Neuro-inspired brainstorming: how to design idea generation that unlocks your team’s collective genius
Published on 11 April 2024 • Written by Dr Lisa Colledge
Most brainstorming sessions miss great ideas. In this article, I discuss how neurodivergence-inspired brainstorming practices help teams unlock their collective genius, improve creativity and innovation, and eventually design better solutions.
Innovating starts with creating lots of ideas. They may or may not be what you later implement, but to start with that doesn’t matter. Humankind has evolved to be inherently brilliant at finding solutions by building in sub-groups who specialize in different aspects of problem solving. Making the extra effort to design an inclusive brainstorming process unlocks the collective genius that is naturally present within this neurodiversity, but brainstorms often fall short of capturing all ideas of the team. Best practices inspired by neuro-inclusion help create an environment where not only neurodivergent individuals, such as dyslexic, autistic, dyscalculic, ADHD team members, but also introverts and anyone inclined towards solitary reflection, can contribute meaningfully.
🎧 You can also listen to this neuro-inspired advice as a podcast: Episode 41: How to design a brainstorm for autistic and ADHD thinkers - and everyone else.
Three key takeaways
Humans are incredible at finding solutions because we evolved sub-groups specialized at each different aspect of it. In a brainstorm, we are at our best sharing ideas to solve a problem when we ensure that we enable the collective genius of these sub-groups to emerge.
Neurodivergent brainstorm participants hold critical keys to group success, such as big picture thinking, pattern analysis, and comfort in risk taking, but tend to struggle with the majority style of information processing and communication. Introverted team members, who prefer to think first and then talk, share these challenges, as does anyone who prefers to start with quiet contemplation. If these styles are not enabled, your brainstorm won’t unlock the full range of creativity available.
Make your brainstorm process inclusive by spending extra time preparing and providing options to contribute. Share materials beforehand for those who wish to prepare; during the brainstorm session, use a mix of verbal and quiet written contribution time slots to cater to all thinking and communication preferences; and continue the brainstorm process by allowing participants to contribute after the session itself has finished.
Brainstorming is about generating lots of ideas that could solve a problem. It’s creative. It’s about quantity, not quality. It’s about sharing data so that the team can make observations and draw connections. It’s about building on a starting point by saying, “Yes, and”, not, “No, but”, and being willing to go where the discussion takes you. For now, it’s irrelevant how feasible those ideas are.
It follows that the conditions for a successful brainstorm must enable everyone to share their ideas. To make sure we get all ideas outside of the heads they are created in, we need to create a brainstorming environment that is inclusive.
We can all probably recall brainstorm sessions that were filled with enthusiastic, rapid-fire discussion. But think back to whether there any quiet participants among the vocal majority (statistically, it will have been a majority). Was the list of ideas truly representative of each individual who spent time in that session? Or were some ideas missed?
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As a group, we can’t help but excel at ideation
Humans are incredible at finding solutions to problems because, over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, we have solved the so-called Exploration versus Exploitation challenge of adapting successfully to unpredictability. Our solution was to evolve sub-groups whose styles of understanding, interpreting, and acting on information differed. The collective genius that emerged by combining these diverse styles allowed us to navigate environmental change that could have extinguished our species. Problem solving is an innate skill of groups of humans.
Releasing that potential during a brainstorm takes some effort, and I’ll take two approaches to convincing you that the extra time is worth the result by highlighting people with different neurotypes in your group from two perspectives: neurodivergence, and preferences in interacting with others.
Let’s start by considering contributions from the likely neurodivergent people participating in your brainstorm. You don’t need to know for certain whether they are present or who they are to take steps inspired by neurodivergence that will release contributions such as those typically associated with:
Dyslexics, who tend to be great at complex, big picture thinking but read slowly and struggle to keep track of what they have read.
People with ADHD, who tend to be comfortable taking calculated risks but may seem disorganized and jump between topics.
Dyscalculics who often possess creative problem-solving skills but can make mistakes with numbers.
Autists who tend to be objective and resistant to bias but likely take things literally.
It is easy to become overwhelmed by the variety of challenges faced by neurodivergent colleagues, but here is a helpful generalization made by Victoria Honeybourne (reference at the end). Neurodivergent team members tend to exhibit:
Low self-esteem.
Differences in information processing.
Difficulties with working memory, or the ability to hold information in short-term storage for immediate processing.
Differences in executive functions, which underpin skills such as organization, planning, structuring of information, and focus.
Now let’s consider the neurostyles of your brainstorming team members from a second perspective the perspective of introversion and extraversion. These are preferences in our attitudes to interacting with others, and describe one of the four dimensions of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) description of personality. In their book (reference at the end), Olaf Isachsen and Linda V. Berens share these descriptions:
An extraverted person is outwardly focused and energized by interactions with others. They talk first, and then think or feel, and they use many words. They have scattered energy.
An introverted person is energized by being alone, and they have a rich inner life. Silence is a blessing to the introvert, as they like to think first, and then talk or feel, and they are economical with words. Their energy is concentrated. Hear more in my interview with Richard Etienne.
