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Hi everyone. Thanks for tuning in. It's great to have you here for another episode of the podcast. And if this is your first time listening to the show, a big welcome to [00:01:00] you as well. For those of you who have been listening for a while, you'll know that I talk quite a bit about tailoring your communication to meet the needs of your audience.

So a big part of that is understanding people's different communication personality types. So the three factors there are whether or not you are a strategic or detailed thinker, whether you have introverted or extroverted tendencies, and if you are primarily an auditory or a visual learner. If you go back to episode six, you'll hear me talk more about those three elements in more detail.

And you could take my communication personality type quiz via my website. I'll put the link in the show notes for you. So I thought we'd start to delve into some more specifics around each one of these elements and give you some ideas for how to meet those unique needs of different audience members starting today with those who are primarily visual learners.

So a quick recap here for those of you [00:02:00] who did or did not listen to episode six, visual learners are those who primarily recall things that they've seen rather than something that they have heard. Those people who remember more of what was said are likely to be auditory learners primarily. There's also kinesthetic learning, which means we learn by doing. But for the purposes of communication, we focus primarily on auditory or visual learning. And some people maybe have some auditory learning skills, but are primarily visual learners and vice versa as well. But you will most likely be predominantly one type or the other.

It's interesting that visual learners are really a predominant learning type. They make up 65% of the population. Why are more people visual learners and why do visuals work? So, you know, doing the research on this, it really does depend what you read, but the stats are anywhere between 20 and [00:03:00] 50% of your brain is involved in visual processing, which kind of makes sense when you consider that 70% of all our sensory receptors are in our eyes, and we process images much more quickly than we can process written text.

There was one study I read that found we can understand the meaning of an image in just 13 milliseconds. We can get a sense of a visual scene in less than one 10th of a second. Our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour. So this is kind of why you understand that people remember 80% of what they see and do, 20% of what they read and only 10% of what they hear. How crazy is that? So 80% of what people see and do is what they actually remember. To add another layer to this, adding colour has shown to increase the recall of information by [00:04:00] up to 82% and increases comprehension of that information as well. And you know what?

Communicators have been getting wind of this for a really long time. You see that in newspapers, so visual information increased 142% in newspapers between 1985 and 1994. It increased 400% in literature since 1990 and, get this, 9900% on the internet since 2007. We are exposed to so much more information than ever before, so visuals really help us cut through the noise.

It's also worth remembering that since the dawn of time, we've relied on our sense of sight and sound for survival. So from birth, babies are actually drawn to recognise faces. For those of you who have had children or been around young children, you'll know that they [00:05:00] recognise their mother's faces really quickly.

It's quite extraordinary. We process information to keep us alive basically. We've been on this planet evolving for millions of years, but interestingly, even though we've been around that long, we've only really been using written symbols and letters for about 5,000 years. We've only had texts in mass production in the past 500 years or so, and many people were still illiterate.

So realistically the written word is a really new thing for us, and all of this makes the case for why we should be getting away from long written copy if we want to reach people quickly and effectively. And it's especially true of our visual learners. As I said, they make up the majority of our learners and our brains are wired to respond to visual stimulus.

Now we know all of that information. What can we do in our comms every day to reach the [00:06:00] visual learners in our audience? And I've got a few ideas I'm about to share with you in this episode. And of course, I'd love to hear your thoughts as well. So let's get stuck into it. The first idea, and again, it's not rocket science, is infographics and charts.

They are a great way to communicate with visual learners and. A big caveat though, they have to be done well and they can't be too overcomplicated. So remember that we want people to be able to resonate or understand what you're saying very quickly, not get frustrated by trying to figure out the image.

So if infographics are really good for things like sharing key outcomes of a project or financial results, even things like responses to a survey, so data. They're really great at showing a roadmap, so that allows people to see how lots of little things fit together in a bigger context or a timeline of events. They are great for communicating a strategy.

So for example, a strategy on a [00:07:00] page, and those of you who are part of my 12 month free comms toolkit, I have given you a example template of a strategy on a page for comms. But you can use that for any project, any organisation really. Strategy on a page is a great way to reach visual thinkers and just communicate in general actually about a strategy.

Infographics and charts are also really good for pulling together information from different sources to make a point. So for example, you could have research and data from one source, research from another, bring it together in a visual to help make a point. Really good infographics use a mix of simple graphics and very minimal words to share a message.

