Your Iconic Image : The Power of Visual Thinking

Todd Cherches, CEO & Cofounder of BigBlueGumball

Todd Cherches is the CEO and cofounder of BigBlueGumball, a NYC-based management consulting firm specializing in leadership development and executive coaching. He is a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s “MG 100 Coaches,” a three-time award-winning adjunct professor of leadership at NYU, a lecturer on leadership at Columbia University, a TEDx speaker, and the author of the groundbreaking book, "VisuaLeadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life" (Post Hill Press/Simon & Schuster, 2020). Todd was nominated as a finalist for the 2021 Thinkers50 "Distinguished Achievement Award" in Leadership, and was ranked #35 on the 2021 Thinkers360 list of the “Top 50 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers in the field of Management.”

www.toddcherches.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddcherches/

www.marlanasemenza.com

Audio : Ariza Music Productions

Transcription : Vision In Word

Todd Cherches is the CEO and co-founder of Big Blue Gumball, a New York city based management consulting firm, specializing in leadership development and executive coaching. He's also the author of the groundbreaking book, visual leadership leveraging the power of visual thinking in leadership and in life. Welcome Todd,

Todd:

Thank you so much Marlana. Great to be here with you.

Marlana:

So, I know why I think that visuals are so important. Why do you believe that they're so powerful?

Todd:

I mean, a lot of reasons, the main one is that we all need to get others to see what we're saying. That's the biggest challenge, whether it's an email, a Ted talk, a conversation, a text, we're trying to get an idea or a thought out of our head into someone else's head. One of the best ways to do that is to think, and to communicate visually. So, whether that's through photographs as you do, it's so amazingly well or through drawing or through using props, whatever it is, or even visual language using metaphor and storytelling. So those are all the different ways that I help to teach and coach people to think and communicate more visually.

Marlana:

I know you use the term visual thinking, what does that mean?

Todd:

There are different definitions, but to me it's about thinking and communicating in pictures as opposed to words or numbers. So often the business world we're talking about ideas, financial statements or whatever, but it really is about painting a picture with words. That's why they're saying a picture's worth a thousand of them, is around in all cultures. And it's almost like the equivalent of Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint slides. That's the equivalent of that. So, we produce words in Word documents, we produce numbers on Excel spreadsheets, and then we produce slides that help us communicate more visually if it's done well. Some of the people are still doing the bullet points and reading off the screen kind of thing, which is not doing it well, but yeah, the bottom line is really about getting ideas out there into the world so that other people can understand them.

I talk about three things in my Ted talk, ACR, attention, comprehension, and retention. When use visual imagery or visual language, it captures people's attention. It gets them to focus because they're looking at something. So, in today's world of interruptions, distractions, and information overload, that's one of the biggest challenges just to reign people in and get them to focus comprehension. It enhances our understanding and retention. It increases our recall our memory. And if we can remember things, we're more likely to use and apply them. So those are the main, some of the science behind why visuals are so impactful and just as humans, we're just wired visually. That's just who we are and how our brains were.

Marlana:

It was interesting because I did watch your Ted talk and you reinforced an idea that I'd heard once upon a time that it doesn't matter what language we speak because images, pictures, and things like that transcend all languages. Yeah. But tell us a little bit about how you came to that discovery.

Todd:

Sure. Well, a lot of people think because I'm an executive coach and I do imagine leadership chain consulting that I have a business background, but I actually have an English literature background with a concentration in Shakespeare and poetry. And if you think about literature and poetry,  it is about storytelling. It's about metaphor. It's about language, .? So, that's in my roots, long, a big reader going back a long time. And then my first part of my career was working in,  advertising and then media and entertainment and theme parks. So advertising is a visually based business. Even if you're doing radio ads, you still need to communicate visually. and  working in the movie industry, the TV industry, and then the theme park business. Again, it's all about storytelling, .? I know that's a big part of your work is visual storytelling.

