Why Your Team Goes Silent When You Ask for Ideas
- 11 minutes ago
- 5 min read
A leader recently shared a frustration with me that I have heard some version of many times:
“My people are quick to bring me problems. But when I ask them what ideas they have to solve them? Crickets.”
Or maybe you’ve experienced this version:
You intentionally carve out time in a meeting to brainstorm. You get the right people in the room. You explain the challenge. You turn to the group and say:
“Okay, everyone. What ideas do you have?”
Silence.
Eventually the same one or two people start talking. Someone throws out the safest, most obvious idea. Others nod. Maybe you fill a whiteboard with a few thoughts.
You had high hopes for the meeting. But you leave frustrated.
I want them to contribute.
I want them to take ownership.
I don't want to be the person who has to come up with every answer.
I get it. And I don't think the answer is to lower that expectation. But before you conclude that your people aren't creative, don't care, or aren't willing to contribute, consider another possibility:
You may be asking for the right thing in the wrong way.
Why I Cringe at the 20-Minute "Brainstorm"
Every time I see something like this on an agenda, I cringe a little:
2:00–2:20 — Brainstorm Ideas
Okay, I cringe a lot.
Not because I don't believe in brainstorming. Because creativity isn't an event. It's a process. Think about what we are asking someone's brain to do when we introduce a problem and immediately follow it with: "So...what ideas do you have?"
We're asking them to understand the problem, process it, make connections, generate possibilities, evaluate whether those possibilities are any good, and then have enough confidence to say one out loud in front of their boss and peers. All within a matter of seconds.
And then we're surprised when nobody raises their hand.
Some of the world's most successful creative teams understood something we seem to have forgotten: Great teams don't do all their thinking together.
What ABBA, Fleetwood Mac and Rodgers & Hammerstein Knew About Creativity
In his new book Superteams: The Science and Secrets of High-Performing Teams, Rod Friedman shares the creative process of ABBA's Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus.
Their songwriting involved cycling between two very different kinds of work: private, individual work to develop ideas and collaborative work to bring those ideas to life.
Fleetwood Mac had a similar rhythm.Stevie Nicks originally wrote "Dreams" on her own. Her bandmates weren't exactly blown away by the original ballad. Lindsey Buckingham later worked privately on the demo, giving different sections their own sound before the band ultimately transformed it into one of Fleetwood Mac's most iconic songs.
And then there were Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. The legendary duo behind Oklahoma!, South Pacific, The King and I and The Sound of Music didn't just spend time apart while creating.
They lived in different states.
Hammerstein wrote lyrics from his farm in rural Pennsylvania while Rodgers composed melodies from his apartment in New York City. They exchanged ideas over phone and mail and came together when necessary.
One of the most successful creative partnerships in musical theater history wasn't built by spending eight hours a day in a conference room together.
As the author of Superteams puts it:
“Creative solutions rarely arise through constant communication. More often they are the product of working apart and then coming together. And it’s the first half of this equation that is desperately lacking in the way most work teams operate.”
That's the part I think we are missing.
Collaboration doesn't mean doing all the work together. It means knowing which work is better done together, and which work isn't.
Friedman emphasizes that “Superteams don't achieve better results by being together all the time. They get more done by striking the right balance between focused individual work and purposeful collaboration.”
And there is actually some century-old thinking that helps explain why.
Your Brain Needs Time to Do Its Job
In 1926, British psychologist Graham Wallas published The Art of Thought and proposed that creative breakthroughs unfold through stages:
1. Preparation
Gather the raw material. Find examples. Hear the stories. Study the problem. Look at the data. Ask questions. Jot down initial thoughts. Give your brain something to work with.
2. Incubation
Give your brain space to work. Step away and shift your attention somewhere else. Go for a walk. Work on something different. Drive home. Sleep on it. Your conscious attention moves on, but your brain keeps making connections.
3. Illumination
Let the idea emerge. Something clicks. A connection appears. A sentence pops into your head. Wait…what if we did this? The beginnings of an idea suddenly take shape.
4. Verification
Turn the idea into something useful. Write it down. Test it. Develop it. Share it. Get feedback. Adjust it. Figure out whether the idea actually works.
Now compare that process to what happens in most brainstorming meetings:
Here's a problem you've just heard about. You have 20 minutes. Innovate!
We've essentially asked people to jump from preparation straight to illumination, skipping the space in between where their brains have a chance to make connections. And then we wonder why the ideas don't flow.
So what can we do differently?
Next Time You Are Asking for Ideas or Solutions, Try This
You don't need to overhaul the way your team works. A few small shifts can dramatically change the quality of ideas you get back.
1. Ask before you need the answer.If you want ideas on Tuesday, tee up the question on Friday. Share the context and what you're trying to solve. Give their brains days, not seconds.
2. Ask a better question.“Any ideas?” is a big, blank canvas. Try: What are we missing? What would make this dramatically better? What have you seen others do that we could learn from?
3. Give them something to work with.Share the customer feedback. Send the article. Show them examples. Give them the data. Tell the story. Better raw material leads to better ideas.
4. Encourage them to think alone first.Create some space between introducing the challenge and asking for answers. Have a few days? Let them sit with it. Have an hour? Send them out for 10-15 minutes. Encourage them to take a walk, toss a ball around, grab a coffee or do something physical while they think. Movement and a shift in attention can give the mind room to wander, make connections and surface ideas that don't appear while staring at a conference-room whiteboard.
5. Come back together to build.Thinking alone doesn't replace collaboration, it makes collaboration better. Bring people back together to share what surfaced, combine ideas, stretch one another's thinking and make good ideas better.
6. Generate first. Evaluate second.Resist the urge to immediately respond with “That won't work,” “We've tried that,” or “We can't afford it.” Get the possibilities out first. There will be time to pressure-test, refine and decide later.
Keep the Expectation. Change the Process.
If you're frustrated that your people aren't bringing ideas to the table, don't stop expecting them to contribute.
Change the conditions under which you're asking them to contribute.
Give them the problem before you need the solution. Give them something useful to think about. Give them a better question. Give them time to work alone. Let them walk away. Then bring them back together to build on what surfaced.
Your people may have far better ideas than you're currently hearing.
The best idea may not show up at 2:13 because the agenda says BRAINSTORM from 2:00–2:20. It may show up Tuesday morning on someone's drive to work. Or Wednesday night while they're doing the dishes.
Creativity isn't an event. It's a process.
And great leaders don't just ask for great ideas. They create the conditions that give great ideas a chance to emerge.
Written by Heather Italiano, Organizational Health Consultant and Founder of People Warriors
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