I've seen some people try and create infographics and they just end up shoving like a whole lot of words or whole sentences or two on a line, and then plunk an icon next to it. And apparently that's an infographic. That's not, it just doesn't work. [00:08:00] It's still too text heavy. If you haven't got a graphic designer that you can call on, jump onto Canva and use their templates.

They are a great starting point. Also, just Google infographic ideas. I used to do that before Canva was a thing, like back in the, the old ages of Adobe, uh, Photoshop and InDesign. So Google some ideas. There's heaps out there that will inspire you. Charts are really good for displaying statistical information or data, particularly if you want to compare one set of results with another.

So for example, a pie chart that shows overall results for a survey question like, Overall, how would you rate the quality of this event? That's really great for a pie chart to to show where the majority of people are sitting. Other charts like line graphs or bar charts can be really good too, but you really need to design them in a way that ensures the key information stands out and [00:09:00] isn't lost in the overall picture.

Now when using graphs and charts, I really love the advice of one of my fellow consultant friends, Kate Norris. So Kate helps people develop presentations and simplify really complex ideas and data into key visuals. She has a past life as an analyst, so that makes a lot of sense. I'll link to her LinkedIn profile in the show notes and Kate's advice is really great.

It is one graph, one story. When we pull a chart together with lots of data points, there's lots of stories you can infer from that, which means if there's a key story you're trying to get across, it's getting lost. So you can use things like the type of chart you use or the colour to hone in on one story, one data point that you want people to take notice of.

So, for example, you could make all of the bars in a chart gray, except for one, which is yellow or red, to draw attention to that one in particular. So really think about how [00:10:00] you use charts strategically. Don't just plunk it on a page, one graph, one story. What's the one story you want to get out of that graph?

Okay, so the second idea for communicating with visual thinkers is whiteboarding. It's a great tool for visual learners. Whether that's in person or online, using like a whiteboard virtual tool. Now, especially if you're trying to explain a complex idea or a new concept, or helping people to understand a process, this is when whiteboarding comes into its own.

Now, I use the term whiteboarding loosely because as long as you have a pen and a piece of paper, something to draw on, you can achieve the same result, right? So when we whiteboard, we keep it simple again, and, where possible draw it out in a logical sequence. Start at the beginning. Work your way through the rest of the idea or the process with that person.

Talk it out loud as you go. Another idea could be to whiteboard a mind map, put the central idea or problem to be solved in the centre, build out the responses or [00:11:00] ideas from there. I really like Whiteboarding because it can help people to articulate something they have in their heads, but they've struggled to get other people to understand it and articulate it themselves.

I. And also people can then co-create with a visual so they are able to have a sense of ownership over what you develop and a really deep understanding of what you're trying to communicate. Um, obviously I love whiteboarding cuz I do sketchnoting that sort of stuff. I carry my own pack of whiteboard markers with me, which probably sounds really nerdy, but I just wanna make sure I've got good pens with me.

But drawing things out has, I found, particularly when it comes to complex ideas, uh, technology, trying to explain how a system works is a really great way of getting people who are predominantly visual learners to get across something complex as well. Okay.

The third idea is video and animation. So video is obviously a very visual tool, although it can and does have auditory elements to it, [00:12:00] of course.

But it's a great way for people to receive and process information very quickly and in a way that's really engaging. So, Now engaging is the key word here. Three minutes of some executive head talking to a camera is not engaging. Nobody likes the talking head. And if you're going to do that, you may as well have just released an audio recording or a transcript.

It amounts to the same thing. If you want your videos to engage people and reach those visual learners, they need to be interesting. Remember, our visual learners remember more of what they see than what they hear. So if all they're seeing is a head on a screen, they're not remembering much. So intersperse the talking head with infographics or animations that simplify what that person is saying.

That's a really excellent way to cut through. So, for example, I've done this before where I've had a CEO being filmed as they're talking through a script, and her face was only at the top and [00:13:00] tail of the whole video. In between those top and tail, we had an animator create images and an animation that reinforced what she was talking about verbally.

They're really simple. They're more like drawing icons on a screen and a keyword here or there, but it was so much more interesting and much more likely to be remembered. So think about how you could use animation or uh, really smart visuals in these corporate videos. Also just note on video generally keep it short.

So thanks to social media, our attention spans are shorter than ever, so anything over two minutes is probably going to be switched off. Um, Facebook actually suggests keeping videos to under 60 seconds, and they probably know their, their market based on all the data they're gathering. And the second tip here in general is to use closed captions.

