“Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language.”
Walt Disney
In today’s global marketplace, offices and workspaces are naturally becoming increasingly multicultural. The way we do business has changed.
So, we have to change the way we communicate.
“Communicators need to face the reality of how employees’ experience their day-to-day working lives and ensure engagement, clear line-of-sight, streamlined processes, and a healthy, progressive business.”
A multicultural workplace is a wonderfully complex melting pot of backgrounds, languages and cultures. Language is therefore no longer the most effective way to get across key strategic information.
Do you find that cultural and language barriers complicate your internal communications strategy?
Why not try drawing it?
Graphic Facilitation
Facilitation n. the art of leading people through processes toward agreed upon objectives in a manner that encourages participation, ownership, and creativity from all involved.
Graphic facilitation is a clear and engaging way of communicating your internal communications strategy that transcends cultural and language barriers. In fact, using images to communicate ideas far predates modern language. Our Neanderthal forebears were using cave paintings to communicate themselves long before the spoken word existed.
Graphic facilitation not only strengthens understanding, but it also helps to break down cultural divides and differences. It is a non-threatening translation of content that relies on visual stimulation rather than verbal cues, thereby avoiding any confusion.
80% of human beings are proven to learn visually. Graphic facilitation is a universal language that taps into our natural instincts – no matter what our culture, background or spoken language. Visualisation techniques can help team members to digest an abstract or complex idea in a much shorter space of time, irrespective of culture or first language.
The effective use of this invaluable tool means better collaboration, more creativity and better understanding. You need to be sure that ALL employees and team members walk away with a clear understanding of what was presented to them, and that employees are not penalised for their cultural or language differences.
Universal Involvement
Our goal as leaders is universal involvement. It is vital, therefore, that you use every tool at your disposal to make sure that neither language nor culture is a barrier to that.
If you would like to know more about how we could help you communicate your internal communications strategy visually, please give us a call today!