CJ Delling had a job in HR but she gave it up to make her living doodling in meetings. Seriously. As a graphic recorder, she helps people make sense of meetings. Find out what that means

CJ Delling, graphic recorder with Gutsay

Listen to this episode if

• You organise team meetings and events
• You re not getting people acting on what you re saying
• You want to appeal to the 65% of the population who are visual learners

A picture tells a thousand words

Graphic recording, infodoodling, corporate cartooning call it what you will, a picture tells a thousand words, especially when:

1. Your audience includes people who need visuals to learn effectively (hint: that s well over half the population)
2. Your audience is bored with words and needs something more

Here s what this podcast is about in the imagery of this week s guest, graphic recorder CJ Delling.

Click the image for a larger version

 

Find CJ Delling online

• Gutsay
• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Mentioned in this podcast

• 3 Businesses: The Innovator, an interview with Annalie Killian

Podcast transcript

[music]

CJ Delling:

I was working in HR and learning development. I decided to resign. I quit my job, and when I left, a lot of people said, Oh, my God, CJ. What are we going to do without your drawings? I thought, Hang on a minute. What are you going to do without my normal job now?

It was really the drawings, and the pictures I drew for people for their reports, or for their presentations, for their flip charts, or anything that people really liked. I thought, Hang on. Maybe there is something in it. I should really be going freelance with this.

[music]

Steven Lewis:

You are listening to Talemaking from Taleist, the podcast where we talk about using the skills of journalism, and the art of storytelling to get your business message out. I m Steven Lewis. I m sitting here on a chilly Sydney morning outside a cafe with CJ Delling, whom you just heard there from Gutsay.

CJ has moved from learning and development in human resources into becoming a graphic recorder. Welcome, CJ.

CJ:

Thank you for having me on the podcast.

What is a graphic recorder?

Steven:

Firstly, I guess you better tell us what is a graphic recorder?

CJ:

A graphic recording means that you re sitting there listening to what is being said, and you write it down. You can write it down on a piece of paper or on a whiteboard. You re just capturing the main concepts.

Graphic recording might not be that well known as a concept. People might also like to call it info doodling. They might like to say corporate cartoons, visual summaries. They re all words describing the same thing.

Steven:

Some people might have seen those videos on YouTube where somebody is talking and a hand is drawing cartoon pictures illustrating what is being said. Is that the kind of thing that we are talking about?

CJ:

Yes. But that would be done graphically and animated on a computer. But, yeah, we can also do that in real life with pen and paper, or just with a tablet and a stylus.

Steven:

For me, I am thinking about sitting in a meeting, and it s really easy to tune out in a lot of meetings. You re sitting there in essentially somebody else s meeting with the requirement of recording it. That must take an enormous amount of concentration.

The skills required for graphic recording

CJ:

Yes. The key skill is not the drawing. The key skill is really the listening, and the deciding what is important and what to leave out.

After a full day, or a five day conference, you can pretty much just pack me up, store me somewhere, and let me recover for a couple of days. Because it takes an enormous amount of concentration and listening skills.

Knowing where to start an infodoodle

Steven:

As a journalist, my job is to write the story after the event. I sit through the event, or I talk to the client about what they want to say. I get the whole picture. Then, I can go away, and I can choose to structure it and say, Actually, that vignette should be at the beginning, because it sets a tone.

In your case, you are recording this live, so panel one of your drawing is the first thing that s said. How does that work? How do you know what to start with?

CJ:

It is always good to start with a title. That gives me a lot of confidence to just start with a title. Then maybe the date of either the conference, or the meeting, or anything like that to get something on the page. From then on, it sounds really strange, but it s a combination of courage, and just going for it. Also, just trusting your instincts, a bit of intuition as well.

In terms of, OK, something here sounds really important. These are the five things now that are going to be on this page. If we talk about, let s say a conference setting where there s a speaker, I can pretty much tell straight up, if this is going to be an easy one to draw, or a bad one, just by the opening couple of sentences of the speaker.

