Connecting Multidisciplinary Points of View Through Metaphor with Jennifer Shinkai

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In this episode we are joined by Jennifer Shinkai. You may know Jennifer as the founder and host of the Ikigai podcast or of the on-line community, Make March Matter. Today she joins us wearing yet another hat. This time of diversity and inclusion workshop facilitator.

Jennifer walks us through both the how and the why of metaphor being a powerful tool for communication in your team. I wanted Jennifer to join us on the Business Karaoke Podcast to learn about how she uses metaphor as a tool for divergent thinking. I've spoken quite a bit that in my work with Design Thinking and innovation we use a specific structure to explore the problem and the solution. We diverge and then we converge, that means that we first go wide, go broad, go deep on a subject and then only after doing that do we synthesize.

As I am always on the look out for how other facilitators, industries or methodologies provide structure to divergent conversation, my hope was to learn something. Perhaps that I could add metaphor to my divergent facilitator tool kit. And I can happily report that was absolutely the case. Not only did I learn about metaphor as a communication tool but I've used it in workshops since with some surprising results. Hold on to the end of the episode when I test out my own metaphor skill, in real time.

If we only ever have a conversation the way we've always had it, we will only ever yield the results we've already seen.

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did! Don't forget to share you feedback with me on your favorite social media platform 🙏✨

Let's begin!

💡Key Conversations
04:50 | The development Make March Matter from idea to community of 400+ people
12:00 | Authenticity in multi-cultural environments
23:00 | Points of View - if an image is worth 1000 words a metaphor is 1000 meetings
36:15 | Examples from the field and a stand out story for Jennifer
45:30 | Creating the space need to explore new perspective
53:15 | Jennifer's own Ikigai

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Here's where you can find out more about Jennifer ⬇️
Website  | https://jennifershinkai.com
Make March Matter | https://www.facebook.com/groups/makemarchmatter2020/
LinkedIn  | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifershinkai/