Have you been in a "brainstorming" session where each person just defended their own ideas? Even worse, have you encountered one where nobody speaks in fear of being criticized? Should we even call those two examples brainstorming? When you brainstorm, you want to connect with other minds and let each other's ideas help each other in building the perfect beast. So what's to do if that's the case?
What Is The Perfect Way To Achieve Good Brainstorming?
First and foremost, an effective leader needs to facilitate good brainstorming. Being a good leader does not mean imposing upon others, but rather preventing people from imposing upon others. Such a leader must be able to temper any overly controversial comments or opinions and prevent arguments in the early goings.
Every brainstorming session has to be unbiased and open in nature. Do not judge lest you feel comfortable in being judged, and let those "ridiculous" ideas spur you on to whip up great ideas. To brainstorm effectively, you can't stifle the creative process. In other words, the leader would be tasked to encourage open sharing of ideas among participants.
Anatomy Of Good Brainstorming
The scenario: your business needs to cut delivery costs. The group would then come up with all sorts of ideas. One person in the group suggests not to deliver, but when he gets cut off by the next guy, you gently enforce the ground rules. Then the ideas keep flowing - "negotiate lower rates" says he, "find another company with lower rates", says she. Then Tom, Dick and Harry pipe in with ideas about reducing package weight and increasing customer charges, and so on, and so forth.
Being the leader of the session, you would be tasked to make sure everybody behaves like businessmen and women and not prehistoric cavemen. Now all you have to do is separate the wheat from the chaff and choose the best and most useful ideas of the bunch.
To keep the creativity flowing in this stage, have participants defend or develop ideas that are not their own. This brings new insight to the idea, and prevents the problem of ego-identification that causes people to get "stuck in a rut" with their own ideas.
Let us assume there was somebody who did not like the thought of not delivering. He may emphatically declare "we have to deliver!" Then he thinks for a second and says, "I suppose we could deliver to central distribution points instead of to the individual customer. Why, customers can just make a quick drive to get their order. And soon enough, he realizes that you can save on shipping that way.
Then another person pipes in that this may be amenable to customers. This would be much more convenient for customers who can just up and return their item with no need for packing or shipping. Before moving on to other ideas, you'll need a few people to see if said idea would work.
Good leadership keeps the whole process working. The previous example showed you how to churn out gold from a seemingly garbage idea. Now that's what I call good brainstorming!
What Is The Perfect Way To Achieve Good Brainstorming?
First and foremost, an effective leader needs to facilitate good brainstorming. Being a good leader does not mean imposing upon others, but rather preventing people from imposing upon others. Such a leader must be able to temper any overly controversial comments or opinions and prevent arguments in the early goings.
Every brainstorming session has to be unbiased and open in nature. Do not judge lest you feel comfortable in being judged, and let those "ridiculous" ideas spur you on to whip up great ideas. To brainstorm effectively, you can't stifle the creative process. In other words, the leader would be tasked to encourage open sharing of ideas among participants.
Anatomy Of Good Brainstorming
The scenario: your business needs to cut delivery costs. The group would then come up with all sorts of ideas. One person in the group suggests not to deliver, but when he gets cut off by the next guy, you gently enforce the ground rules. Then the ideas keep flowing - "negotiate lower rates" says he, "find another company with lower rates", says she. Then Tom, Dick and Harry pipe in with ideas about reducing package weight and increasing customer charges, and so on, and so forth.
Being the leader of the session, you would be tasked to make sure everybody behaves like businessmen and women and not prehistoric cavemen. Now all you have to do is separate the wheat from the chaff and choose the best and most useful ideas of the bunch.
To keep the creativity flowing in this stage, have participants defend or develop ideas that are not their own. This brings new insight to the idea, and prevents the problem of ego-identification that causes people to get "stuck in a rut" with their own ideas.
Let us assume there was somebody who did not like the thought of not delivering. He may emphatically declare "we have to deliver!" Then he thinks for a second and says, "I suppose we could deliver to central distribution points instead of to the individual customer. Why, customers can just make a quick drive to get their order. And soon enough, he realizes that you can save on shipping that way.
Then another person pipes in that this may be amenable to customers. This would be much more convenient for customers who can just up and return their item with no need for packing or shipping. Before moving on to other ideas, you'll need a few people to see if said idea would work.
Good leadership keeps the whole process working. The previous example showed you how to churn out gold from a seemingly garbage idea. Now that's what I call good brainstorming!
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