Discover how strategies like daydreaming breaks, eliminating groupthink, and BrainSprinting can boost your team’s creativity with Chris Griffiths and Caragh Medlicott
In an ideal world, brainstorming sessions would always be fruitful. Everyone would come together, ideas would fly, and you’d leave with ideas aplenty and clear plans for implementation. Sadly, an ideal world isn’t quite where we live. Still, do not despair! As with anything in life, the strategy we bring to a task can have a huge impact on its ultimate success – and by changing a few key things you can unlock the full potential of a brainstorming session with your team.
No brainstorming session is truly successful if you don’t have a plan of action
Daydream time
Did you know that daydreaming is a powerful neurological tool when it comes to both creativity and problem solving? Research has shown that when we engage in mind wandering – a state we often enter when occupied by methodical tasks such as chores, commuting or exercise – our brains light up and make connections that simply aren’t possible when engaged in focus work.
Your team can experience the profound benefits of this enhanced creativity on a collective level by taking time-boxed daydream breaks in the lead up to a big brainstorming session. That might mean 15 minutes to get out for a walk, to doodle, or something else entirely. Giving your team this precious time to let their imaginations roam free will naturally enhance overall creativity and boost brainstorming sessions as a result.
Eliminate groupthink
Groupthink is incredibly toxic in any meeting but can be especially damaging in a brainstorming session. Groupthink occurs when a group of people fail to think critically about a topic, and instead agree with each other in order to maintain the harmony of the whole. People in brainstorming sessions are especially prone to falling victim to this phenomenon, and the quality of overall ideas suffers as a consequence.
You can eliminate groupthink by asking every team member to prepare ideas ahead of time. This ties in nicely with the daydreaming point which comes before this, as team members can use their mind-wandering sessions to generate ideas and arrive at a brainstorming meeting with these ideas prepped. Everyone can then go round and share their ideas without being influenced by each other, creating more variety and creativity overall.
Facilitate brilliance
We’ve all seen brainstorming sessions go haywire. When you’re dealing with a mix of different personalities, it’s not uncommon for louder people to dominate while those who tend to be shy or reserved contribute less. To prevent this, make sure your sessions always have a facilitator who can help to steer the conversation so that it includes everyone and flows nicely.
They can do this in a number of ways. Firstly, by bringing a calming and non-judgmental atmosphere to the meeting. Second, by ensuring everyone goes round and shares their ideas one at a time, capturing them in a place everyone can see, and allowing for conversation but keeping everyone in check. This way, the brainstorming session stays on track and everyone’s voices are heard and considered.
The good, the bad and the wacky
There’s no such thing as a bad idea. No, seriously. What we think of as ‘bad ideas’ only become a problem when we apply them – but at the idea generation stage, it’s natural that ideas will vary in strength. The trick is finding the ones that work and the ones that don’t, but to get there, you need to entertain all sorts of fun and nonsense along the way.
The best ideas aren’t the safe ones – but they’re not necessarily the craziest either. With the help of a facilitator, push your team to build on the ideas they’ve already made by making them even wackier. Alternatively, if all the ideas you’ve collected are already too ‘out there’, you can do the opposite by seeking out more ‘boring’ ideas. Then, crucially, you can look for ways to combine wild ideas with safer ones. This is typically where the best ideas come from – a Goldilocks zone for innovation!
Plan to implement
What good are ideas if you can’t then get them off the ground? No brainstorming session is truly successful if you don’t have a plan of action for how to take your creative ideas forward. You don’t need to have it intricately mapped out, but you do need to have a strategy for how you might kickstart the whole process. The first part of this is identifying where you’re at in the ideation journey – perhaps more refining is needed; in which case you might want to regroup with your team and spend more time simmering ideas until you have identified the best ones.
Once you’re happy with your ideas, you can begin to figure out how these can then be turned into more. If you’re struggling with figuring out how to do this, you can try using a technique known as ‘reverse brainstorming’ to help alter your perspective, encourage innovative thinking and kickstart your planning. The idea of this tool is to consider how you could achieve the opposite of what you’re looking to do. For example, how could we waste this idea? You might decide that you could waste the idea by having an unclear vision for implementation, communicating poorly with other departments, and failing to identify key tasks to make the idea a reality. Taking these findings, you can then do the opposite and implement your ideas effectively.
BrainSprint, not brainstorm!
If you’re looking for a simple solution to failed brainstorming sessions, it’s time to consider BrainSprinting, a process that we have successfully used with many who get stuck with their creative process. This approach combines the best elements of individual ideation, focused daydreaming, and structured collaboration to create a powerful framework for creativity and problem-solving.
One of the key reasons brainstorming sessions are ineffective is due to teams trying to force an outcome in a single session, often lasting several hours. BrainSprinting involves short, intense bursts of group creative thinking, typically multiple 30-minute sessions spread over a few days, with periods of incubation in between. This rhythm aligns with our brain’s natural creative cycles, allowing for both focused work and the vital ‘aha!’ moments that often come during relaxation. Why not give it a try, and say goodbye to failed brainstorming sessions!
Chris Griffiths and Caragh Medlicott are the authors of The Focus Fix: Finding clarity, creativity and resilience in an overwhelming world
