Sherri Petro, President and Chief Strategy Officer of VPI Strategies, represents VPI Strategies on the Expert Panel for Managing Americans. ManagingAmericans.com is a management blog with more than 300,000 monthly readers. Sherri contributes monthly to the Workplace Communication Skills Blog and is one of the most highly read columnists.
This month’s article is “Talk to Me In Pictures”.
Quick. Think fast. What’s your first thought when I say “workplace communication?”
Did you think of written communication like texts, emails, memos, policies or reports? Did you think of verbal communication like phone calls, meetings, one-on-ones or the grape vine? Perhaps workplace miscommunication — a conflict, a rant or your boss’ nonverbals during your last interaction – popped into your mind.
I’d wager that if I ask the same question in a handful of years, there will be another category that will be top of mind. If communication is all about getting the point across, we have evidence we have another option we really should be considering just as important – visual.
Why?
According to Neil Fleming’s VAK theory, 65% of us are visual learners versus auditory or kinesthetic. Look it up on Google. It’s been touted for years so why should we start thinking of visual communication like we think of written and verbal communication?
It’s not like imagery is news. Marketers, graphic designers, movie-makers and curriculum developers have already built their careers on this knowledge. We’ve all seen ways we can communicate visually with some functionality in the software that allows us to communicate with each other from bar charts in Excel to Smart Draw in Word and red flags in Outlook (Can you tell I use a PC?).
I am talking about something that goes beyond. It’s not new as much as using this tacit knowledge in how we communicate more effectively at work. Let me make my case and give you four reasons I am calling this a bonafide trend of importance!
Visual Communications: 4 Reasons Why It’s Trending
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