Brainstorming can often improve creativity when you need many possible ideas.
Consider these 12 suggestions the next time your team needs to generate solutions to a problem.
1. Encourage debate, dissent and healthy criticism of ideas.
Healthy debate has shown to produce more ideas than the traditional “don’t criticize any idea” mentality (Nemeth et al., 2004). Set these rules beforehand, though, to keep the debate healthy and the ideas coming:
Don’t personally attack people.
Use such phrases as, “I have a different view,” “I see things differently” or “What about this?”
Reiterate the other person’s viewpoint before offering your own.
Clarify the other person’s viewpoint first.
2. Keep your creative teams diverse.
Include new people and women and men.
3. Make sure the brainstorming leader is affirming.
And not overbearing and that he doesn’t unintentionally drive his personal agenda.
4. Create spaces in your office area that encourage frequent and spontaneous interactions.
5. Don’t allow one person to dominate brainstorming sessions.
Sometimes a ‘know-it-all’ can shut down creativity.
6. Be observant of something called ‘social loafing.’
Social loafing is our tendency to feel less responsible for a project in a group than when doing a project alone. Some on your team may sit back and let the rest of the team generate the ideas. Guard against that. Studies with a rope tug-of-war showed that blindfolded people who believed they were pulling a rope alone pulled 18 percent harder than those who thought they were on a team (Karau & Hart, 1998). However, the more cohesive the group, the less social loafing.
