Most of you have heard the term “can’t see the forest for the trees”. What that means is that sometimes you can be too close to a problem to see the entire picture. If you are in the middle of the forest, you can’t grasp the size of the forest for all the trees blocking your view. The same holds true in many life situations whether it is business, family or personal relationships. Sometimes, in order to understand a problem, you must step way back to see all the angles. It may help to have input from friends who see the “picture” from a different point of view.
Here is a fun excercise that you can share with your kids, students, or employees in order conceptualize the “forest” and why it sometimes takes a team to see the entire picture. This works great with a small group of 5 to 6 people, but you can adapt the idea to any number. First off, you will need a large picture…a really, really LARGE picture. A wall mural or a large picture painted on butcher paper would work. Mount the picture on a wall with the middle of the picture “Nose Height” to one of the team members. Choose one of the team members to be the “lost person” in the forest. Before letting that person see the image, put a blind-fold on him/her and lead them to the wall. Have them place the tip of their nose on the picture, then remove the blindfold. Tell the “lost person” that he/she can look with their eyes, but they cannot turn their head or remove their nose from the picture. How much of the picture can they see? Can they tell what the subject of the picture actually is?
Next, allow each team member to describe 1 single point on the picture and let this continue until the person with their nose to the wall guesses the correct subject of the picture.
This excercise teaches several different things:
1. Sometimes you can be too closely involved to see that a problem exists
2. Sometimes you can be too close to a problem to understand the scope of the issue
3. Sometimes it takes a team to solve a problem. This can be family, friends or co-workers
4. Good communication skills are necessary for the team to help the “lost person” finally guess what the picture is all about
Communication skills are important to artists.
Good communication skills are hugely important in business (as well as all aspects of life) but especially where money is concerned. When a customer approaches you and asks you to make them a “blue vase”, what you see in your mind is going to be totally different from what the customer is expecting. You may be thinking a tall slender vase made for long-stem roses while your potential customer may actually be thinking about something they can put their pens and pencils into while it sits on their desk. How you both arrive at the exact same mental image requires very good communication skills.
Here is a fun excercise that we used to do in our office many years ago that helped teach us better communication skills. We had 2 identical sets of blocks. All the blocks in each set were different colors and sizes but the blocks in set 1 exactly matched the blocks in set 2. Then, two of us sat back to back with each of us having a set of blocks in front of us. One of us built a “random” structure with the blocks and tried to describe each step to the person sitting to our back. When all the blocks had been used, we got up from our desks and looked to see how closely the 2 structures resembled each other. You can quickly see how important communication is here. It was difficult to get both structures to look the same.
The same excercise can be done with pen and paper. One person draws a picture using geometric figures placed randomly on the page and tries to explain their drawing to the person sitting behind them. After 3 minutes, the pictures were placed side by side and compared.
Marshall Kregel, Dec. 2010
http://en.eldsto.is/about/ I put this link in so you can read about us – who we are and who we represents. We are married couple’s fore many years and we work together in the art. We would like to be connected to your website.