I don’t feel that I am a creative person. Whenever I encounter people who wants to have brainstorming to discuss solutions for problems, I feel distressed and even get blank in the meeting. How can we stimulate everyone’s brain to get brilliant ideas in the team? In this article, I will share my thoughts on the creative thinking of a team and some experience I have had during last team challenge.
- Create a safe space
Members who enjoy working together and helping each other will be very beneficial to the team. However, this needs to be built on creating a comfortable safe space. A safe space includes trust, respect, open-minded, and positive attitude. Ideally, team members should have common value, goal, or even hobbies. And it is possible to find out things in common among the members. Proper team building (e.g. games, trips) will increase the relationship between members. While people feel relaxed and are willing to share their minds, they are ready for the brainstorming.
- Set the clear goal and objectives
The clear goal can limit the volume of information. It tells exactly where the ideas will go. The objectives will guide team how to reach the goal. In last challenge, we need to find an angle to talk about how to get brilliant ideas. This is a big topic. Our group set goal and objectives quickly right in the beginning. But in the second meeting, we felt it’s too general, and it will be difficult to present all the information in the short time. Therefore, we agreed to change direction to a different angle and simplify the objectives. We started to focus on sharing how to create a comfortable space to get good ideas. Scope was reduced and it became more specific. Next, we would need a brainstorm to figure out how to show our ideas.
- Brainstorming
There are no good or bad ideas in the brainstorming. Any viewpoints should be listened and respected, plus no criticizing. Once the target is clear, ideas can come from all directions. For instance, our presentation keynote was set to simple and fun in the last challenge. So, the ideas like game, meditation, small group work, and check-out were selected as final plan. Ideas such as using PowerPoint, video, presenting by long speech were discarded.
- Time management
It’s important to track the time usage and all the deadlines. The brain can often come up with good ideas at a limited critical moment. I think meeting time shouldn’t be longer than one to one and half hours. Brainstorming session shouldn’t be longer than one hour. The brain needs rest. If there is deadlock, take a break or go to collect more information separately and continue it another time.
There are many issues worth discussing about the creative thinking of the team. Everyone has their own ways of getting brilliant ideas. An energetic team should have open communication and flexibly formulated strategies based on the characteristics of the members to make the team more creative and effective.
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