In most businesses, meetings are opportunities for strategic, synergistic work to take place. Meetings are where you have the opportunity to form “more than the sum of your parts”. [If meetings are where the "Dysfunction" takes place in your business, hit this LINK now]

Meetings are typically where new collaborative ideas are generated and strategic team decisions made.

Meetings are also a setting that tend to bring out the best thinking from only the more Extraverted Members of the Team.

Think about it for a moment: A meeting is a public forum where you must present your ideas to a group and defend them verbally. This is not the ideal situation for more introverted people. There is a real challenge here as well because your introverted team members- you know…the ones who are less likely speak up in meetings, especially when a more dominant or extraverted member has the floor - are often the ones who ultimately generate the longest list of quality ideas.

How can you create an introvert-friendly setting in your meetings and tap all the creativity of your group?

Here’s a simple yet powerful technique that will have all of your team members participating. It’s called “BRAINWRITING”. It is a twist on the classic “Brainstorming” process that is not dependent upon speaking out in the meeting. Perfect for people who are more comfortable with written communication and written generation of ideas such as lists, tables and spreadsheets.

Here’s how it works…

• Present a challenge to the team
• Instead of verbal brainstorming, give each member a piece of paper numbered down the left side and ask them to write 3-5 potential responses to the challenge. NOTE: As in brainstorming, the rules are … quantity of ideas, no evaluation, no critique, no idea too “far out”.
• Each team member passes their paper to the person on their left. Ask each member to use the ideas on the paper just passed to them as a springboard and write down 3-5 more ideas - repeat the “pass and write” once more.
• Make a listing of all the ideas to a flip chart and categorize.
• Take it one step further: I encourage you to play music during the BrainWriting Process … something slower and calmer in the background to smooth the thinking process. An IPod dock music system works great.

The process is non-verbal, collaborative and sequential and will often come up with far more quality ideas than a brainstorming session dominated by the one or two extraverted team members.

Give BrainWriting a try at your next meeting and leave a comment telling us how it went.