Visualisation – Presentation – Facilitation: Translation of the 30th German edition

By Josef W. Seifert

Visualisation, Presentation and Facilitation are working methods that play an increasingly important role in professional everyday life. This was the case in 1989, when this book was first published, and is more relevant now than ever. Since the first edition the author has revised this book numerous times. He has expanded and “modernised” this edition so that the best seller once again sets the benchmark in regard to content and design.

The reader learns how he can skillfully visualise facts, properly prepare and confidently give presentations, effectively chair a meeting, facilitate teams and groups results-oriented, and successfully organise workshops.

The book also provides the reader with proven methods, tips and techniques for communicating information understandably and vividly. The focus is always on the “how” – giving the reader concrete suggestions for practical use. With its clarity and structure this book is probably unsurpassed until this day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Jun 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9783739291048

Josef W. Seifert

Josef W. Seifert is an expert on business facilitation. He is founder, partner and managing director of the renowned consulting and training company MODERATIO® in Pörnbach/Bavaria and author of numerous books on the subject of facilitation.

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ISBN 9783734781087

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Production

Cover Design: David.Seifert, Pörnbach

Text Illustrations and Chapter Cover Sheets: Design House,

Laufer & Zahs, Nußloch

Text Illustrations: Peter Kaste, Erlangen

Layout and Graphics: Moderatio, Pörnbach

Photos: Legamaster, Moderatio, Neuland, Fotolia

Printing and Binding: Salzland Druck, Staßfurt

Completely Revised and Extended Translation:

Barbara Siebert, München

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Barbara Siebert for her painstaking care in editing the text, Karina Gregory for critically reading the text, as well as Uwe Schettler for his loving preparation of the flip charts.

Translation of the 30th German Edition

(German Title: Visualisieren Präsentieren Moderieren)

GABAL Verlag, Offenbach 2011

All brands, products, trademarks, and registered trademarks mentioned in this book are the property of their respective owners and possibly not marked as such.

All rights reserved. Reproduction – also in part – only with the written permission of the author.

www.josef-w-seifert.com

Foreword to the First German Edition

Most people have, in a manner of speaking, been damaged by school: Over the years they have experienced that learning and teaching are primarily associated with speaking and speech. Oral contributions of teachers and pupils are still the focal point of didactic activity wherever the educational process is institutionally guided. This learning environment has channeled our natural learning habits one-sidedly towards the spoken word and passive receptive learning. In the same way it has also uniformly shaped our expectations in learning situations.

Now, if in turn the pupils become teachers, company instructors, or management-level employees, they often merely exchange roles: Whereas they previously spent years training themselves to listen to the teacher speaking, they now quickly grow accustomed to presenting issues, instructions, and solutions to problems as well as to practicing the art of lecturing.

Among the many possible detrimental effects of this, two are particularly tragic: One is the conception that what was said was also understood, and the other is the notion that the task of the pupil or co-worker must be confined to listening and/or to following instructions.

The present book is an excellent guide for helping to dispel this speechification. The author has compiled a wealth of proven methods and techniques for visualisation, presentation, and facilitation. These are useful for understandably conveying information and offer practice-orientated aids for working together and solving problems in seminars and workgroups. The author goes about this using clear concepts and structures.

This is the reason why this book has a great deal to do with the true art of didactic activities.

Landau, September 1989

Prof. Dr. Theo Hülshoff

About this book

Visualisation, presentation, and facilitation are tasks faced by employees of modern organisations more and more frequently. The growing interest in corresponding practice sessions and complete training courses goes to show the importance of this topic.

During my work in the area of facilitation and training techniques, I have repeatedly been asked about literature presenting the topics of visualisation and presentation and/or facilitation in a concise and practical orientated form. This is why in 1989 I wrote the present book, which in the meantime has been translated into several languages and rolled off the presses over 500,000 times. I have repeatedly revised and expanded this book. For the present edition, I have once again revised it so that it is up-to-date in regard to content and design. Photos and graphics have, for example, been renewed and some tips have been added.

In this edition the three closely related subject areas – visualisation, presentation, and facilitation – are once again presented together in one volume instead of separately from one another. This provides the user with a collection of the most important principles, rules, and helpful hints, which together make up a comprehensive guide book.

The focus of this book is the how to, meaning concrete suggestions and useful contributions for practical application. I want to encourage you, the reader, to use this book as a reference work and a work book, to make your own notes in it and thus letting it become a practical tool for your everyday work.

Have fun reading and browsing through this book. I hope you find it useful and full of practical benefits!

