How do you feel when you see a cop in your rearview mirror?

How relaxed do you feel which is a key to creative output, and does your team feel like you are a cop who might judge them?

The key to creativity and creative team problem solving is to be relaxed and suspend judgement in yourself, and those around you so that you and your team can generate the most possible ideas.

The number of creative ideas is greatly reduced if you feel like you have to be careful and walking on eggshells.  You cannot feel reckless abandon and throw caution to the wind if you are being judged, and need to follow rules.  Rule are important in society, however rules need to be eliminated when your team’s mission is the greatest number of creative ideas.

A creative team need needs to change their language, and the single word “but” can double creative output.

When in the idea generation phrase, suspend judgement and eliminate all rules until another day when your team’s creative ideas are graded and judged.

“If you want to have good ideas, you must have many ideas.”  Linus Pauling, two-time Nobel Prize Winner

Keep the ideas flowing from your team by using mind mapping which is a prompted form of brainstorming on steroids.

You can also keep the ideas flowing by by eliminating “group-think” blocking language, and punishment gags which sound like this, “I like your idea, but it will never work!”

Announcing that “we are brainstorming,” should put everyone’s hackles down, and stop the judging comments.

When working in big groups, set the mood by announcing “we are brainstorming,” and that should send everyone the message that the only rule at this time is “no rules,” and anything goes.

When presenting ideas to friends or your spouse, trying saying, “I am just brainstorming now” which may stop them from biting your head off, and jumping in to execute your idea.

Write down ALL ideas, and keep writing until your marker runs empty (then, get another marker), or until you cannot stand it any longer.

Come back an hour, or preferably a day later, and now judge and pick the best ideas to solve your original problem.

Perhaps, one of the ideas might even lead you to think out-of-the-box and realize that your original problem was the WRONG problem.

“The problem was not to breed faster horses, the problem was how to manufacture low-cost automobiles.” — Henry Ford