Friday Opening Plenary - Re-Thinking Collaborative Practice: What Are You Going to Do In a Visual Era

If it weren't for that vexing thing called communication, collaboration would be a whole lot easier, right? Mis(sing) communication plagues the process of working together to find solutions and agreement, especially where there’s intense conflict.

We'll explore a scenario where the important things people try to communicate to each other are not just spoken and then evaporate into thin air. During this plenary, the key messages and points in the conflict resolution process are visually recorded so parties can see comments in real time, confirm their meaning and reflect on them.

Discover 7 things you can do to evolve the way you work with clients to take advantage of visual communication to:

  • mitigate the effect of stress on communication and boost your parties’ ability to listen, understand, think and remember
  • facilitate an automatic shift from “my point of view” to a “big picture” perspective
  • keep parties focused on the most productive parts of their discussion/key elements of solving their problems
  • avoid misunderstandings and increase the odds that everyone leaves meetings with one “group” memory

In 2013, after experiencing the complete absence of visual communication in two failed mediations during her own divorce, Lisa set out to bring the benefits of the methods that make her visual facilitation practice so successful to the field of mediation. Lisa is trained by the Justice Institute of BC and certified by Mediate BC and Family Mediation Canada. She has a visual divorce mediation practice in Victoria, BC and is the creator of BIG Beginnings in Visual Mediation – the only online program that teaches visual communication skills nuanced to mediation (www.bigbeginningsinvisualmediation.com). Lisa will inspire you to wake up your creativity, pick up your markers, and proclaim, “For the sake of easier collaboration, iDraw!” (even if you think you can’t).

Forum Session Type: 
Session Date/Time: 
Friday, October 26, 2018 - 19:30 to 22:00