Brainstorming
Training Exercises and Resources

This exercise encourages delegates to think about workplace issues that could potentially reduce their productivity. It is an ideal exercise for delegates who work together as a team and aim to increase their team productivity. This exercise is simple in nature as it encourages people to think of the most important productivity issues from their own specific view. The power comes from habitual use of this exercise when productivity issues are addressed regularly, collectively and something is done about them.

In this brainstorming exercise, delegates get to think about the most unlikely solutions or ideas in a systematic way. The aim of this brainstorming technique is to encourage out-of-the-box thinking and encourage the participants to be bold in proposing non-obvious solutions. The competitive and fun atmosphere of the exercise which is run much like a game encourages everyone to suggest unusual solutions without the fear of being ridiculed or criticised.

While brainstorming, sometimes people may feel reluctant to voice their ideas especially if they want to raise a concern or highlight a problem. This is particularly common when senior staff or managers are present and no one wants to look bad by saying something negative about their boss’s suggestions. In addition, people generally prefer not to be the messenger of bad news and would rather leave it for someone else to highlight the issue. Unfortunately, this leads to groupthink where people end up agreeing with each other rather than thinking of better alternatives or solutions.

The rolestorming technique proposed by Rick Griggs in 1980s aims to solve this problem by giving an opportunity to participants to adopt different roles while going through the brainstorming session.

In this brainstorming exercise participants take different roles to contribute to the problem solving activity. This allows them to contribute without fear of being laughed at or criticised. The roles are defined by a facilitator prior to the brainstorming session to bias it towards a particular direction.

In this brainstorming exercise delegates learn to come up with ideas separately and then together as a large group. The brainstorming technique helps those who are more comfortable in smaller groups to contribute while still taking advantage of large group creativity and brainstorming.

In this exercise delegates learn about an effective brainstorming technique that aims to take advantage of personal and group creativity. In classic brainstorming sessions, some members might feel too shy or threatened to present their ideas or to challenge bad ideas. Another common problem is group think; the group can end up exploring a particular area for solutions and ignore all others by remaining too focused on the current ideas. The Shifting Technique helps you to systematically avoid these issues.

You can extend classical brainstorming and double brainstorming with the following techniques to get more results:

• Reverse brainstorming. With this technique participants are encouraged to look at the problem from an opposite angle. This is particularly useful in situations where it is difficult to identify solutions to a problem in a direct way.
• Negative brainstorming. With this technique participants look at how things go wrong and identify problems to solutions.

To carry out these two types of brainstorming sessions, use the following exercise.

In this exercise delegates get to practice writing stories by creatively adding their own extensions to a series of stories and collectively develop them. This is an ideal exercise for creative participation or for coming up with bold and unusual dramatic ideas for making stories. It can be used for any kind of creative expression or story telling such as illustrations, comics, films, theatre, animations, etc.

Brainstorming is one of the most widely used techniques to generate ideas. If it is carried out systematically it can do wonders and can lead to innovation and a huge amount of creativity. Classical brainstorming involves a small group of people, a well–trained facilitator and a clear problem to explore.

Brainstorming is about two fundamental areas: idea generation and idea evolution. In a brainstorming session, three principles must be followed:

• Aim for quantity. Quantity would lead to quality through the evolution of ideas.
• Defer judgement. New ideas can be fragile. If all ideas are recorded and given a chance, they can grow legs and stand on their own feet. Otherwise they can be lost without been given a chance.
• Go for associations. Even if an idea is not suitable, it can open up the search to reach another idea which can be much more useful. This is why no idea should be killed and judgement should be deferred. It allows you to maximise the search efficiency and lets you come across more novel ideas.

In this exercise, delegates get to practice classical and double brainstorming. Also see reverse brainstorming and negative brainstorming for other techniques.

This energetic exercise can be used as a brainstorming and data-collection activity for team members. It helps individuals to express themselves around a predefined set of questions. This can also help the management and the team to better understand each other. A great advantage of this exercise is that everyone can equally contribute without fearing ridicule or judgement.

You can easily customise this exercise by adjusting the set of questions provided to them and bias the exercise towards a direction of your choice. This exercise is ideal for delegates who work closely together as part of a team.