Are they structured? Are they going to tell people? I talk you through my 10 step program for example. That really helps me to know, OK, there s 10 steps coming up, I can space it out.

If they don t do that, you can still obviously do it, but it s more of an adventure then, I would call it. Where things could always go wrong, but it s OK, sometimes it s also to make mistakes.

How do people react to visual note taking?

Steven:

When you re doing it on a whiteboard, the whole room can see you doing it. How do you find people react to that?

CJ:

In the beginning I thought it would be very distracting for people, so I always put that to the client to say, OK, how would we manage that if that is happening?

It hasn t actually happened. People find it quite good to actually you know how you described in the beginning sometimes people tune out? Even though it still happens during a meeting for the participants, they can almost catch up again, if that is something that sometimes people do.

It helps people to know what they already talked about. There s nothing worse than a meeting that goes in circles, and circles, and people talk about different things, different issues, and there s nobody really categorizing them. I don t know. I really find my initial fear of Oh, people will get distracted was completely false.

People find it so much easier to actually focus on what is being said, and what have people already talked about, decided, what s going to come up next. That was my initial thought that proved to be wrong.

Can a graphic recorder actually change how the meeting runs?

Steven:

I m thinking of sort of an element of the Heisenberg Principle, I m thinking of, If I did a presentation, and I was watching the graphic recorder recording what I was saying on a whiteboard while I was doing it, it would be interesting to me, live at that time, to see what you thought was important about what I said. To see whether it gelled with what I thought was important. Have you ever had the presenter say, No, no, no, no. That s not the key point ?

CJ:

No, they haven t said that, because I think they might just be so in what they re doing as well. If I then give them either a printout, take a photo, and print it out for them, or if I just draw it on a piece of paper and give it to them afterwards, they re always astonished. A, that somebody was listening, [laughs] and B, that I managed to capture the main points.

It comes with a little bit of experience as well, having been to a lot of talks, knowing what talks are like, and what are really big issues. I ve done things as well, like biomedical engineering where I have no idea, and just managed to pick out the big ones as well.

You can pick it up in terms of how they talk, or how their body language changes as well when they talk about a really important point.

Does it help to be an outsider?

Steven:

We ve talked on the podcast before that, actually, in a lot of situations, people don t think it will, but it really helps to be an outsider, because you are not bogged down in the detail, generally because you don t understand the detail, right?

CJ:

Yes, absolutely. [laughs]

Choosing visual metaphors and having a visual alphabet

Steven:

How does it come to you what to draw? You re at a financial services meeting, you re drawing characters who are saying things, or you re drawing a pile of coins, or whatever is representing what s being said. It must have to come to you very quickly what visual metaphors you re going to use.

CJ:

Yeah, and that is also something that people can practice. Some people like to call it a visual alphabet. For example, what s the go-to symbol for conflict? What s the go-to symbol for growth, or innovation, or ideas, or anything? That is always helpful, to have that in the back of your mind.

Sometimes the speakers, or the people hosting the meeting will have little stories themselves, and then you can just draw out a picture. Let s say they re talking about how they had a rat infestation in their kitchen, and that is an easy thing to draw, [laughs] just as an analogy to prove a point or something.

I can then just pick that up, and people will, A, remember that story better, but then they will also look at the visual thinking, Oh, that was that story, that reminds me of that, and there are the key points written right next to it.

Steven:

I say, "financial services, and you say, rat infestation.

[laughter]

Steven:

Have you ever had a situation where you ve drawn, or you ve started to draw something, that you ve probably revealing too much about myself, if I could draw where you ve suddenly realized, Hang on, that might a bit offensive ? Because you re talking about banking, and you started drawing a fat cat, or that sort of thing. Have you ever offended anyone?

