions.
My tool number one is a whiteboard.
Working with whiteboards
When the situation allows, I use whiteboards to support our sessions visually. It requires that people are in the same room, of course:
Working with paper
Sometimes I work with flipchart paper instead of whiteboards. Paper is better if you plan to keep the artifact and also there is more opportunity to get creative — you have more options for various types of markers, chalks and so on. And of course, it is always a good idea to use sticky notes — they add an extra level of flexibility to your conversations:
Expanding drawing space with a DIY approach
Here is a small hack for you to create a large space on the wall to draw your diagrams. Take a few flipchart paper sheets, attach them to the wall with the use of masking tape, overlap them a bit, so that there are no gaps between sheets. Then secure the overlapping seems with matte Scotch tape — this tape allows you to draw over it and it behaves like paper. The glossy one is a no go, markers ink will not stick to it:
Creating presentations
In large organizations presentations (aka ‘powerpoints) play a very important role in communication and documentation. I am not a big fan of presentations, especially poorly made ones. But while they are a predominating format for both communication and documentation, I would like to at least improve the practice around creating those.
As an agile coach, I am expected to contribute to the knowledge base built up by creating powerpoints. And visual thinking helps me a lot with the task. There are two major methods I use.
Icons library approach
I use a custom made a visual library that I then use as images on the slide, I move them around and create diagrams right inside of the MS Powerpoint slide:
Hand-drawn illustrations approach
Quite often I draw illustrations for my slides on paper or sticky notes. And sometimes I draw illustrations digitally. But for me physical drawing is much faster:
Once I am happy with the illustration, I insert it into a slide:
Communicating
As an agile coach, I would like to communicate effectively as I have to do it a lot. I would like to encourage new practices through popularizing communities. I communicate new ideas and I want them to look attractive so that people would be interested to learn more. And visual thinking is helping me succeed:
Facilitating events
I strongly believe that an agile coach is most of all a facilitator. At least I facilitate a lot. Small sessions, big sessions, workshops that last a few days. I like facilitating as it is a very challenging task. And again, visual thinking is a huge part of it.
I use visual thinking techniques to visualize the agenda:
I organize a lot of visual displays in the room to foster a productive process:
When used properly, visual thinking inspires people to participate, to contribute and be positive about even tough questions during the sessions:
I am not a big fan of facilitation canvases as I prefer full flexibility, but I certainly respect and use this tool a lot:
And of course, I use the tools like parking lots, expectations and many more:
Training people
An agile coach is also a trainer. I do a lot of classes. I teach agile principles, I teach methods and techniques. And I love this part of my job — I like the magic of exploring possibilities with other people. Visual thinking is my approach to training people — be it the topic of agility or visual thinking itself. I do not use slides at all. During a class, I draw everything on flipchart paper, or whiteboards, digitally or on A4 paper broadcast to a screen with the help of a document camera. Check my other article to learn more about my use of the document camera in my teaching process.
Preparing the material for a class
Visual thinking comes handy when I need to sort my thoughts out when preparing the material for the training:
Planning training events
Visual thinking methods help me plan and prepare for training sessions:
Running a training
When I run the training, I explain the material by drawing in parallel to my talking — and that is also a visual thinking technique. A very powerful one.
Just a few examples of posters created during training:
Drawing training posters is great fun for me as a trainer but at the same time it is a game-changer for the course participants — their engagement and immersion into the process is ultimate compared to other ways of performing a training.
Learning — attending conferences and classes
And when reading books or listening to podcasts.
An agile coach has to develop and grow constantly. You need to sharpen your saw. I attend meetups, courses, and workshops to learn new things and to deepen my understanding of the concepts with which I work. I read books and I listen to podcasts. I immerse myself in a huge amount of new information. And visual thinking helps me stay sane, helps me focus on the underlying essential concepts, take in and absorb the most important parts first.
I use sketchnoting and drawing a lot to help myself concentrate and make a better sense of the new material:
When presenting myself to new people
When you are an agile coach, you meet new people and get introduced to new teams all the time. It is good to have your thing to present yourself and make the first impression. I naturally prefer to present myself a visual way. Here is an example of how I do it:
If you are interested in learning how you can present yourself visually, check my article on the topic.
Creating explanation videos
A couple of years ago I have started experimenting with video production. I know for a fact, that video material is the most engaging when you try to get a new idea across. I am still relatively new in this field but I have created a few educational videos on the topic of agile and people loved them!
Check some of the videos I created on the topic of agile:
Coaching and mentoring
The agile coach is a coach. I do a lot of coaching, mentoring and supporting individuals and teams. Visual thinking is great in this area too — when you put things to paper, suddenly it is not you who says those things, suddenly, the paper with the notes becomes the extra participant of the conversation where you and the person can stand on the same side while observing those facts. It is a very powerful phenomenon that I exploit to a full possible extent.
Goofing around
Agile coaches are people too! We are also prone to stress, depression and lack of motivation. We are struggling to help organizations change the culture. We are exposed to a lot of frustration and disheartening. For me, visual thinking is a great source of humor as a defensive mechanism from dark thoughts and bad moods. Humor helps us smile when we are sad.
Coming up with your memes
And if not as a tool for building up your resilience, visual thinking is a great tool to promote yourself on social media. For example, by coming up with funny stuff:
By the way, follow me on Instagram. I share a lot of cool stuff.
Self-reflection
And finally, I use drawing for self-reflection and self digging. It is good to explore your thoughts by putting them on paper. Sometimes cool things emerge.
Afterword
As you can probably see now, visual thinking is not a tool I choose to use or not to use on a daily basis. It is deeply rooted and tightly integrated into how I work and operate, as an agile coach. I cannot imagine myself without the tool. I hope you got some ideas and inspiration for what you could use for your work. And if you are not an agile coach, I hope you can see that the application is universal and can be taken to any other profession as well.
I am an aspiring product manager, agile coach and a visual thinker living in Copenhagen, Denmark. I blog on visual thinking and share my random agile thoughts if you want to read more. You can get in touch with me via my website or Instagram account or on Twitter. All the best!