This book is the fourth in a series sponsored by Wiley & Sons to comprehensively explore the rapidly expanding field of visual practice for facilitation, group leadership and consulting. (See Figure I.1). Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change (Figure I.2) builds on prior books, but assumes a more general level of understanding of the purpose and power of visualization than when the series began. Since Visual Meetings was published an entire body of literature has emerged with an ever-widening delta of practitioners, and attendant confusions about how these methods really work in practice.

Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change explores the integration of visual facilitation, dialogic practice, and change work, as practiced by co-authors David Sibbet and Gisela Wendling, Ph.D. It introduces a new Seven Challenges of Change model.

A deeper purpose for writing Visual Consulting emerges from our experience of current events on local and global levels moving very quickly in complex and polarizing ways. We believe there is a need for practitioners who can be constructively involved in responding to these challenges and help guide change using the tools that visualization and dialogic practice provides. Both of us authors are fully engaged in long-term projects working on organizational and community change, often combined with supporting practitioner development. We feel called to share what we are learning more now than ever. We are eager to reach consultants in general who are becoming aware of the power of visualization, but also to visual practitioners who are awakening to the possibility of using their skills to help design and facilitation change in a more expanded way.

As with the other books, what we are sharing is based on experience enlivened by relevant theory. We know practitioners need concepts and light scaffolding to guide their developmental work, and specific, useful practices that can be applied. And we also know that reading stories of how these approaches work in actual practice can bring the theories, skills, and approaches to life.

Blending Three Fields

We are integrating three fields of practice in our conception of visual consulting: Visual facilitation—Dialogic practice—Change work (Figure I.3). Each of these fields has disciplines, associations, literature, practices, and special language. What makes it possible to integrate them is they share a need for process awareness and process thinking.

Dialogue

Visual Facilitation

Visual facilitation is my (David Sibbet,) lifelong passion with decades of organization and community consulting across multiple sectors. I, Gisela Wendling, have spent my professional life researching and supporting change work with a continuous focus on integrating the principles and practices of dialogue in my work. We are excited to introduce readers to several new visual frameworks that have been especially powerful with our own work in this regard. One is the Consulting Framework for Respectful Engagement that will help consultants of any type understand their roles and the type of relationship they hope to establish with clients.

A second, the Liminal Pathways Change Framework, has grown out of my, Gisela's, research at Fielding Graduate University. It re-conceptualizes the basic archetype of change embedded in traditional rites of passages as a human systems change framework, offering insights not only into the phases and milestones of change but also inner process and outer process dynamics that accompanies it. This framework has been consistently eye-opening and useful to people who are participating in our workshops.

The third model is a Seven Challenges of Change framework that integrates The Grove Consultants International traditional organization change model (described in Visual Leaders) with the Liminal Pathways work.

Being Aware of the Inner & Outer Dimensions of Change

These frameworks and process models are outgrowths of our joint leadership of many change projects and our work of teaching process consultants about these methods. Over the course of our professional practice we have became increasingly convinced that one's own inner awareness and how this applies to the use of oneself as an instrument for change is as important as the supportive outer structures consultants create, including the hands-on practices and tools they use with clients.(Figure I.4) Of course this dual focus on the inner and outer dimensions applies not only to consultants and their development but also reflects the dual focus that is needed to effectively support change in client systems. As we began sharing these ideas, we found more and more colleagues coming to similar conclusions or feeling confirmed by what they have sensed or known all along but had not seen simultaneously well-integrated before. Throughout the chapters we come back to this dual focus and share specific approaches and practices to working with each of the seven challenges of change.

Use of Self

Change Work

Anchored in Student-Centered Learning

We bring 70 years of collective, field-tested knowledge to our writing. Our methods have been refined through actual practice in the field, informed by reading and extensive exchange with colleagues. Underlying this we share rich, formative experiences in student-centered learning.

I, Gisela, as a student in the humanistic-oriented psychology department at Sonoma State University was part of a several-years-long extraordinary learning community modeled after the principles of student-centered learning. This community was guided by true elders in the field of humanistic psychology—William McCreary, who had been a student of Carl Rogers, and Arthur Warmoth, a student of Abraham Maslow. In this approach it is the learner and not the content, the instructor, or the institution that is at the center of the learning process. It taught me what it means to be an empowered learner, to locate my self-authority, to pursue my callings, and embrace community as a deep resource for personal and collective learning and development.

My passion for supporting transformative learning processes grew while I was in the masters program in Organization Development, also at SSU, learning the trade by participating in immersive action research projects­­—a program which I later directed. Being part of the scholar/practitioner doctoral program at the Fielding Graduate University further deepened my appreciation for self-direction and peer learning. My approach to working with organizations and fellow learners is deeply rooted in these experiences.

I, David, worked for many years with the Coro Center for Civic Leadership before starting my consulting firm, The Grove Consultants International, in 1977. Coro pioneered experience-based leadership development in its nine-month Fellowship in Public Affairs, now offered in six cities across the country. Many of The Grove's visual and other methods were seeded in that experience of helping Fellows learn from their own experiences.

Colleagues from the Global Learning & Exchange Network worked extensively with David and Gisela in refining the core ideas in this book. The GLEN's purpose is to evolve methodologies of collaboration and change to better face the problems of our times. This network is supported by The Grove Consultants International. For more information about both check:

https://glen.grove.com

www.grove.com

This shared orientation to designing and facilitating empowering person- and client-centered approaches, along with her global perspectives and focus on human systems change led to Gisela joining The Grove as its VP of Global Learning. She and David launched a Designing & Leading Change Intensive at The Grove in 2014 to explore the integration of their fields of work. Response to this work resulted in them co-creating a Global Learning & Exchange Network (or The GLEN) with the help of a half-dozen colleagues and Grove consultants. Its purpose is to evolve methodologies of collaboration within and across organization, communities, and cultures to better face the problems of our times. Through eight on-line inquiries, or what we call Exchanges at The GLEN, we shared our emerging Seven Challenges of Change framework and tested it's depictions of the inner and outer challenges against the extensive experience of our colleagues.

Structure of the Book

In general, this book is oriented to the less experienced consultants in the beginning chapters, making the case for visualization, dialogue, and change working together and providing frameworks and explicit, practical examples of how to get started. As the book progresses we address the more subtle aspects of change, continuing with specific methods and tools.

The book is, itself, highly visual and designed to be scanned as well as read. We invite you to move between sections to find the parts that resonate with your current interests. But if you want to follow our main case (the UC Merced Vision & Change Alignment process) from beginning to end it is best to read the chapters sequentially.

SideStory I.1

Part I: Imagining Visual Consulting, Jumping into the Flow, is written to orient you to this way of working.

Chapter 1: The Potential of Visual Consulting begins with a story of the California Roundtable on Water & Food Supply, and how Gisela, as a consultant who does not work on the wall graphically, extensively used visualization as a way to both support dialogue and catalyze new, holistic thinking to address some of the tough water issues California is facing. She eventually involved David as a visual facilitator, so this story embodies many of the themes of this book.

Chapter 2: What Kind of Consultant Are You? introduces the Consulting Framework for Respectful Engagement, an extension of Ed Schein's traditional definition of process consulting. This overview provides you with a sense of where you are entering this field.

Chapter 3: Capabilities You'll Need, orients you to capabilities we believe are needed to practice visual facilitation, dialogic practice, change work, and use of self. These are framed in the context of the four flows of process, a powerful set of distinctions from Arthur M. Young's Theory of Process that underlies this and all The Grove's other work. These capabilities deal with both inner practices and outer structures.

Part II: Visualizing Change, Helping Clients Look Ahead, heads directly into the challenge of finding clients, scoping your projects, and contracting for success, and at an overview level thinking about change not only in terms of stages of process, but also the weave between inner and outer considerations.

Chapter 4: Finding & Contracting Clients, begins with the story of a Visioning & Change Alignment project at the University of California at Merced. This year-long consulting engagement threads through subsequent chapters provides many examples of best practices for designing and leading change. This chapter is a must for anyone beginning the consulting journey.

Chapter 5: Basic Patterns of Change introduces the Liminal Pathways Framework, a way of looking at how traditional peoples have supported change for tens of thousands of years. This work is an outgrowth of Gisela's field study of indigenous rites and ceremonies in Peru, Africa, and Australia and her doctoral research. This framework applies to change in general and transformational change in particular.

