Seeing the Forest for the Trees

The 'Seeing the forest for the trees' board serves as a visual tool for exploration and connection with the entire group at the beginning of a meeting, using the metaphor of individual trees (the participants) together constituting a diverse forest. It sparks reflection & conversation and leverages the group's diversity, revealing what would otherwise remain hidden - a picture is worth a thousand words!

What do we (not) have in common? What are the strengths/weaknesses of our individual trees, and do we form a healthy forest together? What might be missing in our forest?

The board connects directly to the shared purpose of the meeting for which the characteristics of the forest are relevant and thus leads naturally into other activities and conversations.

Group

6 - 18 people that are on a shared journey (e.g., in professional development or a project) but may not know each other very well yet.

Duration

15 minutes

Features

- the board supports less experienced Miro-users with pre-made drag & drop elements, and the user only needs to access the default color palette

- within the limitations of the default color palette, the contrast has been optimized to support users with a color vision deficiency

- the board is designed for common laptop screen sizes, optimizing legibility while maintaining the overview (and thus limiting the need to zoom in & out)

- the layout follows the default scroll direction for easy navigation

FACILITATOR INSTRUCTIONS

Before the meeting:

Decide what information you want to visually encode in the tree ring profiles and what axes you use to sort the profiles. Change the labels on the board if needed.

The example shown is for a group of facilitators from the NeverDoneBefore community, visually encoding:

🌳 How many years of experience do you have as a facilitator?

🌳 Are you self-employed, or do you work for an organization?

🌳 What area do you primarily work in these days?

🌳 Do you work mostly online, in-person, or roughly 50/50?

🌳 How many certifications in facilitation do you have?

🌳 In how many professional communities are you currently active?

During the meeting:

1) Start at the first field and invite participants to duplicate & drag the tree ring image that reflects their situation to the second field on the board.

2) Reveal step-by-step the visual encoding guide at the bottom of the second field and demonstrate the editing steps, letting participants customize their tree rings.

3) Invite participants to move their customized tree rings to the final field, positioning them along the horizontal & vertical scales so as to reflect their situation.

4) Now it's time to start seeing the forest for the trees! Invite a group conversation by highlighting aspects that stand out and inviting additional observations. For example:

🌳 Are the trees healthy?

What aspects of our trees serve/inhibit us? (e.g., certifications)

🌳 Do we form a healthy forest together?

How might our similarities/differences support us?

What might be missing in our forest? (e.g., specific expertise)

5) From here, you can take it into further conversation and activities connected to the shared purpose of the meeting for which the characteristics of the forest are relevant.