CJ:

No, I haven t, because I just draw what they re talking about. It s not that I bring my own interpretations about banks in it. No, I just draw the words, or the stories, or the key concepts that people are talking about, so I m not the one to blame [laughs] for the rats.

Becoming a graphic recorder

Steven:

You ve already said that you went from learning and development in human resources through to becoming a graphic reporter. How did that happen?

CJ:

How did that happen? Good question. I ve always been drawing. Even in high school, when I was taking notes, they were a combination of words and pictures, and then when I started my first job after uni, I helped somebody start up a new service line in a big organization, and there were a lot of models that we needed to create.

That was a very nice thing for me to help with the visuals, and then it just started to move on from there. When you facilitate courses, you need to prepare flip-charts, and how can you best prepare flip-charts up front?

How can you best prepare flip-charts before you start the course? What are really good pictures to tell people about the concepts? Then it just moved on from there, basically.

Steven:

It s interesting you say that about models. I m wondering if you do models for people now, because I used to think, sometimes when you see those PowerPoint presentations, and people have got their model with arrows going around in a circle, or it s a pyramid

It often occurred to me that they had just gone into this clipart section of PowerPoint, and thought, I fancy a pyramid. I don t know how to make it a four-segment pyramid, so I d better only have three segments in my model. I guess going bespoke is easier. Do you do a lot of that work now?

CJ:

Not so much. Most of my work is actually doing it in real time. I do a little bit of cartooning for presentations and pitches, but what I find I m helping friends with mostly is actually structuring content, what makes sense to put at the front, what at the end of a thing, and for that I would draw a picture.

Maybe that s a market niche I can still get into, to help people who are struggling with the style of a content problem, where you need to actually then create a four-tier pyramid, and how to do that.

Do people see corporate cartooning as childish?

Steven:

What I talk to companies about is storytelling, which is a word that I find very difficult in a corporate context, because it sounds juvenile. Storytelling, oh, that s what children do. Of course, people who understand storytelling understand that it s the most powerful thing that you can do. There is a reason that storytelling runs through the centuries.

I m wondering, in the case of what you do, you ve said it could be called info-doodling, or corporate cartooning, both of what you gain also sound that they might have a childish connotation, certainly cartooning. Do you find you get that reaction from people that it sound like a childish thing to do?

CJ:

I think, yes, if people haven t experienced it, if I explain it to them, is I bring a lot of a pens, which is a child thing. I have lots of paper, child thing, and then I sit there, and I draw. People immediately either think fine art or finger paint, that s the decision for people there.

It s only when they experience it. Either they have seen great video, where somebody did that, or they have been to a conference, and they heard the speaker, and they saw the notes afterwards. They saw them create it at the same time where they actually really get the value of it, where it helps people to recall what they just have listened to, or it helps people.

Let s say in the meeting, everybody is talking about different things, to actually come together, and talk about one thing at a time, and cut down meeting time exponentially basically.

Steven:

What is the size of meeting that would be appropriate for somebody? I m trying to think of a company meeting for me, too few. It would be very odd for you to be sitting in a very small meeting in a corner with your beret on and your pencils out. What is the sort of size of meeting that you get involved in?

CJ:

They re mostly the size of like, I would say 5-15; it s like a team meeting, or a strategy session there. For the training workshops, it can be any size, like for whatever size you are running for your training workshop. Conferences, doesn t matter really, I m just one out of, let s say a thousand, or one out of two hundred, or one out of fifty, and I ll be drawing it.

An example of a graphic recording situation

Steven:

Can you give me an example of a recent event that you went to?

CJ:

I recently did the 2015 Amplify Festival, which is a four day Innovation Festival, and it s hosted by AMP. That was a very long day, started very early in the morning, 7:30, finished at like 5 in the afternoon. The sessions were about 40 minutes each, and I was just drawing session after session, after session. After each session I scanned it in, and sent it to the social media team to use for their blog, for their social media, and I also gave to the speakers if they wanted it.

