The Ten People You Meet in Ideation
At ITG, we’ve run thousands of meetings and ideation sessions. Each team we work with is made up of a diverse group of people, all with different ways of thinking, interacting, and ideating. Our job is to quickly figure out each person’s strengths and opportunities, so that we can get the most out of all participants and achieve the common goal. I’ve come up with 10 archetypes we typically see in our workshops. In this article, I share some techniques that capitalize on strengths, and redirect to help get the best out of them all.
1) The Optimist
This person likes every idea they hear – which is amazing in an ideation session. The key with this person is to make sure they are also generating ideas. You need to encourage the Optimist to build on the ideas they hear vs. just saying they like them. Some prompts like “what else could that be good for,” “where else does that idea take you,” and “how can you build on that to make it even better” will help them move on from reaction mode to building mode.
2) The Self-Doubter
This person is not confident in their own ideas. When sharing ideas aloud, try not to call on this person first, but do call on them. And when you do, be sure to tell them what you like about their idea and how it inspired you to come up with another one. Be prepared to share an idea you came up with based on their idea, which will help build their confidence. The Self-doubter will become more likely to participate, knowing they are adding value and stimulating the thinking of others. Another way to get them to feel more confident is to pair them up with a “pro” so they can get the hang of it early on in the session. In our sessions, Creative Consumers® associates are great at helping newcomers get the hang of ideation.
3) The Builder
This person is great at taking other people’s ideas and adding their own little twist on it to come up with more ideas. They are really helpful in generating quantity, which is needed during ideation. We want to encourage and praise this behavior, because it models for others how to use ideas to get to more ideas. The key with this person is to help them also learn to take risks and generate fresh ideas of their own for other people to build upon. It helps to take extra time with the Builder at the beginning of an ideation exercise to ensure they understand how to use the initial stimulus to get to a new starter idea.
4) The Soloist
This person only likes their own ideas – and this is no fun when you are trying to get people to collaborate and build on one another. With this person, the key is to get them to focus on others. For example, suggest they pick an idea that someone else shared, then use it to build another idea based on the initial idea. It will help them see the value in other participants’ ideas and be more collaborative. It will also help them generate a more diverse set of ideas because they will be using the perspective of others as stimulus vs. reverting back to the things they like.
5) The “Facilitator”
This person is highly engaged in the process, which is great! They frequently chime in to ask good clarifying questions about the activities we are doing, and even offer helpful suggestions! However, their job is to participate in the session, by generating ideas. The key here is to encourage the “Facilitator” to immediately put any suggestion they have to use, with the sole purpose of generating more ideas.
6) The Rambler
This person has trouble articulating their ideas clearly and concisely. They want to participate, they are excited to be there, and they ramble. Rambling isn’t helpful because it makes it difficult to understand their great ideas and it takes up time that can be spent generating more ideas. Give them a template to use to form their ideas, for example: “This is a ___________ that ___________ and makes the user feel ________.” This helps them generate ideas that are more concrete, and also more succinct. Once they get the hang of it, using that structure will feel more natural.
7) The Entertainer
This person likes to be center stage and lobby for their ideas frequently. When sharing ideas aloud, don’t call on them first. Let others model how to share ideas – and even model that behavior yourself. Ensure everyone on the team knows that headlining ideas helps lead to more ideas in a session, and more ideas lead to better ideas. Headlining is a way of sharing your idea without the backstory and logic as to how you came up with the idea (unnecessary in an ideation session) and without telling everyone why your idea is so special (also unnecessary during ideation). Let everyone decide which ideas they think are great during convergence, not during ideation.
8) The Naysayer
This person hates everything. Your job is to prompt (in other words force) this person to say what they like, and only what they like about ideas. If they start to say what they don’t like, immediately redirect them to what they are “for” and why. Then get others involved to build on ideas based on what the naysayer just said. If they proceed to say what they don’t like, either (a) tell them they will have the chance to share those thoughts later or (b) give them constructive language to use like “I wish,” “How to,” or “How might we,” and then build another idea and move on. Without these techniques, they will quickly bring everyone else down and bring the ideation to a halt.
9) The Journalist
This person is not in an ideation session; they are conducting an interview. This person loves to appear when our Creative Consumers® associates are involved. The CCs are fascinating people with great insights, and they answer questions thoughtfully and thoroughly. However, when the task is idea generation, Q&A is not a good use of their time. The Reporter is curious, which is great, and they can behave this way in sessions that don’t involve CCs as well. You just have to channel that curiosity into using stimulus to generate ideas vs. using information solely to learn.
10) The Unicorn
This person only comes up with wacky ideas. Great! We need this person in an ideation session. Starting with wild ideas is a way to get to new and interesting spaces. It’s easier to take a crazy idea and tone it down a bit than it is to start with a boring idea and try to make it more interesting. The key to managing the Eccentric is to get them (and others) to use their wacky ideas to come up with additional ideas that meet the objective more closely. Forness® mindset is a great tool to use, because it keeps the good alive, while addressing concerns about feasibility in a productive way.
All of these different personalities can participate effectively in an ideation session. You just need to know how to get the most out of them.