Now this is an understandable question to ask when you are just learning how to Mind Map and don’t yet appreciate its power or its proper application. The confusion comes from not appreciating:

1. the efficiencies of applying Mind Maps in the context of a meeting
2. the added dimension that applying Mind Mapping gives to your understanding of what goes on in a meeting.

How To Use Mind Mapping In Meetings

We had this conversation during a break and so I demonstrated to him how Mind Maps should and shouldn’t be used when you are taking notes from the spoken word such as in a presentation or more specifically in this case from a meeting.

To do that I drew Rob’s attention to a conversation that was going on between two of his colleagues who were stood next to where we were sitting. We could hear everything they were saying because a) they were very close and b) they were two very loud types – the sort that when they answer their cell phone in public you wonder whether they actually need to use it because of how loud they talk.

Anyway, first of all I showed Rob what it would be like to try and capture everything they were saying using conventional long hand notes. This is what most people do when they take notes in this way – they try to record everything that it said. Rather rapidly I scrawled down my notes that looked a bit of a mess particularly with my handwriting getting worse as I rushed to capture all that was said. I only did this for a minute and it was exhausting just to watch it.

Most people will rarely get beyond the “capture” or “copying” stage of information gathering when they take notes because of the way that they have been conditioned to “gather” what is going on rather than “think” about what is being said and capture the conclusions.

What happens is that whilst they are “gathering” the stream of consciousness they lose sight of where the speaker is going and in the process of putting what has been gathered to paper will often miss something.

So having demonstrated that, I then showed what happens when using Mind Mapping to gather notes from the written word. Now here we have to shift our thinking approach. Remember that to Mind Map effectively, you have to identify the topic (central image), what the main points are (main branches) and what the detail associated with those main points is (smaller branches) using colour, keywords and symbols/pictures.

So as you sit in the way of a stream of dialogue your first task is to identify what the topic of conversation is by listening to what is being said and thinking about it. That forms a main branch that you can capture in a matter of seconds with a keyword.

Then you continue to listen and continue to think about what is being said only now you are focusing on the outcome or conclusion of the dialogue rather than a capture of the dialogue itself. As new themes/ideas/concepts become apparent then these are recorded with keywords. You will find (and I have proved this) that less than 6-7% of what is being said (i.e. the words being used) is actually important.

So in front of Rob as the adjacent conversation next to us continued, I showed him the leisurely pace at which I captured the themes of what was being discussed and how they inter-related to each other by using a Mind Map.

The important thing was my focus shifted from recording all that they were saying to capturing everything that they meant i.e. the summaries, conclusions and outcomes from each stage of the dialogue. I was THINKING about what was being said instead of just gathering it.

Rob could quite easily see the power of using the tool in this way because he could see what I was writing/drawing as he was listening to the source conversation. That was when it clicked.

Now Rob was really smart because then he said this:

“Ahh I see how it works now and it appears to me that it is not really the Mind Map that matters in this but the PROCESS of doing the Mind Map that is the power”.

Very few people really pick up on that point and Rob was right. The creation of a pretty picture with colour, keywords and pictures is not what Mind Mapping is really about. It is about the process of putting one together that forces you to think far more effectively and in a fashion that is in tune with the way your brain naturally sorts and organises information that is the real power. The Map diagram that results is really just the evidence of a higher level of thinking.

So you can use Mind Maps in meetings and they are extremely powerful. Try them out and let me know how you get on.