It's every story there are villains victims and heroes. There's an obstacle, there's a, there's some kind of quest or goal. There's obstacles,  barriers or challenges that stand in your way. There's a beginning, middle and end. There's some kind of a resolution at some point. we always talk about how you are the hero of your own life story. So, there's all kinds of metaphors that come out of the, the world of entertainment and media. and that's a big part of my coaching is getting people to think of themselves as the hero of their life story. And then now what, what do you do with that? .? How do you create a happy ending to your story through,  you know, through the coaching and the training? So that was just a few of the concepts behind. but it's rooted in my background in literature and in the entertainment and media industry.

Marlana:

What about the people that come to you and say, yes, but I'm not a creative and I'm not a visual person?

Todd:

Well, one thing I say is that we're all visual in different ways. There's  something called VA visual, auditory reading and writing and kinesthetic. At one point they were identified as learning styles as if you're a visual person, or you're an auditory person, but the reality is they're just different sensory modalities for taking in and processing information. So, we're all visual, we're all auditory at different times. It really is about forming imagery in our mind. I was asked this the other day. What about for people who are blind or side impaired? In some way you could still use metaphor, you could still use visual language. You could still paint a picture with words. It doesn't apply only to site.

It applies mainly to the way we think and visualize things. and when you talk about leadership, one of the biggest words that comes to mind is vision, .? We talk about visionary leaders or having a leadership vision. And what does that mean? It's about seeing picturing in your mind's eye, which is a term coined by Shakespeare. And I know that cause I was an English literature and Shakespeare major. He said that in Hamlet, when you saw the ghost of his father, he didn't know whether it was an apparition or a figment of his imagination. I see my father in my mind's eye. How do you get an image from your mind's eye into someone else's,  that's one of the biggest challenges that we all face. So,  all of these things tie together, but  those are some of the reasons why it's so,  so,  embedded in the way I think and the way I work and, and now how I apply it to my training, coaching, and teaching.

Marlana:

So, what are some of the most effective ways you have seen this manifest?

Todd:

Well, I break it down to four categories. One is using visual imagery and or drawing category. Two is using mental models and or frameworks. Category three is using metaphor and analogy. And category four is using storytelling with bonus points for humor, if and when appropriate. So those are the four buckets and they're not  mutually exclusive in silos. When used in combination, they're even more powerful. 

You can have a metaphor and then tell a story about it. Or you can have a mental model that is drawn out by hand, or you can describe it, you know, verbally, .? So,  the way my clients use this, or I use this in my teaching, is it transcends language barriers, cultural barriers. like if I say to you,  we need to plant the seed for a new idea.

We need to get to the root of the problem. We need to branch out a new direction. We need to see which ideas bear fruit and the sky's the limit. I just use five or six different analogies of metaphors that use nature or a tree as the foundation. So, when you use imagery like that,  it helps people to picture what you're saying. It creates clarity, just as a good metaphor can create clarity. A poorly shows, a metaphor can actually do the opposite and create confusion and chaos. 

I use a lot of baseball analogies, so I'm a big baseball fan, Mets and Yankees. but if I'm talking to a 25-year-old student of mine from China, she doesn't know anything about baseball, most likely. So, something with theater, dance, nature, or something that from her culture will resonate more than using  metaphor, analogy or story that is meaningful to me. So, it's always starting with, who's your audience, what's your purpose? And what's gonna resonate with this person. If we are aware of this, we could be more strategic and more intentional, intentional, because we don't even realize how often we use metaphors or tell stories. but it's a big part of once you're aware of it, then you could be even better at it. 

Marlana:

Agreed! Go back to those four buckets and break those down for us a little bit.

Todd:

Sure, the first one is using visual imagery. Even though we're on video, some people may listen to the audio podcast. I may say something's the tip of the iceberg, .? So, you picture in your mind an iceberg and from iceberg image that about 10% is above the surface and the other 98 or 90% is below the surface. So, the iceberg represents as a metaphor. It's both a visual image and a metaphor, what we see or know versus what we don't. And we always know there's more that we don't. So, when we first meet someone, that's just the tip of the iceberg. If you start watching a movie, the first five or 10 minutes of it's just the tip of the iceberg. So again, it always reminds us that there's more coming and then it's up to us to dive beneath the surface, to uncover what else is down there.

Iceberg can also think about Titanic can represent danger ahead, .? What are the dangers lurking underneath that we need to be aware of? . So just from that one image, you can have a whole conversation around how can use the iceberg as a metaphor, so that's, that's one category is using imagery. I just did a workshop for the Harvard Institute of coaching a couple of days ago on visual coaching and how coaches can use visual techniques, like the ones I'm talking about in their coaching practices. So, one exercise I do is, I have a sheet of emoji faces, they may say to a client which emoji face represents how you're feeling today. So, they may not say, or I'm confused, or I'm stressed or I'm tired or I'm happy, but they'll look at the imagery and it kind of forces you to reflect and then say, all  this is the face that best represents me.

And they'll say, well, tell me what's the story behind it. So, we could use imagery as a catalyst for conversations in a way that just asking you a question verbally and literally may not list the response. That’s just one example of category one and there's mind maps and there's storyboards, which are visual, but they're also in category two, which is using mental models and frameworks. So, you can use post-its or index cards or sketch something out as a mind map or a storyboard,   a company's organizational chart as a visual representation of the hierarchy and reporting structure. They're all around us. One of the things I always say is we want thinking outside the box has become a cliche, but you can't think outside the box unless you have something inside the box. So having boxes and frameworks will help us to simplify the complexity of the world, put them into boxes or categories so we could see them more clearly.

And then we see solutions that maybe we hadn't thought about before. So, I'll stop there for a second, but that's category one, visual imagery and category two models and frameworks.

Marlana:

 Well ,go ahead. Keep going. 

Todd:

There's two more. I just wanted to pause, see if you have any thoughts or questions. Category three is using metaphors analogy. just like the tip of the iceberg and just like the one with the tree, planting the seed, cetera. when you use metaphorical language, it helps to make the abstract concrete, the unfamiliar ,familiar, the invisible, visible. if you say, my love is like a red rose, that's newly sprung in June. But metaphors are not just for songwriters and poets, it really is for all of us to say, oh, baseball, that idea came out of left field, or you had a grand slam, or you really struck out on that presentation.

We do that all the time. I think the key is finding  metaphors that resonate with your audience. I used  the analogy, (we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.) And I had a visual image of the Brooklyn bridge, because I'm from New York, but I did the same workshop with a group in San Francisco via zoom. I used the golden gate bridge instead and I did it once through the group in London. I used the tower bridge. When use a metaphor or an image that resonates with your audience, people think, oh, this person gets me. So, I am saying, meet people, not where you live, but where they live or somewhere in the middle. In fact, speaking of bridges,  I have a textbook in college called Bridges, not walls and words can build bridges between people to connect them or put-up walls between people to divide them.

So, in terms of what you're saying, what you're showing,  are you connecting or dividing people through your words and your images. The last category storytelling,  which could be visual through pictures and imagery or could be verbal. But again, as I said, stories take people on a journey . You have a beginning, middle, and end. Aristotle said that couple of thousand years ago. but stories are human, they're relatable, they're emotional, they're memorable. So, if I'm coaching a manager,  I might say, instead of saying to your employee, do these 10 things and don't do these 10 things. You may say when I had your job, let me tell you about the worst mistake I ever made and what happened and why I say why I have these JS and don'ts that person's gonna be on their edge of their seat.

They wanna hear that story, .? So, stories stay with us and they're just more impactful than there's facts, figures, and feelings. Facts and figures are the rationale, that's the evidence, the feelings is what you wanna capture through the emotion of your storytelling. And again, when you use humor, it lightens the mood. But people are more receptive and more innovative when they feel good and when they're engaged, but it's gotta be relevant and it's got to be appropriate for a situation. So anyway, those are the four categories, and my whole book, visual leadership is a break it down into examples for those four categories. But in a nutshell, which is a metaphor, those are just a few examples,

Marlana:

And it's interesting that you say all that because I know most people when they invest in someone or something, make a purchase, or...