3 Brainstorming Techniques For Unearthing Better Ideas From Your Team

Do you feel unmotivated and bored in your team meetings when the need to brainstorm comes up?

This is a pretty common attitude held by leaders worldwide; they feel like their employees simply cannot or do not want to contribute creative new ideas, thereby leaving all of the brainstorming on their shoulders.

To unearth better ideas from your team, try these 3 brainstorming techniques.

Give Them Time Off

No one is creative when they are tired, yet some managers falsely believe that their employees can and should come up with clever new ideas while busy working on other projects.

While some individuals are simply not good at multitasking, others are swamped with thinking about and completing other tasks.

If you really want results from your team, then you must give them some time to sharpen their creative skills and come up with good ideas.

Consider sending them home early one day or allow them to skip an entire day by focus in on the homework to spend that time brainstorming.

Create A Blueprint

If everything goes right, your team will come back with great new ideas, but you may not be able to implement them.

In order to get everyone on the same page and present realistic ideas that can actually come to fruition, create and share a blueprint for your goal with your team.

This should include:

• The ultimate goal of the project
• Projected budget
• Timeline
• People available to help
• Possible limitations
• Comparable examples

Provide Inspiration

You may ask your team to come up with a certain idea, but they may not have any mental references about what you are talking about.

This is why it is always good for managers to prepare and provide inspiration to employees.

This can involve research into what competitors are doing and what is already out there.

If you are creating a marketing strategy for your food company, see what other companies are doing and discuss how you can improve the status quo.

After some initial research, urge your employees to do what helps them to inspire themselves.

This can involve listening to music, taking a walk outside, looking at art, etc.

Thanks again

Mark Williams

Head of Training and Development

MTD Training