FAQs 

What does the name Lephorus® mean?

Lephorus® stands for the three phases of a Lephorus® session:

  1. SIMILE – choosing an image that looks most like the answer to the question asked.
  2. METAPHOR – the similes are then assembled to build the metaphor of the issue at hand.
  3. FOCUS – discussing and agreeing next actions.

Lephorus® is always about solving real business issues. Better team cohesion is a great side effect.

 

Can you recommend a whiteboard other than Mural?

In July 2021 Miro announced that their whiteboard is available as an app on Zoom, which makes it easy to use when running Lephorus® workshops online. To our mind, Miro is quite similar to Mural, but we find that navigating and seeing where you are on the whiteboard is more difficult but do try it out and see what you think.  https://miro.com/works-with-zoom/

 

Update on using Mural with Zoom

You can now add Mural via the 'Apps' tab on Zoom. If you are the person running the session you can find it when clicking on the 3 small dots under your video image.

You can just search for it and it’s easy to add.

However, there are two drawbacks:

  • You open Mural once you have started your Zoom meeting. Zoom then sends an invitation to Mural to the participants in the meeting.
  • If you use one screen, you then have both Mural and the Zoom videos on that screen, which means that the actual Mural whiteboard is quite small. On my laptop, I can reduce the size of the videos, but they still take up about 1/5 of the screen.

The advantage is that you can see the faces of the participants as you are working on the whiteboard.

In our experience though, and when working on the whiteboard, not seeing the other participants doesn’t seem to be a problem. People seem to be concentrated on the images themselves.

In addition, it’s messy in that it’s not a seamless access to Mural, but through an invitation. This takes time when you have already started the session. Usually, we send the Mural invitation at the same time that we send the Zoom invitation, so that everybody can log onto the board before the workshop starts.

These are just our thoughts. If you try it out and find it easier to use than we did, please let us know on [email protected]

 

Why are there gaps in the numbering of the images / cards?

We have many more images in the image sets than the 16 that we use in the workshops. We test which images work best in a particular workshop and they are then part of the ‘package’ distributed with the masterclass.

 

Why do you use 16 image cards in the workshops? Why not more?

In our experience 16 images work well as they provide a sufficient spread to encourage wide-ranging discussions but are not so numerous that it becomes difficult to choose.

 

Do you have any recommendations on how to ‘sell’ the use of Lephorus® to my clients?

In our experience, it is best to start by demonstrating Lephorus®, either using the short introduction to visual metaphors as described in the handbook (the 3 abstract images) or by using a full image set (abstract images are usually good) for the client to describe the issue they have. We ask the client if there is an image that looks like the issue they have – the reason why they are looking for your facilitation or coaching.

 

Can I use an alternative to the 3 abstract images for the introduction to visual metaphors?

Yes, we have sometimes used images of doors instead (numbers 8, 15 and 20). If you don’t have these in your image sets, please contact us on [email protected] to order the set of three.

 

What do I do if somebody says that they would prefer not to take part in the workshop?

We have seen this happen in a very few cases. We ask the person to ‘suspend disbelief’ for a while and just sit in and observe what is going on for 10 minutes or so. In every single case, they get interested in what is said and usually ends up by being an enthusiastic participant.

 

You use the same image sets in several workshops. Do clients get tired of seeing the same images?

The context is always different, and the images are perceived differently depending on that context, so we have not yet seen workshop participants tiring of the images. In our experience, this is more a worry from the viewpoint of the facilitator.

 

Do you find that there is a particular profession or category of people who find it easier to work with images than others?

We find that engineers take to Lephorus® very easily, but the majority of people enjoy the methodology and find it easy. The only exception we have found so far are artists and designers who sometimes find it difficult to distance themselves from their theoretical knowledge of objects and images.

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