Brainstorming Sessions: Everyone can be Creative!

I was facilitating a brainstorming session with a client a few months ago. There were a number of people in the room – 15 in total. While they were all excited about the session, 5 of the participants noted they just weren’t very creative and were unsure how much they would contribute.

This is common! At every brainstorming session I facilitate there are always a handful of participants who feel they are not creative enough to participate and they won’t have any good ideas. Nonsense! We can all be creative. Some of us just need to dig a bit deeper to find our creative side!

At the start of any brainstorming session – regardless of the participants involved or the purpose of the session – I open with a few activities to get participants engaged, the creative juices flowing and to enable them to be comfortable working with each other. If we are all being silly together, we can work together more easily and innovative ideas come out in the session.

Start each session with an activity to encourage creativity. For example:

• Doodling
• Coming up with new uses for common, everyday items
• Drawing or coloring activities
• “Play on word” activities such as LRIENAEDS = read between the lines
• Take an 8 letter word and see how many 2, 4, or 5 letter words can be made from that word

These are all simple activities that get participants engaged in the session and increase creativity. Increased creativity enables for more productive brainstorming sessions as participants are more engaged in the session and realize they can be creative.