Many platforms are automating this now anyway, so LinkedIn does this now automatically, which is fabulous. But having those [00:14:00] closed captions helps people who are watching on their mobile devices or who are hearing impaired. So again, just two tips there. Keep it short and use closed captions as a general rule.

Okay, so the final tip is, Use models or demonstrations. So this one is really good for people who are a little tactile as well. You can build out a model and it can be a really fun and really memorable way to communicate. And again, it doesn't have to be overly complicated. There's a great workshopping technique called Lego Serious Play, and you could actually be trained in this technique.

And it's where you use Lego along with a framework of questions to help people explore strategies, learn more about each other, or come up with ideas. If you use a tool like Lego in helping teams understand a strategy and their role to play, it can be a really fun experience, and it's so much more memorable than showing them a PowerPoint.

I've run a workshop for a client using Lego, and it was [00:15:00] such a good way and a fun way to get people thinking and involved in the future direction of the business, to start conversations at the tables with people they may not have really spoken to before as well. So they've really built some connection and then you take photographs of the results and you end up with a few visuals that they can then use to remind them of what they discussed or what they decided on as well.

Of course models are also a really great way to communicate things like a new building or a new facility, or explore a new piece of equipment that people will have to learn to use. Demonstrations are also very visual ways of communicating, so you might remember from your own high school days doing home ec or science, maybe seeing that bunsen burner light up and things bubbling away in a test tube.

Hopefully not exploding. But in a corporate sense, demonstrations can be really useful as well. There is a great book by John Kotter. If you haven't heard of John Kotter. He's basically [00:16:00] kind of the godfather of, uh, change and change management and change leadership. So he's from Harvard Business School, so this book's called The Heart of Change, real Life Stories of How People Change their Organisations.

Now, in this, he shares a story of a business that had a number of different factories all around the US and each factory was managing their own procurement. But of the same items. So an executive at this business could see that money was being wasted because the organisation wasn't taking advantage of the economies of scale they could get if they centrally managed procurement.

Now he tried to get other senior managers to understand the issue and the opportunity. So he put together a business case and it basically fell flat, didn't resonate. Um, those executives didn't see the problem as one that was urgent, uh, one that, you know, they necessarily had to put a lot of time into solving.

Uh, but he was really passionate about this. He knew how much money they could save and what the opportunity was, so he changed tact. He [00:17:00] knew each one of these different facilities was ordering work gloves, and they were ordering them from various suppliers all over the world. They were all different types of glove, but they all had the same purpose.

They were work gloves. So he collected and get this 424 different types of gloves that the business was procuring through these different factories, and he tagged each pair with the price and the supplier. So 424 different suppliers, different prices for this whole, for the whole factory, for the whole organisation.

It's just ridiculous. So he did that, and then he took that pile of 424 gloves and dumped them on the boardroom table in front of those senior executives. You can imagine it got their attention. They could see right in front of them why this was an issue. 424 different type and brands of gloves and a huge range of prices.

What a complete waste of time and money, right. [00:18:00] But it was a successful demonstration. So this led to them completely overhauling their procurement process and becoming a much more efficient business. So that story is just a great example of the power of something visual and how it can communicate a message simply, quickly, and really effectively.

So here's our episode recap for today. Number one, most people are visual thinkers, and our brains are wired to respond to visual stimulus. That's why visual communication is so important and so effective. I've shared four ideas for ways that you can communicate effectively with the visual thinkers in your audience.

Number one, infographics and charts. But remember, keep them simple. Reduce the word count and, one graph, one story. White boarding. Grab those pens. Grab a scrap of paper and sketch out the ideas or processes with others. Videos and animations, but keep them short. Keep them simple. Keep [00:19:00] them interesting. No talking heads please.

And finally, models and demonstrations. Can you create something physical but still visual that attracts attention and helps to make a point.

So hopefully that gives you loads of ideas to get started. I'll also put links in the show notes to a few bits and pieces for you to check out. As per usual, I would love it forever if you could take a few minutes after today's episode to rate and review the show. It helps me to know what people are finding valuable that I can keep doing more of, and it helps the show become more visible in the podcast apps, which means more people can learn. And if you have any ideas for content or topics you'd like me to cover, please get in touch.

I'm very easy to find and very open to ideas. Have a great week and I'll meet you all back here next week for another episode of Less Chatter More Matter. Bye for now.