Chapter 6: Seven Challenges of Change provides an overview of the framework that will guide Part III on visual consulting practices. It explains the integration of the basic pattern of change illustrated in the Liminal Pathways framework with The Grove's organizational change model (described in Visual Leaders). This framework evolved during the writing of this book as colleagues and others reflected on the themes that were most important for practitioners.

SideStory I.2

Part III: Visual Consulting Practices, Responding to the Challenges of Change, moves through the Seven Challenges of Change Framework one at a time, and elucidates core principles for working with inner process dynamics and outer process structures, as well as best practices for each.

Chapter 7: Activating Awareness Shares how to be aware of the surprise, shock, hopefulness, and preparedness. We describe outer structures for doing scoping, initial client meetings, mapping drivers of change, interviewing stakeholders, using conceptual models to hold a systemic perspective, assessing readiness, and contracting for change.

Chapter 8: Engaging Leaders of Change moves into the formation of design teams, visual stakeholder analysis, roadmapping, role clarification, and working with resistance. We speak to the fears, and feelings of uncertainty connected with this early stage. It continues the UC Merced case with explicit examples of charting, dialogic practices and overall design for a change process.

Chapter 9: Creating & Sharing Opportunities explores how to design and hold a strong container for design thinking, visual facilitation, visioning, scenario planning, creating large storymaps, and dialogue practices to support this challenge. Exploring assumptions, resistance, caring, and creativity are inner aspects. The UC Merced story continues, showing elements in practice that create strong containers for the work.

Chapter 10: Stepping into a new Shared Vision brings the UC Merced story to culmination as the University agrees on its vision and priorities moving forward. We describe how to stay connected to purpose, hold complexity, and cross the threshold in decision crucibles, and large-scale visioning processes.

Chapter 11: Empowering Visible Action looks at the importance of taking enough time to involve new leaders, support emergence, and learn from experience. It explores communicating early wins, keeping a clear rhythm, supporting work groups, building capacity, and facilitating learning opportunities. A case from Cal Poly Pomona's College of Business Administration shows how visioning work materialized in visible results for the college.

Chapter 12: Integrating Systemic Change uses the iceberg model to look into the systemic issues and mental models that need to shift to support change. How do you persist courageously, clearing old habits and nurturing new patterns of working systemwide? How can consultants amplify successes, clear blocks, design new processes, and evolve new rituals for creating and sustaining culture change.

Chapter 13: Sustaining Long Term moves into the challenge of evolving culture change over a period of time—both appreciating the gifts of change and living with impermanence. How do you evolve the culture, celebrate completions, invest in renewal, and maintain and refine?

Part IV: Expanding Your Resources, Continuing the Journey, contains a last chapter, the appendix, bibliography, and index.

Chapter 14: Toward Mastery wraps up with our hopes for where these concepts, principles, and practices will be used, and how you as a visual consultant can begin the longer road of personal practice and development in this field. It includes sidestories of consultants who are working at this level.

Appendix and Bibliography. The back of the book has a short overview of the Theory of Process, which underlies Grove models, as well as links and a bibliography of the references that have inspired us in writing this book.

Visual Consultants as Vanguards of Integrated Thinking and Practice

In a time of specialization and polarization, we are writing into the space of integration and collaboration. We have been hugely inspired by the response of our clients to this blending of dialogue, visualization, and change (Sidestory 1.3). Take any away and you do not have the potential we are describing.

SideStory I.3

• As you will discover, this is not a book about the traditional use of visuals as static pictures that explain things, but of using visualization as an active language, central to the social construction of what we consider valid and real, and understandable in the world.
• This is not a book about dialogue separated from the work of the world, but about the important integration of inner and outer ways of knowing and relating while working IN the world.
• This is not a book about change management—the smoothing of organizational transitions, project and process optimization, and the many operational capabilities needed to run any organization. It is about stepping up to support change that transforms and touches the deeper currents of culture and the paradigms that we use to make sense of the world.

We hope you consultants and others who read this book can become adept at BOTH the use of visualization to guide consulting processes in a structured way, and the use of your own visual imagination to become adept at enhancing dialogic explorations, guiding consulting processes in a structured way AND using your own visualization to become aware of your and your clients' inner dynamics. For visual facilitators stepping into consulting, we hope you can come to see the path forward as a wonderful expansion of your receptive, improvisational capabilities, and learn to listen to parts that can't be visualized explicitly, but can be honored by how you show up and the quality of your being while holding the processes of change.