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The attack of the idea vampires!
Just like Harry Potter’s Death Eaters and Dementors, watch out for these suckers – they’ll either turn you into one of them or squeeze all of life’s joy out of you!
Brainstorming is supposed to be a collaborative idea-generation process that, theoretically, gets great results. Yet it only takes a couple of bad seeds to turn these sessions into unpleasant and unproductive nightmares.
Every organisation has its fair share of underminers – identifying the most common offenders, how many of these troublesome types do you recognise from your place of work?
Attention ghouls: they always want to stand out and be the centre of attention. They can smother a brainstorming session by dominating the conversation, excessively pushing ideas and ultimately sucking the life out of the whole group.
Dictators: they love every idea, as long as it’s theirs. These totalitarians feel they are the only ones with good ideas, or good taste, for that matter. Many bosses unknowingly become dictators in meetings – maybe not on purpose, but their role in the company makes it all too easy.
Idea assassins: these seasoned killers love to shoot down ideas – anyone’s and everyone’s. Under the pretence of being constructive, they find flaws, poke holes and pick apart all promising ideas until they bleed to death.
Obstructionists: to them, nothing is simple or easy. They complicate conversations and procedures and bring up extraneous facts or considerations that derail the flow of the group. Nothing is straightforward to the obstructionist – they over-think, over-speak and single-handedly dead-end an otherwise promising session.
Social loafers: these are the people who show up for the brainstorming session, but rarely participate in the generation of new ideas in any meaningful way or contribute much substance. They usually sit back, appear bored or aloof and let others do all the heavy lifting.
Wet blankets: these are the pessimists who have the unique ability to instantly dampen the enthusiasm of any session by being discouraging and depressing, with the majority of their comments not holding water.
To find out more about brainstorming killers and how to deal with them, go to www.smartstorming.com