Draw to Win

Did you know that 2/3 of our brain activity is occupied by processing visual information? Most of the information about the world is received from our eyes. Visualization is the most powerful way to communicate. So what? We as a leaders can use it to educate and persuade people, to share our vision and sell our ideas.

But how to do that in practice? That's what the Dan Roam book Draw to Win: a Crash Course on How Lead, Sell, and Innovate with Your Visual Mind is about.

Why drawing is important:
- Drawing is the oldest 'technology' in the world
- 90% of all information is visual
- Visualization attracts attention and improves clarity in communications
- Visual information is memorable

Knowing that, we can significantly enhance our presentation skills. No special knowledge is required to start drawing: we can easily draw lines, arrows, shapes and smiles. That's all you need to start drawing to explain or sell your ideas. The accuracy of result pictures is not important.

The author explains that our brain processes visual information to answer the following questions: who? what? how many? when? where? and why?
Organize your ideas into a visual story that provides that answers and you will need only 6 pictures or slides to explain everything. The book even includes an example of how to explain a salary increase to a manager using this technique, but I won’t spoil it—better to check out the original for the full story 😉!

Additionally the book contains practical tips to get started with drawing and use it to improve creative thinking. One that I really like: if you don't know what to draw, start with the circle, name it, continue adding circles until your idea takes shape.

To sum up, visualization is a powerful tool that can be used to manage, educate, sell, share, collaborate and innovate. I really enjoy the book, it's full of interesting facts and practical advice. There are more books by the same author on this topic, and I’ll definitely add them to my reading list!

#booknook #softskills #presentationskills