Steven:

Did you fine that it got a good reaction?

CJ:

Yes, that is always the people who don t like it, they don t come up to me and say, I hate what you do. Maybe that s all I think where this doesn t happen.

I do get a lot of people walking up to me, saying they really enjoyed it. It helped them remember things. It helped them just really focus. A lot of people say I don t know how to listen for that long, because a lot of people admit that they can t do it.

Steven:

Amplify is one of the most unusual corporate events in Australia. I interviewed the curator of the event for AMP, who is Annalie Killian, whose title is AMP s catalyst for magic, which is their indication of how unusual the event is.

If you d like to hear more about the Amplify event and the catalyst for magic at AMP, it s in my other podcast, which is called Three businesses, which you can find at the Taleist website which is tale, as in telling tales, taleist.com.

That s a kind of out there event, and what you re doing, to a lot of people, would be kind of out there. I m imagining sometimes you get called in by someone who ve got a sense of the unusual, who understands that their organization needs a bit of shaking up.

When you walk in there, people are pretty conservative, and they are, as we discussed, finding it pretty unusual. Have you ever had anyone come up to you afterwards, who you think you ve really broken through to, and help them step outside themselves?

CJ:

I thought you going to say I have broken them. [laughs] Maybe not at a meeting, but it was a team intervention, where the team was having a lot of problems.

They were coming together, and it was all disguised as a learning event, as a training workshop. What they actually needed to do is, what they wanted to do behind the scenes, was create more trust between the people, and bringing them together as one team.

I was not told about these things before I joined this day, [laughs] this training day, and only found out about that throughout the day. What it helped people was they had something to talk about with each other.

I was there in the corner, had my butcher s paper there, and it helped people to actually go back and revisit what they already talked about. About their team purpose, their team identity, the team behaviors that they agreed on, and then they took that back to their workplace and put that up.

They had lots of other teams come around and say, Oh, what is this all about? It helped maybe the team and a little, little bit to remember the things that they had agreed on, and also to have something to talk to each other throughout the day.

That was a big surprise, it was a big surprise for me, and maybe a bit of a surprise for them as well. Something unusual to get them out of their comfort zone, and start behaving in a different way.

The data on graphic recording

Steven:

We know, we discussed in the first episode of the podcast that stories are remembered for longer than just facts on their own. Do you find that visual elements are remembered longer than just pure note taking element?

CJ:

Yeah. If somebody goes to something, and doesn t take any notes at all. They will remember certain things, but if they take notes themselves, and if they re visual notes, they will remember 29% more of what actually talked about or agreed upon. If they can t take notes for themselves, for whatever reason, it s good to have somebody like me there who can take notes for the whole team.

[background music]

Steven:

If somebody does want you to come to their meeting to take some visual notes, or at least to talk to you about how that would work, how would they get hold of you?

CJ:

They can come to my website gutsay.com and all my contact details are on there, you can contact us there. Contact at gutsay.com. We re also on Twitter, and on Facebook. [laughs] Just give us a call, or send us an email, we re always happy to chat, and it s amazing what can be done with a little bit of pen and paper in a business context.

Steven:

Thanks CJ.

CJ:

Thank you very much for having me.

Steven:

You ve been listening to Talemaking, I m Steven Lewis from Taleist. You can find more episodes of Talemaking at taleist.com. That s tale as in telling tales, taleist.com.

Many of our guests have donated extra content to our exclusive library that is just for our subscribers, and CJ is actually doing CJ has actually done some visual notes on this podcast.

If you want to see what graphic recording looks like in terms of something you ve actually heard, go on to taleist.com. Go to the entry for this episode, and if you join subscriber library, you will be able to download CJ s visual notes from this podcast.

In the meantime, thank you very much for listening, I look forward to seeing you as a subscriber, a member of the community. Thank you for listening.

[music]

The post The Woman Who Gave Up Her Job to Doodle appeared first on Taleist.