Puch/Germany, July 1, 2011

Your Josef W. Seifert

Contents

Foreword to the 1st German Edition

About this book

1 Visualisation

1.1 Why Visualisation?

1.2 Planning a Visualisation

1.3 Building Blocks of a Visualisation

1.3.1 Media for Visualisation (Information Carriers)

1.3.2 Design Elements

1.4 Composing a Visualisation

1.4.1 The Sheet Partitioning

1.4.2 Arrangement and Logic

1.4.3 Colours and Shapes

2 Presentation

2.1 Presentation – What’s the Point?

2.2 Preparing a Presentation

2.2.1 Preparing for the Topic and Goal

2.2.2 Preparing for the Target Group

2.2.3 Preparing the Content

2.2.4 Preparing the Sequence of Events

2.2.5 Organising the Presentation

2.3 Conducting a Presentation

2.3.1 Tips for the Opening

2.3.2 Tips for the Main Body

2.3.3 Tips for the Conclusion

2.4 After the Presentation

3 Facilitation

3.1 Just What is Facilitation?

3.2 The Facilitator

3.3 Preparing a Facilitation

3.3.1 Preparation Related to Content

3.3.2 Clarifying the Objective

3.3.3 Preparing for the Participants

3.3.4 Methodical Preparation

3.3.5 Organisational Preparation

3.3.6 Personal Preparation

3.4 Conducting a Facilitation

3.4.1 The Course of a Facilitation

3.4.2 Facilitation Aids

3.4.3 Facilitation Methods

3.4.4 Guiding a Facilitation Process

3.4.5 Excursion into Facilitating a Discussion

3.4.6 Excursion into Large Group Facilitation

3.5 After the Facilitation

3.5.1 Personal Follow-Up

3.5.2 Organisational Follow-Up

And at the end a few Tips for the Podium

By the Way ...

Literature

List of Figures

Index

1 Visualisation

1 Visualisation

1.1 Why Visualisation?

1.2 Planning a Visualisation

1.3 Building Blocks of a Visualisation

1.3.1 Media for Visualisation (Information Carriers)

1.3.2 Design Elements

1.4 Composing a Visualisation

1.4.1 Sheet Partitioning

1.4.2 Arrangement and Logic

1.4.3 Colours and Shapes

1.1 Why Visualisation?

A picture is worth a thousand words, as the saying goes. Even though recent studies have shown that every individual has a preferred sensory input channel and that this is not always the visual one, the fact remains that people are visual beings. Most people are at least partly the visual type. Apart from that, a visual representation does in fact say more than anyone could express in a thousand words. Just think of the visual aspects of day-to-day interaction, the area of non-verbal communication.

Another interesting fact is the retention rate:

Fig. 1 – Retention rate

As this illustration shows, we retain 30% more from a presentation when visual representations (images, symbols, written words) are used. The advantages of visualisation altogether can only be guessed at.

But what exactly is visualisation? Visualisation means to represent something visually – this can be done for factual statements, emotions, and processes. Visual documentation does not have to replace the spoken word; rather, its aim is:

to focus the receivers’ attention on the essential

to involve the observers

to reduce the amount of speaking required

to give the audience orientation support

to make information easy (or easier) to comprehend

to emphasise essential points

to expand on and supplement what has been said

to foster retention

to encourage comments

There are no limits to personal creativity in regard to visualisation. However, you should know the fundamentals of visual representation and take them into account. This includes knowledge about ...

... planning a visualisation

... building blocks of a visualisation

... rules for the composition of a visualisation

1.2 Planning a Visualisation

A thorough concept must usually be developed before a visualisation can become reality. Depending on the situation, this will be possible to a greater or lesser degree. Even if only very little preparation is possible, you should not entirely do without visualisation and its positive effects. If you have enough time and/or the visual representation is important, you should definitely allow yourself this time for preparation.

An extensive preparation is a prerequisite for good, impromptu visual representations during a presentation since the presenter must have a previously developed image in his mind’s eye (and/or a pencil sketch on a piece of paper).

As in the case of the good old school essay, the first step to take for the thorough preparation of a visual representation is to gather material. One collects any information on the topic that could possibly be useful. The second step is the selection of items from this material that seem most important (initial selection).

During the third step you reduce those items left after the initial selection. For this you could use the following key questions:

What do I want to represent (content)?

What is the purpose of the visual representation (goal)?

Whom do I want to inform or convince (target group)?

Only after we have completed the planning stage do we deal with the visualisation in the narrow sense. The question now is how and with what the planned contents are to be prepared and presented.

1.3 Building Blocks of a Visualisation

To come up with a visualisation, you need, on the one hand, elements of content with which the information can be logically