As we all know, the traditional resume is an important and essential part of the job search process — a way to efficiently and effectively represent and communicate your career history on a page or two.

But after a hiring manager or recruiter has sorted through thousands of resumes and interviewed hundreds of candidates, your text-based, bulletpoint-filled black and white resume can easily get lost in the shuffle and buried in the pile (e.g., “I forget… which one was the guy who used to work for Disney and CBS?”).

This is why I recommend that you consider something new and innovative: a visual bio!

What is it? Put most simply, it's a colorful, visual version of your text resume.

Of course, it doesn't take the place of your traditional resume. But it is a great way to supplement it. It's a personal branding and marketing piece that you can take along on your interview to use as a visual roadmap while telling your story, and then leave behind as a powerful, colorful, visual reminder of who you are -- and why you're the right person for the job.

Not only will it assist you in clearly articulating your career history but -- as a picture is worth (at least) a thousand words -- it will give you an opportunity to demonstrate your creativity -- and enable you stand out from the crowd.

Our formula for success can best be summed up in the following simple equation:

                 VL = (VT + VC) x (M + L)

VisuaLeadership®  = (Visual Thinking + Visual Communication) x (Management + Leadership)

VisuaLeadership® is the art and science of applying visual thinking and visual communication tools, tips, and techniques to more effectively manage and lead yourself and your people.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, and finding the right words takes time, and time is money, then wouldn’t it follow that business leaders would make more money – in less time – if they simply used more pictures to manage and to lead?

OK, it’s not quite that simple, but VisuaLeadershipR forever changes the way business professionals think, communicate, manage, and lead simply by leveraging the power of visual imagery, mental models, metaphors and analogies, storytelling, humor, and a whole range of other innovative, highly effective visual thinking and visual communication techniques.

In every workshop BigBlueGumball delivers -- whether the topic is management, leadership, team building, innnovation, or presentation skills -- we draw on our background and experience in the entertainment and media industries to meld art and science, words and pictures, stats and stories, and models and metaphors to Educate, Engage, and Excite.TM 

The French novelist Marcel Proust wrote that “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.”

Based on my 25 years of business experience, I've learned that as a management, leadership, and presentation skills consultant, trainer, executive coach, and educator, one of the most valuable contributions I can make to my clients' and my students' growth, development, and success is simply to help them see their world -- and envision their future -- with new eyes.

In our leadership workshops, when we ask participants to call out the first word that comes to mind when they hear the word, "leadership," most of them say, "Vision!" And when we ask them to define what we mean by "vision" in the context of leadership, it's all about having a mental image of the future: a picture, that they see in their "mind's eye" of an idealized future state that is different from -- and better than -- the current reality.

And, so, assisting and empowering leaders to turn that future vision into a new reality lies at the heart of what VisuaLeadership®  is all about.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (who I referred to as "The King of Visual Communication" in a previous blog post) did not famously say, "I have a 500-page strategic plan"; no, he said, simply, "I have a dream."

That speech is a classic example (probably THE classic example) of communicating a leadership vision.

And it's a perfect example of VisuaLeadership® in action.

*For more on what VisuaLeadership® is all about, please check out some of my other posts on this Gumblog and on my LinkedIn page, or feel free to get in touch anytime.

I'm currently working on my book entitled, VisuaLeadership: Leveraging the Power of Visual Thinking in Leadership and in Life, to be published in 2020 by Post Hill Press/Simon & Schuster. So stay tuned!