Engaging and creative activities for a visual leaders training on applications

Creating engaging and creative activities for a visual leaders training on applications is essential to reinforce learning and foster participants' skills in freehand drawing and visual communication.

1. Visual Storytelling: Divide participants into small groups and provide them with a written scenario or story. Ask each group to create a visual representation of the story using freehand drawings. They can then present their visual narratives to the entire group, emphasizing how visuals enhance understanding and communication.

2. Live Visual Notetaking: Have a guest speaker or presenter talk about a specific topic while participants take live visual notes. Encourage them to use images, symbols, and text to capture key points and concepts. Afterward, have participants share and discuss their visual notes, highlighting how different approaches can convey the same information.

3. Visual Problem Solving: Present participants with a complex problem or challenge related to their field or industry. Ask them to work individually or in pairs to create visual solutions or diagrams that illustrate their approach to solving the problem. This activity can encourage creative problem-solving and communication through visuals.

4. Visual Feedback Session: Provide participants with some written feedback or constructive criticism on their previous visual work. Ask them to revise their drawings or visual representations based on the feedback received. This exercise helps participants learn to improve their visual communication skills.

5. Collaborative Visual Mapping: Assign each participant a different aspect of a larger topic or project. Have them create visual representations of their assigned components. Then, combine these visuals to create a collaborative visual map that represents the entire topic or project. This activity emphasizes the power of visual collaboration and synthesis.

6. Speed Sketching: Challenge participants with quick, timed drawing exercises where they have to sketch specific objects, concepts, or emotions within a limited time frame (e.g., 2 minutes per sketch). This activity improves participants' ability to quickly translate ideas into visual form and emphasizes the importance of brevity in visual communication.

7. Visual Presentation Makeover: Provide participants with a poorly designed visual presentation (e.g., slides with cluttered text and no visuals). Ask them to redesign the presentation by incorporating effective visuals, icons, and diagrams to improve clarity and engagement. This activity demonstrates the transformational power of visuals in presentations.

8. Visual Pictionary: Play a game of visual Pictionary where participants take turns drawing concepts, ideas, or industry-specific terms on a whiteboard or paper. This fun activity helps participants practice conveying complex ideas through simple visuals.

9. Reverse Engineering: Show participants a visually complex diagram or infographic from a real-world source, such as a magazine, website, or report. Ask them to deconstruct and recreate the visual from scratch, discussing the design principles and communication techniques used.

10. Guest Artist Workshop: Invite a professional visual artist or graphic designer to lead a hands-on workshop, teaching participants advanced freehand drawing techniques and sharing their expertise on how to effectively use visuals in leadership roles.

Remember to debrief and discuss the key takeaways from each activity to reinforce the importance of visual communication in leadership roles and how these skills can be applied to real-world situations.