Don’t just be opened ended with your questions be ambiguous!

I’ve been reading Group Genius by Keith Sawyer – a great book on creative collaboration. In the book he shows how purposefully vague language is more likely to lead to creative connections and new thinking.

Which means… if you are in the ‘storming’ phase of a conversation or group discussion, it’s good not to be too focused in the way you ask your questions. For example, “so how do they do that?” is a nicely vague question – ‘they’ could mean any number of people, ‘do’ could refer specifically to an action you’ve been talking about – or it could be more rhetorical, and ‘that’ is open to interpretation too.

By using these vaguer nudges the participants are freer to make their own mental connections and build and improvise on their answers, delivering a creative, sparky dynamic in the group.

It’s an argument too for recruiting longer groups so that there’s time to let the ideas flow.