Using art in training

Facilitators often walk into a group to find everyone with their arms cross ed and eyes rolled back. Na, they're not dead; they have issues. Simmons shares her experience working with corporate clients on how to brea k through barriers of skepticism and mistrust, using art in working with te ams and other groups. She says that art can help create a safe place to dis cuss what she calls "dangerous trurhs"-the organizational or team conflicts and other issues people are often afraid to address publicly. Simmons says that she discovered art as a tool when she began consulting co mpanies on turf wars. She devised a metaphor-map exercise to reveal the hid den dynamics in an organization or group. In one case; she asked participan ts to draw maps of the '"terrain" of their company illustrating breaks in c ommunication. The drawings packed quite a punch. Simmons concluded that par ticipants felt safe within the metaphor of the art to bring heretofore hidd en problems to the forefront. As participants shared their maps and stories , they began to solve the problems. In another instance, Simmons asked participants to combine their individual maps to create what turned out to be a big picture of organization-wide mi strust. It was eye-opening not only to the group, but also to management. F rom that acknowledgement, they could then do something about the situation. Simmons explains that creating drawings is only a piece of a larger process but that it does uncover conflict. She also cautions that people often thi nk that they have to be artistic or perhaps a little odd to draw their feel ings, so she offers tips on how to overcome their resistance-through creati ng trust, stimulating their hope for a goad outcome, and preempting blame. The article presents several actual drawings from Simmons's work with parti cipants.