When you want to engage employees Brainstorming is an effective tool to cultivate creative job actions and solicit employees’ ideas to solve worksite problems. It remains one of the best ways to engage employees; however, there are certain guidelines that will make your brainstorming session more successful. It is important to ensure that you also have someone who can hold the team accountable to ensure these guidelines are followed otherwise, you are just NOT “Brainstorming”.
- Be spontaneous- When was the last time you created an impromptu brainstorming session with a group of employees.
- No criticisms – You don’t want to stop the free flow of ideas and being critical of them, no matter how outl andish will make employees thing twice.
- Suspend judgment – There should be no evaluation of the quality of an idea. Now is not the time to critique a suggestion or thought, that can always come later.
- Get ideas out; don’t discuss them – Brainstorming is about the idea coming out not the process of them being exp anded up.
- Record all ideas – Make sure every idea is written down. Missing even one will stop that contributor from continuing the process.
- Expect wild ideas – The wilder the better. You never know where the best solution will come from it may start out as a wild idea and become the way to solve the problem after all.
- Quantity, not quality, of ideas counts – enough said…
- Allow employees to build on each other’s ideas – In this way a sense of teamwork and support of each others ideas can be established.
Focused facilitation and adherence to the guidelines is critical to ensure maximum engagement so be sure to select a facilitator who can make it happen. Happy Brainstorming!!
