Does Brainstorming Work for You? Try the Rare Brain-Writing.
Can a brainstorming session ever get sexier? Everyone in your department is present and sometimes, other departments have to join, this is where your finest colleagues get to shine, right?
Let’s face facts, some people are quick-witted and on top of that, they’re good with words too. Because they possess these talents, they keep spewing ideas and eventually get all the praise during a brainstorming session.
On the other hand, some people are quite reclusive and only speak when they’re “specifically” required to. The talking turkeys, therefore, take all the glory and even if the other half of the room has the brightest ideas, we just never find out.
It’s a two-way thing, either the result of the session is always one-sided (more than half of the team is silent) or the session results in a few people bickering and finally, comes to an end.
In most cases (where there is less supervision), this is exactly what a brainstorming session looks like!
Have you ever heard about Conformity Pressure?
Let me explain.
During a brainstorming session, Melissa and Martin always dominate the meeting, they’re usually the first to give ideas. In the process they do almost all the talking, trying to expatiate their ideas and in the long run, everyone else is influenced by their actions.
This probably isn’t their fault and sometimes, they’re not trying to impress, they just happen to be extra-eloquent and really can’t help themselves.
What I mean here is that early ideas tend to have excessive influence over the rest of the conversation. You’ve probably been in a meeting where someone comes up with a brilliant idea first, and everyone else in the room is trying to appear smart.
There’s this standard the first person sets, you don’t want to mess it up by sounding like a douche, this definitely hinders you and everyone else from coming up with more potential solutions to the problem at hand.
Here’s the challenge, when one person is talking, you’re not thinking of your own ideas anymore, you’re subconsciously assimilating their idea. Agree or not, whatever ideas you’d come up with afterward will be molded by the first idea.
This process is referred to as “anchoring” and it completely ruins originality because the first idea ironically leads to group thinking, as opposed to unique ideas.
In simple terms, conformity pressure can be likened to peer pressure. A lot of us are strong-willed and won’t do otherwise no matter what but whether we accept or not, we sometimes yield to group pressures.
Try Brain-Writing
Although brainstorming has its advantages, but if we have an alternative, why not take it?
Professor Leigh Thompson, at the North Western University, USA, suggested another effective process: Brain-Writing (the phrase was coined by UT Arlington professor Paul Paulus).
Basically, the idea of Brain-Writing is to write first and then talk afterward. The best way to conduct Brain-Writing is to get everyone in the meeting to write down their ideas privately, and then converge to share those ideas out loud.
So, instead of having everyone talk freely and leaving some vital ideas out in the process, everyone contributes by writing something down, and the best ideas are picked. The great part is, no idea is labeled (no names or signatures), so the best idea isn’t picked based on popularity.
However, the main purpose of a Brainstorming or Brain-Writing session is to pull “unique ideas” together, the out-loud system of Brainstorming evades that purpose. The key here is quantity, not quality: that’s why it’s important to get ideas from every single person in the meeting. This can only be done “effectively” through Brain-Writing.
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