Effective Team Brainstorming

10 Brainstorming Techniques For Teams

Brainstorming is a great tool to use to get your teams’ creative juices flowing, get ideas bouncing off one another and bonding with your team. When doing effectively, brainstorming can result in the perfect idea or concept. So, how do you brainstorm effectively? First, let’s go over why brainstorming can sometimes go awry and leave you with the opposite of the intended outcome.

Brainstorming Fails

1. Uneven participation: When in groups, it seems like there are always one or two voices that tower over the others. The extroverts in the groups are quick to dominate the conversation and leave no time or space for other team members to contribute. An unbalanced conversation is a surefire way to defeat the purpose of brainstorming.
2. The anchoring effect: This happens when participants discuss the first few ideas that are brought up during a brainstorm session, they focus all of their attention and energy on these which prevents them from moving forward and discussing more ideas.
3. Awkward silence: If participants come to a brainstorming session unprepared, things can get awkward. If nobody has anything to talk about and no ideas to bounce around, the group will be left sitting their twiddling their thumbs and watching the clock instead of using the time to come up with innovative new ideas.

Now let’s go over some ways to fix those brainstorming fails and have an effective brainstorming session.

Brainstorming Wins

1. Writing: This is a brainstorming method in which everyone writes down three ideas relating to the brainstorming topic. After a few minutes, everyone will pass their ideas to the person next to them, that person then adds more to their idea and the circle continues until everyone at the table has received and revised each note. Then, the group discusses all of the pieces of paper and decides which ideas are best to pursue. This is a great technique in order to ensure everybody’s voices are heard. This is helpful for participants who may be shy or embarrassed to share their ideas out loud. They get to simply write them down and have other people silently revise and add on to them. This method also avoids the anchoring effect by ensuring that all ideas are viewed, revised and collaborated on.
2. Rapid ideation: This is technique where everybody writes down as many ideas as they can during a set amount of time. This is a way to allow participants to capture their ideas before they are critiqued and shot down too soon. The time limit is also a good tool to allow people from talking themselves out of an idea before they even share it.
3. Figure storming: This method works by having the group choose a well-known figure who is not present at the meeting. For example, the company CEO, their boss or a celebrity. Once the person is decided on, the group will discuss how that person would approach the issue or think about the idea. Sometimes in group settings, people can be shy about coming out with their ideas. But, if they say “I know this is how Bill Gates would approach this,” they are more likely to share without hesitation.picture that new version of the phone and you can begin layering ideas on top of it. In the end, you can end up with hundreds of new concrete ideas—ranging from the color to the features to the size.
4. Brain netting: This is a form of online brainstorming that will come in handy during these times of remote work and social distancing. These brainstorming sessions can take place over Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams and so on. Brain netting can be done live or through a document like Google Docs that allows team members to write down their input at a time that is convenient to them. Once all team members have written their ideas down, it’s time to decide on which ideas to pursue. This is a technique that allows remote employees to still be part of the brainstorming session and conversation. Identities can even be concealed which can lead to freer input and ideas.
5. Round robin: During a round robin brainstorm, every team member will participate by contributing one idea to the brainstorm. You must make it around the room at least once before anyone is allowed to throw out another idea or criticize and idea or even discuss one. Also, nobody is allowed to say that their idea has already been mentioned. If that’s the case, come back to them after they have some time to think more.
6. Ladder step technique: This is a little more complicated, but stick with us because this is one the best ways to ensure the group is not influenced by the first few ideas or the loudest members of the group. To practice the step ladder technique, a group leader will introduce the brainstorming topic and then everyone will leave the room except for two people who stay and brainstorm together for a few minutes. Then, a third person comes back into the room and shares some of their ideas before discussing the ideas that the first two discussed. Group members will return to the room one by one, sharing their ideas before they learn about the other ideas. It’s important that those team members waiting outside of the room do not discuss their ideas with anyone until they are inside the room.
7. Mind mapping: In this method, the group starts with one idea and then draws lines that will connect sub-ideas to the first main idea. This is a visual technique to approach brainstorming and can be especially helpful for people who are visual thinkers and learners.
8. Storyboarding: This is another technique that is especially helpful for visual thinkers. During storyboarding, you will draw out your ideas and make a step-by-step narrative or a problem in order to get a thorough understanding. The notes will be organized and drawn out in chronological order and then you can start to eliminate things that don’t relate to the problem. This method allows your team to see how ideas can interact with a solution.
9. Starbursting: This technique is best done during the late stages of brainstorming after an idea has already been chosen to elaborate or execute. During starbursting, the team will start with an idea at the center and then create a star with six points around it. Each point will represent a question: who, when, what, where, why and how. “Why does our company need this new product? When will customers be able to access XYZ” and so on.
10. Get outside: A change of scenery is always great for a boost in creativity and energy. Moving your meeting outdoors or to a restaurant or even a different room than usual is enough to spark some creativity. That’s because brainstorming from the same room with the same people can sometimes hinder creativity and leave us feeling uninspired.

Time For Better Team Brainstorming At Tucker Collective

With this list of ten techniques for team brainstorming, we hope you will get out of the brainstorming rut and downfalls that can easily happen when brainstorming with a team. Try out some or all of these ideas and watch your team’s creative juices flow!