Survey for GFs: What's Your Role?

This month, we are continuing the conversation that was inspired by our January survey question as to how easy or difficult it is to describe graphic facilitation. This month, we want to know what role you play with your client.
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6 responses

We’re definitely seeing a genuine uplift in interest in strategic visualization where the facilitation component is integral to the business conversation and acts as the critical agent to revised thought. We are noting this right across the markets. We believe strongly that there is still a tremendous interest in alternatives to the bland, academic consulting approached provided by the mainstream consulting firms. Still sensitivity by clients around the pure graphical component but once overcome and seen in proper context then not a problem at all. We should all be in very good shape.

— John Caswell

Good question & great to see the terms explained more. I definitely see myself most as 3 & 4 hybrid - facilitator and visual communicator. The images are truly in service to the ideas and the process of the group. I *am* an artist, past, present and future. Those skills are great in my graphic facilitation work, but I always feel funny when clients call me an artist. I define artist as being so much about *self* expression, that it doesn't feel right in that context.

However we define our roles, I love that we're all using images to help people get out of their own heads and realize their ideas.

— Brandy

Being a graphic facilitator for me is a profession which responsabilities are strongly related with the charachter and capacities of the drawer that performs.

In my case I work as a creative individual, modelling concepts and then translating them into fresh images, graphic metaphores which englobe the whole concept, the whole idea. I try to do it as much as possible in a humouristic atmosphere as it's the best way to expose ideas,always welcomed by the one that watch. A graphic facilitator to me needs much more than a good drawing line, but several other skills like a high capacity to draw fast in order to catch as much ideas as possible in the meeting (even the most insignificant ones can give the key to represent the whole concept), the potential to sintethised several concepts or subjects in one through a clear image, the capacity to elaborate meaningful words into graphic sequences...even through colours, etc.

being a graphic facilitator in the world of drawing and illustration is like being a pioneer just arriving to a whole new world... something still to be discovered.

— Miguel Villalba Sánchez "ELCHICOTRISTE"

In my experience, it seems the facilitator/strategist and the graphic facilitator are two distinct entities today.

I think the power of GF and whether it is viewed as strategic or a nice to have depends on the audience. Corporate clients seem to have one of two notions - you are a either a darn smart and innovative business consultant or you are the artist (which often rears its head as, "Hey, let's see if the ARTIST can draw THIS!!!!!". I don't know if it is because they are from the land of plenty or they are busy or that people in these positions are more auditory and less visual. And as a result of the latter perpsective I get the notion that if you can't hold it, measure it, or use it as it has been created it holds little value.

In less corporate environments like Health Care, Not for Profit, or Community groups, this seems to be less of an issue. Perhaps its because they work in a realm that is already less measurable, etc. and have in their own experience witnessed times when less structured means brought a tangible end, i.e., sense appealing information like feelings and emotions play a stronger part in their solutions than they do in the coroporate environment.

I think there are ways to overcome the bias that I have seen, however, it is tough to move the energy from the quiet or quieter Graphic Facilitator who settles in the background to someone who takes a more vocal, center stage on projects and events. I would welcome your thoughts and ideas around this issue.

— March 13, 2007 at 08:57 AM

I see myself as primarily 4&5 depending on what my clients want. Often I can be visually telling their story or putting their words and ideas into images, but I can also use images and colours to help highlight ideas and connections in what they have told me.

Many of the groups I have worked with have initially viewed the graphicing as a novelty but after seeing the reactions of the participants and the end results, then rebook me for other events and recommend the process to their colleagues.

I think the real power of graphic recording is starting to be seen in the health and social care fields, where there is now a demand for true user and participant involvement.

— maria hubbert

It depends. Often they ask for visual recording, sometimes we come to a new role as visual facilitator, sometimes we get the chance to invent a fitting process, for example using our KuS model (see our website), or to work with images and storytelling ….


Almost always they feel afterwards that it was worth while to work with us, and some even recommend us to others.

— Reinhard Kuchenmüller