The consequences of these preferences are similar to those that I listed for neurodivergent contributors. An introvert will find it difficult to process information while extroverts are enthusiastically sharing their ideas, and may become frustrated by talking preceding the consideration of evidence-based insights. All these challenges are exacerbated in situations that an individual finds stressful.
⚠️ If you notice that some of the people in your brainstorm are quiet or seem frustrated, this is often a signal of process friction rather than lack of ideas. In non-neuro-inclusive brainstorms, ideas tend to surface from the subset of people who are energized thinking aloud, processing information in real time, and competing for airtime. Meanwhile, others may still be making sense of the problem, working through the evidence, or holding back ideas they’re unsure how, or when, to contribute. The result is a deceptively energetic session that feels productive in the moment, and is successful in that some ideas have been generated, but that quietly leaves insight, creativity, and commitment on the table.
How can you leverage the collective genius of your diverse group?
How can you design your brainstorm process so people with different neurostyles can contribute readily, while retaining the free-flowing exchange of ideas that you want to stimulate?
This is not about asking people to disclose diagnoses, but rather it is about designing your brainstorming process to more closely reflect the range of thinking styles we encounter in groups of humans.
⭐ Tip 1: Enable participants to prepare in advance.
Some people are comfortable going into a brainstorm without preparation and thinking aloud. To others, that is the height of discomfort. Neither approach is right or wrong, but they are both present. You need to prepare anyway, and my first tip is to prepare in a way that you can also share in advance, so that those who want to can build their familiarity with the material.
Make sure the problem is clearly stated in active language, which is easier to process than passive language.
Share your “game rules” to help to make the brainstorm a safe space, such as being creative and supportive, and not evaluating suggestions at this stage.
Share an agenda. Explain the method that you’ll be following to let participants share their ideas. Include a link to any online collaboration tool you’ll be using so people can be sure they are familiar with the functionality.
Provide any evidence that will underpin the discussion. Consider that some people prefer to look at the original evidence, and some prefer to look at derived visualizations or summaries. Ideally, provide both, such as raw data plus a chart, and anonymized survey comments with your key takeaways. Be explicit about any assumptions you’re making, or any evidence that you’d like to have but don’t.
➡️ Interested in more neuro-inspired examples to improve the outcome of ideation sessions?
⭐ Tip 2: Provide more than one option to share ideas during your brainstorm session.
Not everyone will have looked at the preparation material. Recap the key points to make sure that everyone has a common understanding of what you’ll be doing. Consider providing 5–10 minutes at the start to allow people to re-familiarize themselves with the evidence, or to take a first look at it.
A good way to enable contributions from people with different neurostyles is to have part of the meeting where people can verbally share ideas, and part where people can write them down. For example, consider multiple rounds of your contribution options
In round 1, invite everyone in turn to share one idea verbally (not obligatory), which you capture on a collaboration board, and then provide time to share further ideas to the board in writing.
In round 2, you could ask people to vote on the ideas they’d like to elaborate on, ask questions or post them to the board, and then capture related ideas stimulated by this consideration.
Use a count-down timer to offer everyone the same amount of time when they are verbally sharing make sure everyone gets an equal chance, and a sub-group doesn’t dominate.
⭐ Tip 3: Extend the opportunity to contribute.
A brainstorm that gets as far as tip 2 is very neuro-inclusive, but a brainstorm can also continue after the session itself. Considering a brainstorm as a process, allows us to create additional neuro-inclusive opportunities.
Share the list of ideas with participants.
Give participants a defined amount of time to feedback on this idea list. They could build on existing ideas or contribute new ones. This gives those who prefer to contemplate before sharing the chance to digest and respond to new ideas from the brainstorm session.
Declare the idea generation closed and share the next steps. It’s time to pass this great list on into a different process to evaluate and select the idea(s) to be acted on.
Inclusive brainstorming: paving the way for collective genius
The foundation of designing a successful solution to a change is to generate a lot of ideas at the start. The decision of which idea(s) to pursue emerges later in the process. You’ll generate the most ideas if you take some extra time to prepare and create an inclusive brainstorming environment that enables diverse participant neurostyles.
Taking inspiration from neuro-inclusive best practices will makes your brainstorm more accessible to participants who have ideas and want to share them, but who are not comfortable thinking aloud, providing their inputs in real time, and who like to work directly from evidence. When you’re guided by the neuro-inspired brainstorm design above, your team can consistently capture better ideas earlier.
➡️ Does this feel familiar?
If your brainstorms generate energy but from a subset of your team, it’s most likely not a people problem but a design problem.
Let’s discuss where your brainstorm process may be leaking impact, and how you can transform this into amplified engagement.
References
‘The Neurodiverse Workplace: An Employer’s Guide to Managing and Working with Neurodivergent Employees, Clients and Customers’, Victoria Honeybourne.
‘Working Together: A Personality-Centered Approach to Management’, Olaf Isachsen, Ph.D. and Linda V. Berens, Ph.D.
