Who is The Idea Shapers for?

My newest book, The Idea Shapers: The power of putting your thinking into your own hands, is all about demystifying visual thinking breaking down the complexity of Visual Thinking into a five-step process. The process is further broken down into 24 specific visual thinking concepts called "idea shapers."

I'll start with these caveats: 

• I don't think that visual thinking is the answer for absolutely everything.
• I don't think visual thinking is the right tool for every single person.

But I do think there is an absolute huge amount of opportunity to use the very simple tools of paper and pen, and use these visual thinking concepts, to:

• Deal with complexity
• Think critically
• Tackle a difficult problem
• Create crystal clear communications
• Manage your time
• Help with productivity

There's a lot of great things that that visual thinking can help support.

Let's talk more about who The Idea Shapers is for.

I'm going borrow these guys from my 2013 TEDx talk, Shape Your Thinking.

Aligning with the day's theme of Contrast, I shared this model from psychologist Linda Kreger Silverman, Ph.D.. In her work studying thousands of students, she found they basically fell into two different types of learners.

Photo by Drew Rose

The first type is the folks who are Auditory-Sequential. These students:

• Are good at learning step by step
• Tend to think in words
• Great at listening to instruction.
• Work well with details and concrete facts.

The second type are Visual-Spatial. These students:

• Are great at seeing the possibilities around the facts
• Tend to learn all at once
  (leading to...)
• Have a hard time showing their work
• Think in pictures
• Are strong in spatial relationships 
• Are hands on learners

I'm not a big fan of throwing somebody in one bucket or another, but Silverman's work gave a clear contrast and an opportunity to recognize both types AND find the space in between. 

In Silverman's experience, she found that 25% of folks fell into this strongly Auditory-Sequential. So these are the folks that this is their happy place thinking in words, listening to auditory instruction, learning step-by-step. Twelve percent leaned toward Auditory-Sequential. 

She found 30% percent of the students she studied lean toward Visual-Spatial and 33% are strongly Visual-Spatial. The happy place for these students is learning with their hands, thinking in images. (It will surprise no one that I am waaaaaay over on the right.)

Linda Kreger Silverman's finding were that 37% of those she studied lean towards or strongly Auditory-Sequential, and 63%. lean towards or strongly Visual-Spatial. A third were strongly visual spatial.

Yet, we were brought up in classrooms or in workplaces as adults very much geared towards the Auditory-Sequential folks.

Workplace meetings are generally ultra-auditory. If there is any kind of visual support, it might be a PowerPoint deck of slides filled with words and bullet points.

Or our learning environments that are more common based on teachers lecturing, and reading books. Very, very Auditory-Sequential.  

Sure, you do also have hands-on labs. My own happy place growing up, and why I went off to college thinking I would become a high school biology teacher. 

My 2013 TEDxWindy City talk was about sharing the blue Auditory-Sequential people and the yellow Visual-Spatial people. And very quickly identifying the very snazzy green person in the middle. 

We don't live in a purely Blue World or a purely Yellow World. 

You have got to be the snazzy green person in the middle, who knows how to navigate both worlds.

All kinds of tools.

The Idea Shapers is built for the snazzy green people, and the yellow folks who are strongly Visual-Spatial. 

If you're strongly Audtiory-Sequential, my book likely not going to resonate with you. 

If you are super word-based, or very linear, it is probably not your jam.

That is okay.

But I do think there's a whole lot of Yellow Thinkers who struggle with navigating the Blue World. 

It is just not the way they are built. For you, The Idea Shapers is fantastic resource.

If you do think in pictures, are good at spatial relationships, or lean that way, discovering visual thinking can feel like a homecoming. 

Perhaps you are a snazzy green person or an open-minded blue person. For you, The Idea Shapers can be an opportunity to tackle a problem from a new angle. Look at things from a new perspective. Push yourself and say ,"You know what, I'm going to try this on for size and see what I can learn about the problem I'm trying to solve" by picking up paper and pen.

Blue, green, and yellow, I welcome all learners to join me in the land of Visual Thinking.