What creative techniques can facilitation leaders use to inspire their teams?

1 Brainstorming variations

Brainstorming is a classic technique for generating ideas, but it can also become boring, chaotic, or biased if not done well. To avoid these pitfalls, you can try some variations that can enhance the quality and quantity of your brainstorming output. For example, you can use reverse brainstorming, where you ask your team to think of ways to make the problem worse, and then flip them into solutions. Or you can use SCAMPER, an acronym for seven ways to modify an existing idea: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Rearrange.

4 Storytelling techniques

Storytelling techniques are methods that use narratives, characters, emotions, or metaphors to convey a message, persuade an audience, or inspire a vision. They can help your team to connect with each other, understand the context and purpose of their work, and generate more original and impactful ideas. Some examples of storytelling techniques are the hero's journey, which is a structure that follows the stages of a protagonist's transformation; the six-word story, which is a challenge to tell a story in just six words; and the pitch canvas, which is a template that helps you craft a compelling pitch for your idea.

5 Improvisation exercises

Improvisation exercises are activities that require your team to spontaneously create or respond to a situation, without any preparation or script. They can help your team to boost their confidence, flexibility, and collaboration skills, as well as their ability to think on their feet and cope with uncertainty. Some examples of improvisation exercises are yes-and, which is a rule that requires you to accept and build on whatever your partner says or does; one-word story, which is a game where you create a story by taking turns to say one word at a time; and freeze tag, which is a game where you have to replace someone in a scene and continue it with a new twist.

6 Design thinking methods

Design thinking methods are approaches that use human-centered, creative, and iterative processes to solve problems or create solutions. They can help your team to empathize with the users, define the problem, ideate, prototype, and test their ideas, and learn from feedback. Some examples of design thinking methods are personas, which are fictional profiles that represent the needs, goals, and behaviors of the users; how might we, which is a question that reframes the problem as an opportunity; and prototyping, which is a way of creating low-fidelity versions of your ideas to test them with real users.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?