In 1958, researchers at Yale tested brainstorming. The results were embarrassing.
Groups using brainstorming produced fewer ideas, lower quality ideas, and worse outcomes than individuals working alone.
That was 68 years ago. Most facilitators still open with "OK, let's brainstorm."
The research hasn't changed. The habit hasn't either.
Traditional brainstorming has a design flaw that no amount of enthusiasm fixes.
It hands the microphone to whoever is loudest, most senior, or most comfortable thinking out loud in front of their boss.
Everyone else runs the same internal calculation: "Is my idea good enough to say out loud right now?"
Researchers call this evaluation apprehension. I call it the fastest way to kill honest thinking before it gets spoken.
Then there's production blocking. Only one person talks at a time. While they talk, everyone else waits. And waiting is where ideas go to die. By the time the quieter person in the corner gets a turn, their best thought is gone.
Here's what makes this worse. The confident voices aren't always the accurate ones.
A teacher I met on LinkedIn last week ran an experiment with his students.
First, everyone took an exam individually. He recorded their marks. Then he put them into groups and had them collaborate on the same exam.
You'd expect the groups to do better. They did worse. The high-confidence, low-knowledge students dominated the conversation and overrode the quieter students who actually had the right answers.
That's not a classroom problem. That's every strategy meeting, every offsite, every planning session happening in organisations right now. The pattern is identical. The stakes are higher.
The fix is a method called Think-Write-Share. Three steps. No complexity.
- Think: Pose the question. Give everyone silent time to process it.
- Write: Everyone captures their ideas independently. No talking.
- Share: Then bring the ideas into the room for discussion.
That's it. Writing before speaking means every brain in the room gets equal access to the conversation before group dynamics take over.
This is especially powerful where there are power imbalances.
In teams where challenging a senior leader openly is uncomfortable (or culturally unacceptable), asking people to speak up in a group isn't brave facilitation. It's bad design.
Writing first removes that pressure. Ideas arrive on paper without a name and a job title attached. That changes what gets said.
I started using Think-Write-Share after attending a Red Team Thinking bootcamp a few years back.
It changed how I facilitate. Not gradually. Immediately.
The difference in participation quality was too obvious to ignore. The method itself is simple. But the science behind why it works, and the framework for applying it to different session types, is where it gets interesting.
That's what the bootcamp covers.
My friends at Red Team Thinking are running a 90-minute Red Team Facilitation Bootcamp on March 30th. They'll walk you through Think-Write-Share, the Six Strategic Questions framework, and the research behind both tools.
It normally costs $199. But they've given me a link that gets you in free.
Can't make the live session? Sign up anyway. They'll send you the recording.
If you've ever watched a brainstorming session get hijacked by the loudest voice in the room, this is the fix. Ninety minutes. Free. And you'll use what you learn in your next session.
Questions? Send me a message. I read every one.