Technique - Brainstorming

The purpose of brainstorming in a group is to gather the greatest number of ideas possible. A little quirk of the human mind, however, is called “anchoring” – we are heavily influenced by our first impression of things. Therefore the first idea tossed out in a group setting tends to lead the group down a particular path of thinking and creativity, eliminating a huge range of options that might have been considered with a different “first idea” as a starting point. To minimize this problem, start a brainstorming session by having everyone in the group brainstorm a list of ideas individually on their own sheet of paper. Then start the group brainstorming session. As the energy around one idea path winds down, ask for someone else to call out one of the ideas they wrote down – this will seed another round of group brainstorming.

Assignment: At your next brainstorming meeting, take five minutes at the beginning of the brainstorming to have everyone write down their own ideas first.