How Do You Brainstorm With a Team Virtually- We all know that feeling when working in a team. Some voices dominate the conversation and the rest of them are silenced. It is impossible to make active participation in such a group. You can read how do you brainstorm with a team virtually together and access free virtual brainstorming tools at our website to resolve this problem.
Are you looking to brainstorm with a team virtually ? To brainstorm with a team virtually , you’ll want to familiarize yourself with free virtual brainstorming tools like IdeaBoard Pro. Since most free virtual brainstorming tools are Web-based, they offer the ability to share your ideas and collaborate with others on ideas. This can help improve your team’s success with brainstorms.
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Prepare for your brainstorming session beforehand.
Coming into the brainstorming session prepared makes all of the difference. In order to set the stage for a productive creative process, you should communicate beforehand with all participants. Make sure everyone is aware of the brainstorming outcome, who the other participants are, and what everybody’s role is.
When you do not prepare for your brainstorming session, the only outcome is chaos. We’ve all been in bad meetings, where you show up without any context or instructions. Poorly planned meetings are not only time-wasters, but they also prevent you from getting the best results and outcome out of the participants. When you start a meeting and nobody knows what they are supposed to contribute, or what the ultimate objective is, you’re just setting everyone up for failure.
That’s why you should get in touch with all of the participants at least a few days before the session to let everyone know what the expectations and goals for the brainstorm are. That way everyone can prepare in advance, do research if needed, and arrive in the best state of mind on brainstorming day. This will also help the person who will be taking meeting minutes, as it gives them an idea of which direction the brainstorm session will be heading.
Use collaborative tools and technology.
Have you ever experienced a virtual meeting where you could never figure out the right moment to talk? You either kept accidentally all speaking at once, or you waited and thus experienced an excruciatingly long and awkward silence. It’s not done intentionally – if you don’t have video (or good video) it’s simply because participants can’t see each other’s facial expressions.
Facial expressions and body language make up 55% of communication.
And thus without good video, you’re only getting half the context. Make sure your video conferencing setup has dynamic video and audio. That way, the meeting is remote-inclusive and remote callers can easily follow along. It’s the most important step to a successful brainstorming session.
Use an online brainstorming template
An easy way to get organized on idea generation is with the help of a brainstorming template. This way, no matter how many ideas are created, your boards will stay organized. We’ve listed a few of our favorites below, or check out this article which lists all 15 brainstorming templates available.
Avoid groupthink with brainwriting
Sometimes a regular brainstorming session can stifle quieter voices in favor of dominant or powerful ones. The nature of a regular brainstorming session also means that individuals tend to anchor to ideas that are discussed first. As a group, we subconsciously tend to converge on common solutions.
Brainwriting is our technique of choice to ensure you get a wide range of ideas from everyone. With brainwriting, individuals can break off from the group and independently come up with a list of ideas. This should ideally happen before the group session. Thanks to the collaborative nature of our brainwriting template, once everyone has added their ideas, other participants can expand on them.
Start with an ice breaker.
Ice breakers get the creative juices flowing. And contrary to popular belief, they don’t have to be boring or embarrassing! For example, if you’re a graphic designer, you and your team can set up a couple of design challenges at the beginning of the meeting to have some fun and break the ice.
It is essential to remember that people have different comfort levels when choosing which ice breaker to go for. Luckily, there is no shortage of virtual ice breaker ideas floating around on the internet. Here are a couple of different ice breakers that you may want to consider for your brainstorming day:
- Two truths and a lie: If you are having a brainstorming session with new hires or team members, this ice breaker can work very well. As the name indicates, you get each person to tell two truths about themselves and one lie. The rest of the group needs to guess what the lie is. For example, one person could say that they take ballet classes, are in a mixed doubles tennis pair, and that they go to painting classes. From there, the rest of the group would need to guess which of those statement’s is the lie. It is a good way to break the ice and find out more about the group.
- The Hot Seat: This is another ice breaker that you may want to try for your brainstorming session. As the name indicates, one person will go in the hot seat, and then every person has the chance to ask them one question each. This is a fun game, but it’s important to set boundaries and make sure the questions aren’t too personal or invasive. The last thing you want to do is start off your brainstorming session with someone getting offended.
- Would You Rather: There’s no better way to get to know your colleagues than by asking them bizarre questions, right? This is what Would You Rather is all about. Here are some example questions: Would you rather have the ability to teleport or the power to fly? Would you rather stop listening to music or stop watching films?You get the point! To play, pose a question to the group, or take turns going around and asking each other individual questions. You’re bound to learn something new with this game.
Take turns sharing ideas.
One of the challenges of virtual meetings is trying to coordinate when people are speaking. Fortunately, If you’re using a platform like Zoom for your meetings, there are features to help with this. For example, you can use settings to focus the camera on one person speaking and mute the other microphones, which prevents people from speaking over one and other. But even so, you still need to make sure the overall brainstorming meeting flows smoothly and gives everyone the opportunity to share their ideas.
So how can you help guide the meeting and keep everyone organized? Use an agenda. Creating an agenda is one good way to keep your brainstorming session organized and encourage everyone to share ideas at the appropriate time. When you create an agenda — or an outline of general topics to cover in the brainstorm — and share it with everyone in the meeting beforehand, it encourages participants to plan out their thoughts and think about which parts of the conversation they want to contribute to.
Conclusion
Brainstorming with a team virtually can be a great thing. You can build a virtual team with members in different parts of the world, and then you have a chance to use free virtual brainstorming tools to help you do it.