If you’re a leader who’s ever led a brainstorm of any kind, you’ve probably had this experience.
You open up the floor for ideas, and the room goes quiet. People suddenly find the conference table fascinating. Maybe the meeting yields a few initiatives, but it’s like pulling teeth to get them.
If that’s happened to you, you’re not alone. And it doesn’t mean your team lacks creativity or that you’re a bad leader.
People like to say that meetings inherently kill innovation. I say that’s an over-simplification, and that with the right approach and mindset, “meetings” can easily become “jam sessions.” The problem with traditional brainstorming meetings is that they’re awkward, and can incite a little bit of fear. Specifically, they incite the fear of being wrong.
The good news: that fear is normal, human, and fixable.
In fact, it’s fixable with 3 adjustments:
Make it easier to speak up.
Make the ask specific.
Make progress visible.
Why smart teams go quiet in brainstorms (even when they care)
I’ve noticed a pattern among my clients. A lot of them say they want to “encourage their teams to share more ideas.” And often, I notice a disconnect between leaders’ assumptions and what’s actually going on.
Managers assume their team is disengaged, or maybe they’re just “playing it safe” by handling their day-to-day tasks and not putting in that extra effort to think outside the box and bring new ideas to the table.
But a lot of the time, it’s more of a behavioral economics problem: sharing new ideas feels costly.
In most meetings, the first idea costs the most because it carries the most risk. It’s the most likely to come out clunky or incomplete. It has a weird way of setting the direction, even when nobody intends it to. And it puts the speaker on the spot.
So people wait.
Not because they’re out of ideas—because they’re not sure what kind of idea you want, what’s allowed, or whether the first thing out of their mouth is going to sound dumb. So the room defaults to the familiar: analysis, constraints, cautious questions, and “safe” contributions.
I’ve seen this happen in countless organizations and settings. It’s culture-agnostic. In fact, it often shows up most intensely on the smartest teams—because smart people understand the cost of being wrong in public.
So the fix isn’t to “push harder” or demand more participation.
The fix is to shift the desired outcome from “good ideas” to momentum.
Because once a few ideas are in motion—even imperfect ones—creativity shows up. Innovation feels possible again.
You don’t need to “be more creative.” You just need to design the conversation so ideas can actually survive.
Make it easier to speak up: The Bad Idea Brainstorm
The best part about this exercise is that it’s fun.
The premise is this: people are afraid to be wrong in front of their colleagues. So, make it a rule that everyone has to be wrong on purpose.
Instead of brainstorming the best ideas, do a round searching for the worst ideas.
Make a list of every horrible, illegal, immoral, unethical, wildly impractical, or just plain lousy idea you can think of.
Bad ideas shove your creativity into uncharted territory. They break you out of the predictable lanes. And once you’re there, it becomes surprisingly easy to spot the tiny “seed” inside each rotten idea that can be flipped into something useful.
Round one: generate the worst ideas on purpose.
What makes a “bad idea”? Try some of these:
An idea that would give you the opposite desired outcome:
An unethical idea:
An illegal idea:
A “cringe-worthy” idea:
An insanely expensive idea:
A physically impossible idea:
An idea your mom would hate:
Round two: flip the bad ideas into useful options.
After you exhaust the bad ideas, take a second pass and ask:
“Is there a little something inside this bad idea we can turn into a good one?”
“What’s the opposite of this?”
“What’s the responsible version of that?”
“How would we do 10% of this in a smart, ethical way?”
Terrible ideas will quickly turn into interesting ones.
“Add three approval layers” becomes “remove one approval step or set a 24-hour decision window.”
“Make customers repeat themselves” becomes “create a one-page intake that follows the customer across handoffs.”
“Only managers can make decisions” becomes “push decisions closer to the work—with clear guardrails.”
“Hold more meetings about the meeting” becomes “replace one meeting with a two-sentence decision update.”
Oftentimes, you won’t even have to deliberately facilitate a round 2. The bad ideas will break the ice, the conversation will take off, and real ideas and solutions will start to flow.
Make the ask specific
This one requires an adjustment to your leadership style, and a little more intentional language on your part.
If you want to encourage innovation, don’t ask for ideas in general. Ask for ideas inside a container. Give your team a clear target and a few constraints—so their creativity has something to grab onto.
For example:
If you need practical improvements quickly:
“What’s one thing we could try in the next seven days to improve this?”
“Give me 10 small changes that reduce friction by 10%.”
If you need speed or efficiency:
“How could we cut this cycle time by 10% without adding headcount?”
“Where is the handoff slow—and what’s one step we can remove?”
If you need better customer experience:
“What’s the moment our customer gets annoyed—and how do we eliminate it?”
“What would make customers say, ‘That was surprisingly easy’?”
If you need cost savings:
“What could we stop doing that wouldn’t hurt customers?”
“What’s the cheapest experiment possible?”
Then add one sentence that removes uncertainty:
“Small ideas are welcome.”
“We’re not solving the whole thing today.”
“Assume we can’t buy new tools this quarter.”
“We’re looking for things we can control.”
“What would be the first step toward solving this problem?”
A funny thing happens when you add constraints: you don’t limit creativity. You activate it. Clear constraints can be innovation multipliers.
Make progress visible: The “To-Test” List
I see a ubiquitous habit across virtually every organization and team today. Everyone ends meetings with “action items.” I think people do it mostly because it feels good, safe, and productive. It’s not bad, per se, but I suggest one minor adjustment. Instead of “things to do,” explicitly frame it as “things to test.”
Action items: high-pressure, urgent, task-oriented, “to-do.”
A “To-Test” List: we’re just trying things out, continuing the fun of the brainstorm, open to failing, running experiments.
If you’d like a structure for a To-Test List, here you go:
Owner: Who runs the test?
Smallest test: What’s the simplest version we can try?
Deadline: When will we know what we learned?
Measure: What will we observe? (Keep it simple.)
Once the team sees that ideas actually go somewhere, idea-sharing becomes normal again.
Ideas become experiments. Experiments become innovations.
A Few Mistakes to Avoid:
1) Evaluating while collecting
The moment an idea gets immediate critique, the room tightens.
Collect first. Evaluate later. “Yes and” with reckless abandon.
2) Rewarding only big ideas
If only moonshots get praise, people stop offering small improvements.
Celebrate tiny wins. Belief fuels creativity.
3) Letting ideas disappear
Nothing creates “why bother?” faster than a black hole.
Always end with an owner and a next step, even if it’s small.
A simple challenge
In your next few meetings, track three numbers:
How many ideas did we capture?
How many different people contributed?
How many tests did we launch?
Focus on momentum, not “great ideas.”
Once your team sees that being wrong isn’t fatal, and that ideas actually lead somewhere, the awkward silence starts to break.
And the more you repeat the cadence, the more creativity becomes normal instead of occasional.
At the end of the day, the goal isn’t to have the most brilliant brainstorm on Earth.
It’s to create an environment where ideas can show up without getting shot down, overanalyzed, or forgotten.
If your meetings feel quiet, don’t take it as a sign that your team has nothing to say. Most of the time, they’re just waiting for a signal that it’s okay to be early, imperfect, and a little wrong.Be intentional about giving that signal. In fact, go all the way. Deliberately ask for bad ideas. Set wild constraints. Leave with 10 experiments.
And while no one should expect their first attempt at this to yield a billion-dollar breakthrough, I’d be willing to wager that everyone will have a lot more fun.