3 ways Virtual Live Sketching accelerates success
Live sketching is one of the core tools we employ during our facilitated virtual sessions. And after hundreds (maybe thousands?) of hours of digital drawing, we’ve learned that it has business benefits that go well beyond the pretty pictures. Here are three ways to accelerate success with Virtual Live Sketching:
Enhance your team’s creativity and energy
“It’s kind of like one person passing a box of secure information to another!”
Meetings can be a slog… remote meetings even more so. Mundane topics, volleys of jargon, and dwindling attention spans are all barriers to engagement and understanding. Live sketching cuts through the mundanity and brings action and energy to nearly any important remote meeting. Watching ideas come to life through drawing sparks creativity and generates an almost improvisational rhythm to your meeting. People begin to riff off of one another as they see an image take shape, and they grow more and more excited as words become reality before their eyes.
Turn confusion into clarity
“Oh, you mean that procurement approval phase! OK, now this all makes sense.”
During meetings we often believe we’re talking about the same thing, but our individual perspectives and experience color everything we say and hear. Virtual live sketching pulls conversations out of the ether and into the real. Clarity is especially important in a remote setting as we don’t have the same kind of visual cues we rely on when we’re truly face-to-face, cues that bring context and color to what’s being said. When everyone is looking at the same picture it’s much easier to agree (or disagree) on what’s being discussed or decided.
Increase engagement and retention
“Yeah, the cool leap-frog drawing, I remember! That’s exactly what needs to happen.”
It’s been said the gravitational pull of a meeting is stronger than that of a collapsing star. Words are said, opinions shared, but within minutes of the meeting ending you find yourself wondering what exactly was discussed (and are you on the hook for anything?!). Pictures paired with words have a way of sticking to your brain. It’s much easier to retain information when you’ve had a hand in crafting a visual around it—especially a visual that lives on after the meeting.
These are just a few ways virtual live sketching accelerates success, but there are many more tangible and intangible benefits. Consider adding live sketching to your next virtual meeting, brainstorming session, or leadership summit. Because at the end of the day it’s not just fun to watch someone draw, it’s actually productive.
Photo illustration by Bill Keaggy based on sketches by W. Scott Matthews and a photo by Dose Media on Unsplash.
