In today’s blog post, I’ll talk about one of the most important tools for the creative process, especially when working in groups or teams.

Importance of brainstorming in the creative process.

When I was studying advertising back home, I had to work in teams in order to present a full campaign and the advertising agency identity for our professors, every single week or every two weeks depending on the length of the campaign. We had to come up with the name of the agency, the core values, mission and vision of it and pick a theme that will be an essential aspect of how we approach every campaign.

This experience was great for me but quite stressful, since I had to meet new people and try to become a team. In some of them, we did become one, in others…well that’s a different story (I’ll mention this below). 

What I want to talk about will all the above is how we used to brainstorm and failed in the process. Now, almost 5 years after this experience, I learned how I can improve the usage of this tool.

In the past, when we did a brainstorm, my classmates only wrote on the board the “best” option and work with it. Every “dumb” answer was totally rejected and that’s not how a true brainstorm works. 

When presented a topic, if you do a brainstorm you have to write “EVERY SINGLE WORD” that is presented, maybe you’ll never use it, but it may trigger new ideas that you can work with. A brainstorm is similar to a domino effect inside your brain, if you see certain words, it can activate new concepts that can trigger others that can become usable and creative elements.

Another problem or issue that we had is that the brainstorm was usually led by the person with the stronger personality, that sometimes was the one person that before starting working had already an Idea and made every possible effort trying to enforce their idea, writing only the ideas or words that he/she wanted. A brainstorm must be a group activity and as I mentioned before, there are no dumb ideas.

Brainstorm benefits for work/projects.

There are many benefits that you get from brainstorming, some of the most important are:

Idea Building: This is an obvious one, but it is one of the key benefits. We tend to approach things from one perspective only, ours. That’s why having different inputs can be beneficial when brainstorming with your teammates or co-workers. Ideas trigger other ideas, just be sure not to shut down ideas that you may think silly. You never know how they can benefit the chain of thoughts.

Teamwork: Brainstorming activity can create a team atmosphere if done correctly, It’s a great tool when you are working with a new team. You’ll find out who is really involved in the work and you’ll also know the way that your team members think. This creates an instant where everyone helps everyone.

Critical Thinking: When brainstorming, it requires you to think critically to solve a certain problem or create something innovative and sometimes to think outside the box. The more you brainstorm, the easier it will be for you to find a problem and think about the possible solution. Critical thinking may require you to break a topic or problem down into smaller parts. Considering small and various pieces of the idea, problem, campaign, etc. is sometimes, the key to success.

Practice makes perfect. If you become an expert in brainstorms, you’ll be able to take a topic or situation and looking at it in a logical and clear way, while building a team relation and get better results than when doing things by yourself. 

You can brainstorm by yourself but it is better to do it in teams.

How I’ve been benefiting from brainstorm.

Speak my thoughts out loud: Every time that I finish writing something, I usually read my blog post out loud to myself or somebody else, that way I can get a different perspective of what I wrote. Brainstorming is the same when you need to be creative sometimes, the biggest obstacle is your own brain, sometimes your thought gets all entangle like a ball of wool, preventing your thoughts to manifest in a clear way. Sometimes your ideas are not clear or they are floating around. Brainstorming helps you center them or landing them, especially if someone else helps you connect the missing dots.

Get to know people’s work ethics: Especially when working with new teams, activities like brainstorming help you know your team members’ personalities and work ethics. The more they participate, is usually the more they’ll contribute to the team, by being involved doesn’t mean to be talking and giving ideas. Some people are shy, so when I say involve is to pay attention and to follow the flow of the conversation, some of them will be the ones taking notes, contributing some ideas or just understanding the chain of thought of the team.

Identify the backpacks: Backpack is a term that we used back home in my university to identify the kind of people that never contribute with the team. They barely show up and when they do, they do nothing but distract the others, affecting the teamwork. These are the kind of people that to get their name in the project, they buy the snacks or print the work. I rather take them out of the team if they don’t do any contributions. I do give them certain warnings to see if they change their attitude. “If that works for you, let me know because that had never worked for me.” Remember something, backpacks are usually the ones that graduate without doing any work done and sometimes they even finish university/college with better grades than you and even get a job offer sooner, the only thing is that if they don’t get into working with friends or family friend’s they won’t get far in life.

How a brainstorm should be.

1) List generation: Pick one person or two to write every single idea, keyword and concept of the brainstorming. Some of those ideas may be useful in the future, while others immediately.

2) Create some ground rules: This is a key element for every team activity and when forming a team, you need to set some rules that set how you’ll work, what acceptable and what’s not, what’s a can cause you to be “fired” of the team, etc. Basically your core values and the identity of the team, a great example is to let people be heard, let them finish their ideas before you say yours.

3) Respect other’s inputs: I know I’m being repetitive, but it is important that you know that there are no silly ideas and sometimes your ideas aren’t the best neither, you won’t find the best idea on the first try most of the times, that’s why you do a brainstorm, to practice the rational thinking and as a team to find the best solution.

4) Be open for discussion: Discussing ideas is the key when trying to find a solution, as long as you do it with respect, it is a very positive aspect of a brainstorm. Always give your team solutions not problems. The best example is that when I was working with a team in my university, I came up with an idea and one of my group members said “I don’t like it” but she didn’t say what she didn’t like it or why, and the worst part she didn’t even say how can we improve it nor gave a better idea. That wasn’t helpful at all. I hope you don’t make the same mistake 🙂

5) Sometimes letting go is the best choice: We all want that our idea is the one that is picked, but if every member of the team chose another idea and you did everything to present why your idea is good and it was denied, “LET IT GO”. Another thing is that if the team’s idea was a failure, don’t say I’ve told you so or if we had picked my idea we would be done better, because there is no I in a team only we.

If the ship sank you’ll all drown with it, do what you can with what you got, don’t blame others because that’s not a team spirit. Sometimes is tempting. During college I worked with a full team of backpacks, they were all procrastinating and they start working on the assignments on the due date, not the day before, not a week before, on the same day. I got smart and If they ask us for a presentation and they didn’t do their part I create a different PowerPoint with all their parts so in case they didn’t show up, I could present myself. Since I wasn’t selfish, I told them that I did a presentation that took me 15 minutes to make and that I could present by myself. They got worried and they magically start working with me. I could easily tell the professor to do the all project by myself, but I didn’t because I had to work with them the whole semester, It was better to make them understand that if they didn’t work with me they will be the only ones losing the marks and failing the course.

6) Have fun!: When doing a brainstorming activity, it could be a very pleasant activity, you get to know your team members and if you all come up with an idea together, you’ll get an amazing feeling of success, just keep in mind the mentioned above and you’ll be fine.

I hope this guide helps you and that you enjoy this reading. If you have any other question about brainstorming please leave it in the comments, I’ll love to hear from you, as always have a great day and a wonderful weekend, write you next time 🙂

Alberto Yaconi Vilches

I'm a blogger in the making and marketing enthusiastic from Chile, living his dream in Toronto. I post every Friday or every 2 Fridays :)