Visual Thinking Keynotes + Workshops
Visual thinking pioneer Brandy Agerbeck offers in-person training on visual thinking, visual listening, visual tools for facilitation, and graphic facilitation.
Brandy can customize a program specific to your team or event's needs. She can be the "sage on the stage" in presentation mode with an interactive keynote, but be warned, the session will include hands-on learning.
Visual thinking is a skill set that shines in the workshop, "guide on the side," format. Brandy blends demonstration time, hands-on exercises, and plenty of Q&A.
"Brandy is a triple threat. World-class expert, top-notch trainer, and seamless facilitator. Learn from the best."
Patricia Martin
CEO, Litlamp Communications
We know drawing and visual thinking has a pretty high novelty factor for most organizations. It’s definitely not business-as-usual. Brandy is not here to teach a shiny toy, that you forget next week.
She teaches you indispensable tools that change the ways you work. Create clarity for yourself, your teams, your organization anytime you’ve got paper and pen (or whiteboard, or tablet, or…).
Brandy Agerbeck never shares a visual thinking how-to without the all-important why it matters. This work is always grounded in hands-on practice, making it a refreshing change from lecture-based training.
While Brandy Agerbeck's focus is to make everyone better thinkers, communicators and happier humans through learning visual tools, these experiences also create stronger teams, increase collaboration, improve communication, and are chock full of social learning.
Brandy takes great care to cultivate learning environments of respect, safety to try, the challenges to make us all better, responsiveness and joy.
The room's setup, available materials, and how the agenda is crafted shapes these outcomes. Be sure to share your objectives with Brandy so together you can meet your group’s individual needs.
Interactive Keynote
The Idea Shapers Interactive Keynote
Add a memorable & experiential element to your event to spark creativity, problem-solving and reflection
2-4 Hour Interactive Keynote | Variable Group Size
Brandy begins with a 45-60 minute “sage on the stage” keynote on visual thinking while every participant draws along. Next, everyone puts their brand new learning immediate into practice with a 1-3 hour “guide on the side” exercise. This exercise is a highly customizable component designed to integrate with your event’s format and objectives. A few possibilities:
Launch your event with an introductory exercise, followed by small group sharing to get the pulse of your audience and help participants connect with each other.
We can craft a session of small group problem solving, or tackle parallel scenarios, followed by report outs.
Create a bridge from your event into your attendees’ return to their workspaces with a reflection exercise and new ideas and skills to implement
⭐ Give your audience Brandy’s instantly-understandable and endlessly replicable “four tips and a rule of thumb” for visual thinking.
⭐ Learn the single most important idea to shush the Inner Critic that keeps you from learning and growing.
The Idea Shapers book and The Agerbeck Method online course can be bundled with this talk to extend the experience.
<< Audience engages with Brandy’s live drawing projected from an overhead camera.
Hands-On Visual Thinking Workshops
The Idea Shapers Tour
Experience the vitals of visual thinking for clearer communication, critical thinking, and wrangling complexity.
1-3 DAYS | DESIGN VARIABLE: Room setup, group size, length, and exercises will change levels of social learning and collaboration for participants
Grab you your passport to the rich world of visual thinking! As a respected, international leader in the field, Brandy has broken down the complexity of visual thinking into 24 accessible, concrete “idea shapers.” This workshop is your tour through these tools and drawing as an endlessly adaptable thinking tool. New lands await!
Brandy’s core small group workshop is adaptable in length:
Quick overview of visual thinking with a handful of exercises
A “hop-on, hop-off tour” of all 24 Ideas Shapers with 2-3 stops for hands-on exercises.
Recommended for stronger skill- & team-building
Lite Level plus:
➕ More hands-on exercises
➕ More Q&A time
➕ The magic sleep-on-it factor
Give your team the gift of time to directly apply these new skills to their work
Lite and Essential plus:
➕ Exercises customized to your team or organization
➕Open Day 3 work session to tackle your real work.
⭐ Think only artists and designers can do this? Wrong. Brandy’s gives every participant — no matter their background or skill level — concrete tools and methods to use time and again.
⭐ This is not mindless doodling. This is making great work happen with paper and pen. We emphasize the thinking in visual thinking.
