Visuals, drawings, communication, travels, and much more
I read an article about the importance of giving feedback and the difficulty of giving feedback. I couldn’t stop myself from drawing the 4 rules of thumb:
The original article is worth reading
FR: Est-ce que le français est une langue compliquée? Pas tellement, non, il n’existe que 12 manières d’écrire le son « s ».
EN: Is French a complicated language? Not so much. There are only 12 ways to write the “s” sound.
Librement inspiré du TEDx talk “La faute de l’orthographe” de Arnaud Hoedt et Jérôme Piron.
I had the immense privilege of listening to two prestigious experts in their field, with a common research object and practice, meditation. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche who is a Tibetan Buddhist master and meditation teacher, and Dr Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry who is well known for his research on the brain and meditation, and is a friend of the Dalai Lama.
They talked us about meditation, how it can help decision makers. The conference was a pleasant dance between teachings about meditation, small meditation exercises, and scientific facts that confirm the importance of the meditation practice for more awareness for better decision-making. My visual notes:
Big thank you to my colleagues Carles Blas Chloé Dengis who invited these two persons and organised the conference so well.
Sketchnotes and drawings from my travelbook during our trip to Phuket in Thailand. Everything was drawn on site even if not always finished or colored at the same time.
This way of collecting moments, places, people, food in a travelbook has become precious to me. Because I take the time to observe, listen, feel before opening my travelbook and drawing. Then because looking at these memories after my return, and even years later, takes me back vividly to the moment I experienced with the same emotions and the same feelings. Much more than photos can do. And I say that as an amateur and fan of photography. Besides, you can look at my photo album of Thailand.
Who has never wondered how to reduce their workload? But who has never found a solution to the question, which is not episodic or ridiculous in terms of real benefits?
My colleague Oliver Kozak brought his scientific and systemic approach to present how continuous improvement can help us to really reduce worlkload.
The objective is to free up enough time to be able to start improving, in order to free up even more time up to 40% to be able to improve continuously and ultimately create much more value at work (by moving from the Spend-It-All team model to the Time-Investor team model). How to get there concretely? By improving in three areas: (your) work processes, team efficiency, and organisation development. Important: you have to go slowly, step by step, with persistence day after day, be patient, and get support.
My visual notes of Oliver’s presentation.
My colleague Valeria Croce asked me to record visually two fantastic sessions she organised on “Trust” with renowned speakers. I reproduce here, to accompany my visual notes, the essential passages of the articles that Valeria wrote after the sessions, as a report.
To trust each other at work is even more important in the context of hybrid or remote work, with limited human interaction and the difficulty to reach out to new people!
Chris Tamdjidi shared with us the evidence and learnings he collected through the years working with teams inside and outside the Commission, focussing on the important role of trust in teamwork. He observed that:
This is why it is important to build team habits that help strengthen collaboration, team resilience and trust, especially in a hybrid environment. These habits are: Habits of attention; of connection; and of positivity.
Trust is critical to create an environment where colleagues collaborate, share knowledge, engage and contribute to the achievement of the shared purpose. Yet, trust-based relationships require time to be built. What can we do to start building trust from the very beginning of a new collaborative project with colleagues from outside our team or unit?
Hilary Sutcliffe and Vanja Skoric shared lessons they learned working for over 130 civil society projects.In a nutshell, they identify four areas, where most barriers to trust and collaboration can be found, namely:
Three aspects that are crucial to overcome barriers are: A (truly) shared purpose; a trustworthy process (based on seven drivers of trustworthiness: openness, integrity, competence, inclusion, respect and fairness); and a visible impact.
Three drawings to illustrate in an offbeat way, and probably memorable way, the participants’ conversations during a session on knowledge management.
The session hosted by Huy-Hien Bui and Fania Pallikarakis, whose full title is “Knowledge Management and Collaboration in international organisations: Edge or Curse?”, was held as part of the Friends of Career Development Roundtable (FoCDR) workshop in Brussels on 17 June 2022.
