The purpose of Generative Relationships STAR is to help a group understand how they work together and identify changes that they can make to improve group performance. All members of the group diagnose current relationship patterns and decide how to follow up with action steps together. The STAR compass tool becomes even more powerful when you use it frequently. After a first diagnosis, you can evaluate the progress you make as a group and see if things are actually improving. Tove Jansson’s paintings and literature inspire me. Her art is full of messages of equity and justice among creatures (humans, Moomins, other) of all types. Some of these messages, for example on gender diversity, were revolutionary in her time in the 1940s to 1970s.

Invite participants to practice drawing the five symbols: circle, rectangle, triangle, spiral, star person. 5 min. Apple Freeform, Google Jamboard and Microsoft Whiteboard, each explained briefly below, all allow you to draw and type on a virtual rectangular shaped space. This sort of unstructured sketching helps many people explore ideas or clarify concepts. When drawing with other people, these visual tools may help encapsulate or explain essential points and sequences. As remote work becomes increasingly common, turn to these drawing tools when you need to scribble and show people something that may be difficult to describe with words. Each of these drawing systems pairs well with the respective platform’s video-conferencing system, too: Freeform with FaceTime, Jamboard with Google Meet, and Whiteboard with Microsoft Teams. When you’re done with a drawing, you may export your board, either as an image (Google Jamboard and Microsoft Whiteboard) or PDF (Apple Freeform and Google Jamboard) for long-term reference. min) Form pairs, and interpret each other’s drawings. The person who has done the drawing does not speak at the start. First, have the other person interpret the drawing. Only once the other person has had the opportunity to share his/her interpretations, the original creator of the drawing can add more detail. After 5 minutes you switch roles. Invite participants to create a second draft, in which they refine their story by dramatizing the size, placement, and color of the symbols. 10 min.

First, invite participants to use Drawing Together to visualize their personal journey. Encourage them to include important moments, challenges, and struggles. Afterward, give them a minute to reflect on their journey, and to think about a challenge they still face today. Maybe they already visualized it, or otherwise, the visualization made them aware of a problem they struggle with. The book Moominland Midwinter (Finnish Taikatalvi, Swedish Trollvinter) resonates with our project. Moomintroll awakens in the middle of his hibernation, and finds himself in a completely unknown, frozen environment. Moominland, usually full of life and colour, has suddenly become still, white and frozen. Together with his value creatures, most importantly Little My and Hemulen, Moomintroll learns to survive and enjoy the white winter-wonderland. They also find ways to help others in need, such as a frozen squirrel. Drawing Together can serve as a perfect starting point for Conversation Cafe. For example, ask participants to draw their personal journey or challenges, and share it via Conversation Cafe afterward. 7. Use it as input for “Generative Relationships STAR” Ask participants to invite another individual or their small group to interpret their drawings. Remind them that the person who has done the drawing does not speak. 5 min.

Use as a template a progression from status quo, through call to novelty, discovery, validation, early adoption, and spread Instead of focusing Drawing Together on visualizing a past experience, it’s also possible to use a forward-looking perspective. Have participants draw their professional journey for the upcoming 10 years, as they imagine it at this point in time. Other examples are: using Drawing together to visualize the product development life cycle, the future of a team or organization, or maybe even how they’ll handle conflict in the future. An advantage of a forward-looking perspective is that it allows the participants to truly draw together, instead of drawing alone and inspecting it together. 4. Use it as a recap structure Without knowing a thing about it, at that moment his velvet skin decided to start growing woollier. It decided to become, by and by, a coat of fur for winter use. That would take some time, but at least the decision was made. And that’s always a good thing. (Jansson 1958, 18)” Introduce the idea of drawing together by drawing and describing the meaning of each symbol. 5 min. As always, I’m eager to learn from your experiences as well. How have you used Drawing Together? What works best for you? What other strings of Liberating Structures have you tried? Let’s learn and grow, together! About Drawing TogetherDrawing Together is a Liberating Structure that is all about creativity and interpretation. It’s a structure that you can easily use online. Especially when you want to really draw ‘together’. Just create a large online whiteboard with Mural, Miro, or a similar tool, and go wild! Sometimes I do ask participants to first draw their journey on a physical piece of paper. The combination of using physical paper within an online setting proves to be a powerful combination. Closing Instead of using verbal language as its medium for interaction, Drawing Together makes use of constrained visual language with five purposefully abstract symbols. Steps to facilitate Drawing Together