<< Brandy fields questions mid-tour, sharing from her 22 years of experience.
The Idea Shapers book and The Agerbeck Method online course can be bundled with this talk to extend the experience.
First Rate Flipcharts
Craft the 10 crucial flipcharts that take meetings from meh to masterful.
2 DAYS | UP TO 20 PEOPLE: Wall space, flipcharts, room size impacts ideal group size.
In a Harvard Business Review study, 71% of senior managers said their meetings were unproductive and inefficient.
Learn the antidote to this lousy statistic. The humble conference room staple — the flipchart — is the key to unlocking the untapped talent of your team and making the most of your time together.
⭐ Not only does Brandy shows you step-by-step what to draw, she divulges all her best practices in how to use each one and why every single flipchart is critical to your meeting’s success.
⭐ Take the guess work out of whether your meeting time was well-spent. Your productivity is made tangible. Increase the focus, participation and collaboration of every meeting.
⭐ Ace these 10 indispensable flipcharts and adapt them to any meeting topic.
Note: This workshop is not artsy-fartsy flipcharts facelifts. These 10 proven formats are GAMECHANGERS. Spread this approach throughout your organization to change meeting culture forever.
<< Brandy piloting this program with “lab partners” from her three-day immersive public workshop, The Lab.
The Idea Shapers book and The Agerbeck Method online course can be bundled with this talk to extend the experience.
Visual Listening
Tune into this essential life skill of listening by making it tangible with paper and pen.
1-2 DAYS | GROUP SIZE VARIABLE
Great listeners are indispensable. Sadly, most people are lousy at it. The power skill in the noise of the 21st century is visual listening.
In this workshop, we dive deep into specific visual listening techniques:
⭐ Learn how a conversation transforms with paper and pen. People feeling listened is even more important than you think.
⭐ Recognize your own filters and biases that affect your ability to listen well.
⭐ Discover the different types of speakers and how each one helps and hinders listening.
⭐ Tap into the treasures of Brandy’s 10 Micro Listening Cues to guide comprehension and synthesis.
⭐ Understand the Visual Organization Scale, a spectrum for different levels of making listening visual and spatial.
The Idea Shapers book and The Agerbeck Method online course can be bundled with this talk to extend the experience.
Gold Star Graphic Facilitation
Capture the core qualities and guiding principles for supporting groups visually.
2 DAYS | UP TO 20 PEOPLE: Wall space, flipcharts, room size impacts ideal group size.
Most narrowly defined, graphic facilitation (or graphic recording) is being the one person in the room making live, large-scale drawings of a meeting. But the listening, thinking, and drawing skills needed to excel in this unique role has immense power in so many more positions and projects.
Awaken your ability to guide groups with paper and pen!
⭐ Learn The Essential Eight from the author of the “graphic facilitation bible,” Brandy Agerbeck’s The Graphic Facilitator’s Guide.
⭐ Identify which group-serving smarts you already possess and know how to improve the ones you are missing.
⭐ Grasp the guiding principles that keep you focused and first rate in this complex role.
⭐ Use your improved listening, thinking and drawing skills in whatever work you do.
The Idea Shapers and Graphic Facilitator's Guide books and The Agerbeck Method online course can be bundled with this talk to extend the experience.
Stellar Stickies
Take this brilliant brainstorming tool to a whole new level.
1/2 - 1 DAY | Dependent on wall space | Great addition to First Rate Flipcharts
At a couple pennies a piece, what sticky notes can help your team create is pure gold. If you know how to mine them. Stop squinting at scribbly stickies and turn them into industrial-strength idea machines!
Brandy is eager to share the very best practices from her 22+ year graphic facilitation career to use this simple, sticky tool to its highest potential.
⭐ Choose this workshop if you tackle complex topics and projects whose component pieces need to be named, understood and aligned.
⭐ Collect gems from your talented teammates, including those voices you don’t hear often enough.
⭐ Discover the secrets of how to use these simple squares to surface new ideas quickly, the zoom through alignment and to reach higher levels of meaning and agreement faster.
⭐ Master this ubiquitous ideation tool: from how to set up everyone for success >> through proven processes >> to elegant archiving.
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