I was talking with someone who was wondering aloud about how to boost the creative thinking skills of a group made up primarily of fact- and logic-driven individuals. Think accountants, engineers, compliance officers, and others in right-wrong answer professions.
What a great (and challenging) question. We’ve faced a few situations like this. We don’t deal with it more frequently because we consciously push in advance for diverse groups to engage in creative thinking and innovation workshops.
In response to the question, we shared several ideas to identify the participants more likely to display strong creative thinking skills within a group setting such as the one described.
The first step is to identify the participants most likely to display strong creative thinking skills by asking someone within the organization to profile each participant. They can do this based on their strategic thinking perspectives alone. They might also profile them based on the types of voices each will bring to a group setting.
To identify those most likely to display robust creative thinking skills within a logic-oriented group, look for the math and music people. Invariably, people with interests and aptitudes in both math and music are versatile thinkers. They can more easily disengage from the purely logical side to think imaginatively. You can insert a question about who enjoys math AND music within an ice breaker exercise or within a sign-up sheet asking various questions.
Another possibility is to give the group an abstract ice breaker task with no obvious right or wrong answer. Ideally, the exercise should push participants outside their comfort zones. Even mentioning such an exercise will cause many of them to balk or pout. Most of the rest will display that behavior while doing it. Some of them, however, will have fun. Those individuals are signaling more openness to creativity through their behavior. One ice breaker question we’ve used that happened to work will in this regard was, “What is the last thing on your mind?” Participant’s answers made it clear who could have fun with the question, and who just thought it was the dumbest question ever. An exercise that works well is telling them that you are going to teach them to draw a cartoon. It always works (everyone winds up realizing they can draw) and always unveils the participants interested in doing new things.
While none of these approaches is guaranteed, they can all help identify participants with stronger creative thinking skills. You will want to make sure you spread these individuals throughout any small groups. This will help create more focus on generating ideas versus analyzing them to death! – Mike Brown