The Power of Creative Tools & Products to Create Breakthroughs, Attract Clients & Transform Your Business
Part 2 of 4. The Power of Imagery
In this series, I’m going to introduce you to the power of creative tools for transformation and how products can make a difference in your business.
We continue from part 1 where I spoke about how creativity requires a stimulus.
Imagery, pictures and visual metaphors are the perfect stimuli for creativity, intuition, and insight. An image can be paired with any open-ended question and it will always open up new associations, ideas, and perspectives. Whether you ask your client to look around the room and land on something visual or draw an image from an imagery card deck, the impact is powerful.
Lakoff and Johnson’s work with metaphor finds that metaphor comprehension is grounded in our sensory (see, hear, taste, touch) and our motor experiences. This research, which has been around for a while has been affirmed by more recent research that says that our brains conduct a sort of mental stimulation as a way to understand the metaphor. What’s exciting to me is that metaphor has such a strong connection to the body. This is one of the reasons imagery brings new awareness to the coaching conversation.
Several years ago I was at a gathering and one of the women brought a card deck. The deck had imagery on one side and content on the other. The cards got passed around, we each drew a random card and let the image prompt a life story. It was all very spontaneous and the images called forth stories that were richly textured, deep and meaningful. This depth of conversation would not have happened without that creative stimulus.
When you work with images in groups or privately allow the client to choose an image in response to a question. It is helpful to tell them that they don’t need to know why they are drawn to a specific image and to allow their intuition to choose. Trust your client to be guided to an image that will serve them.
Next, trust your coaching skills and your intuition in the exploration process. Avoid your own interpretation of the image by focusing on the elements; colors, shapes, textures, rather than the content. Your job is to help them find the wisdom that the image represents.
Be open and expect surprises and aha moments.
Try this….
- Next time you explore values or learning related to a peak experience or transformational moment, invite your client fully into the experience right now, all senses engaged. It will get the same neurons firing as the original experience and that will shift their internal state and brain chemistry at the moment.
- Invite a client or group participants to choose an image (from a card deck or collection of pictures) in response to an open-ended question. For example: What does success look like? or What is your relationship to…..love? trust? money?
And then “coach” the image to deepen the insight and awareness it is calling forth.
Watch for our next part in 2 weeks when I talk about Using creative tools to be more memorable.
About the Author:
Marcy Nelson-Garrison is a product mentor and founder of www.coachingtoysstore.com. If you like this series you will love Marcy’s free ebook: Creating Aha Moments, Creative Right-Brain Coaching Exercises for Individual, Group & Team Breakthroughs. Available www.marcysfreegift.com
The Expert Series is brought to you by choice Magazine as part of our ongoing efforts to bring opportunities for learning and growth to the coaching community. Delivered in four parts every two weeks, each series covers useful topics for business development and coaching insights, serving the needs of leaders in all areas and walks of life. Archived copies of the previous series can be found here.
