When we come to the group meeting, we often do what we
called the brainstorming. Brainstorming is done to find ideas and mix them together
to become better ideas. But, what if there's always one loudmouth with average
ideas who try to dominates? Sharing ideas in groups is all good. Ironically, it
becomes less useful nowadays. You know people that hoping to look smart and
productive will blurt out their idea over and over, wasting time and energy. Meanwhile,
the others rallies around that idea both internally and externally. And, what
we got is an average solution. The loudmouth says their thing continuously and
everyone else harrumphs. Then, the brainstorming is over.
The solution to avoid these are do the brainwriting. Why
brainwriting? Because it has quieter process. As Thompson and Nordgren say: write first, talk second. In her studies, Thompson found that brainwriting groups generated 20%
more ideas and 42% more original ideas as compared to traditional brainstorming
groups. In brainwriting treatment everyone will write their ideas first.
This will free people to write ideas and of course unbiased by anyone else.
After finish the writing, then they will discuss a lot of raw ideas which come
from individuals. Next, vote and combine the raw ideas. "Usually the best
idea that is selected at the end isn't exactly what anyone came up with at the
beginning; the idea has been edited," Nordgren added. This treatment will
neutralize the overly-dominate people and energize the normally-quiet-shy
people.
The most winning part of brainwriting is aim for introvert.
Being an introvert is a loss when it is faced with that loudmouth phenomenon.
The introvert with ideas usually will give up when doing brainstorming with
these loudmouth. Thompson's studies have found that in most
meetings with traditional brainstorming, a few people do 60-75% of the talking. With
brainstorming everyone include the introvert will write down their ideas and
discuss it together. Everyone has the same chance.
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