Mind mapping is a very interesting technique in pedagogy for sharing ideas. A tool that can be deployed by children and adults alike that helps you visualize and communicate thoughts. Everyone gets to paint the canvas and work together as a team to arrive at amazing solutions, which we may have looked herculean to achieve in the beginning. You may wonder how could you not see the solution earlier? Why everything looks workable all of a sudden? It also helps identify new ways to solve the same task and with so much ease. That’s the power of mapping your thoughts on a canvas, it builds and nurtures teams – a collective effort for a positive outcome.
So how does it work?
We are aware that amongst the various learning styles – Visual learning is the strongest – as our mind process information post visual impression. Visual learners use pictures, drawings, charts bars graphs and other forms of visual stimulation to work-out a pattern of information. It helps us to go through the mind of the other person and this enables us to interpret their thought process.
The main idea is to put the big picture at the core of the chart and work around it by drawing arrows, pictures, cloud anything that helps you ideate, but ensure that every idea you map works for the big picture or emanates from it.
E.g Take a chart and put the word “Happy” in the center, draw a circle around it. And start mapping what gives you happiness. Initially you may be a little reluctant to open up and write your thoughts in ink (I don’t promise that it’s going to be easy) but eventually you will begin to map your mind. Later, you may even look at it and think was this really you…trust me this is just the start.
Companies deploy mind-mapping exercise before commencing on projects. The core idea is to get the cross functional teams (CFT) to work together. The teams are encouraged to be as innovative and as disruptive as they can be. This competitiveness amongst teams leads to brainstorming and ideation. And we have seen some of the best ideas being presented from mind mapping.
The Power of Mind Mapping
Information Recall – As we learnt, that pictures, diagram have the highest recall. You will be amazed as to how clearly you can recall the information of your “MAP” after a couple of month or even longer. It improves memory.
Knowledge retention during these creative sessions is also very high as there are exchange of ideas and this cross learning amongst peers/ colleagues actually enriches everyone.
Hierarchy and relationship is all about processing structured information between the various thoughts, when mapped. This can be visualized and it helps to facilitate problem solving in a logical and methodical manner.
Clarity for teams working on a projects. keeping the BIG picture in mind all team members can see and interpret information from the same view point. Information sharing and transparency becomes critical in big operations to achieve effective results.
Creativity –you can see adults looking like kindergarten kids. Excited, jovial, happy and at their creative best with sketch-pen in their hands drawing pictures, cartoons and everything they can. This is mind mapping
