Most of your conversations probably look like this:
You’re chatting with someone else (maybe in person, maybe over the phone, maybe online) and there’s a back and forth between the two of you (or however many are in the conversation).
This is a great way to connect with someone, to share how things are going, to hear about what’s going on in their life, to discuss whatever topic is of interest to the two of you.
But something happens as that conversation unfolds. As it goes in more directions, it’s easy for those initial parts of the conversation to drift away and to leave your awareness. Spoken words are fleeting after all, and our working memory is limited.
So depending on the complexity of the topic that you’re discussing, you might start to have some trouble keeping in mind all of the things that have been discussed and figuring out where to go next.
And while the conversation have might started in a positive tone, what happens if it turns negative? What if certain tensions start to arise? How does that impact the quality of the conversation?
What if we introduced a third point into this conversation? What if, instead of just having a face-to-face back and forth with fleeting words and potentially distracting emotions, you each had something else to reference and work with?
What if that third thing was a hand-sketched visual artifact, where you can capture each of your thoughts about the topic you’re exploring, where you can reference previous threads of your conversation, where you can direct your attention and energy when the pure social dynamics aren’t working in your favor?
That’s what’s called 3-Point Communication.
I was introduced to the idea in Oliver Caviglioli‘s book Dual Coding with Teachers, which references 3-Point Communication in the context of education. But I think it’s equally powerful and needed in the corporate context and within organizations so that you can have more effective meetings and strategy sessions and performance reviews and sales calls.
That’s because something powerful happens when you give one or both or all of the participants in a conversation the ability to create that common reference point in the moment to support the purpose of the conversation.
Here are four specific roles that a visual artifact can play in a conversation.
The first thing that it can do is set the context. Let’s say you are initiating the conversation and there are certain topics that you know you want to address. Imagine being able to say “Here’s the situation as I see it…” as you sketch out or show a simple drawing or diagram, even if it’s just the start of a drawing or diagram.
From there, as the conversation continues, you have the ability to track it. You have a common reference point that can keep all of these ideas from floating away, so that you can literally point to and reference something that one of you said 10 minutes ago without relying on your working memory to do so.
You can also think of the page as a neutral third party that helps to manage the energy of the conversation. The page allows you to capture the positive energy whenever it occurs, and it also helps to defuse the negative energy by giving each party something else to focus on instead of interpersonal tension.
The fourth and final role that the third point of a sketched diagram plays is identifying the next steps that happen after the conversation. Who is in charge of what? When you have a visual recording of the conversation, you can circle or highlight the specific actions that each person needs to take to support the common goal that you came in with. That way you can you spend less time on follow-up and more time on follow-through.
So if you’re finding that your meetings are running in circles, or that there’s a lack of clarity around what you and your team members should be working on to move a project forward, or if you feel that conversations just aren’t going as well as you’d like because of the limitation of a two-point dynamic, then you might want to give 3-Point Communication a try.
For support in building your 3-Point Communication skills, check out my program Sketch Strategy.
Through that program I offer live workshops for organizations and leadership teams to help you build out the starting point of those important conversations, to build a model that communicates your overall strategy or the customer journey or how you conduct performance reviews or how to address a current pressing challenge within your organization.
Cheers,
-Doug