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Dress to Impress? The True Power of Visuals in Change
A comment on a post by Eric Partaker
6 powerful visuals that will change how you think.
Upgrade your thinking today... Check out these powerful visuals from Liz Fosslienš„ 1. The Best Time to Take a Break ā³ Too often we keep going until our tank is empty... ā³ When instead we should take a break well before. 2. Ambition vs Reality ā³ It's fine to have ambitious goals, provided you also... ā³ Narrow yourā¦
Read the original on LinkedInKudos to Liz Fosslien for these powerful illustrations!
š¤Long ago, I often pondered the extensive use of visualization in client presentations. I've seen countless slide decks filled with polished graphics and impressive images.
Somewhat less impressive, though, was the relevance of insights or creativity of solutions the visuals aimed to convey.
It seemed the sophistication of the package attempted to compensate for the mediocrity of the content.
Sure, for consultants that consider their value creation and final product the delivery of a ppt slide deck (instead of a behavioural change of the organization) it needs to have a professional, high quality look that creates a "wow".
"Clothes make the man" and indeed, perfectly designed slides DO increase the likelihood of the content being accepted after all.
ā This led me to question whether the focus should be on the content or the package and of course the answer was āon bothā.Ā ā
š” A typical case of shifting from a restrictive āEither/orā to an expanded āAs well asā mindset.
šŖ Images work well and these here are extra strong as most of them use powerful metaphors like the fuel gauge (resources, resilience), the umbrella (protection, enabling) and the watering can (nurturing, growing).
š« If āa picture is worth 1000 wordsā, a metaphor is worth 1000 pictures.
Images move people.Ā Human behavior is far more driven by the sequence "See-Feel-Change" than by "Analyze-Think-Change" as Harvard Prof. Emeritus John P. Kotter postulated in his seminal book āLeading Changeā.
š This also has been repeatedly underpinned empirically.
E.g. in an intriguing study from 2018, UC San Diego researchers discovered that while words can have an emotional impact, images of objects associated with strong positive or negative emotions significantly altered behavior in ways words alone could not (P. Winkielman/ Y. Gogolushko, Frontiers in Psychology, 29.01.2018).
So let's put on our best attire, not just to impress, but to truly address the change we seek to manifest.