Brainstorming with your customers

Brainstorming is one of the most effective tools when it comes to offering creative solutions, where the active involvement of all those present is sought. Teamwork allows to speed up the process of generating possible answers to the problems to be faced. This tool, well executed, can be very useful during the development of your coaching sessions.

The coach alone cannot offer strategies and actions to be executed if they are not adapted to the client's profile and needs, which is why we insist on involving the client in each of the solutions that are proposed during the development of the following sessions. During the development of this guide we will be addressing the topic of brainstorming as an efficient mechanism for working with clients.

How to carry out brainstorming?

The way in which brainstorming is executed will depend considerably on the abilities and skills of the coach. However, it is possible to apply some general methods as long as you have not developed your own methodology in this respect. You can use a whiteboard to make notes.

The idea is that both you and the client start expressing your ideas out loud, every idea will be written down no matter how absurd it may seem. No time should be wasted on the quality of the ideas or the fit with the topic, you want as many as possible to come up in a relatively short period of time.

What to do once brainstorming is complete?

Once we have finished brainstorming and all the proposals have been noted down, the in-depth analysis begins. Each proposed idea should be discussed with the objective of refining or discarding it, and you can also try to mix two or more ideas to find more complete solutions to the problem at hand.

Always keep in mind that the core of the problem revolves around the customer, so the solutions generated through brainstorming must be tailored to the needs and particularities of the customer. With this in mind, provide the necessary space for your client to have total freedom to make their proposals and to express their opinion about the ones you have made.

How long should the brainstorming session last?

Depending on the method to be applied, the average time that the brainstorming should last is established. We consider that this should be brief, for the reason that what we want is that the ideas arise from the subconscious, so it does not require so much time to process the thoughts, these should be spontaneous. Whether it is one minute, three or five, the process should not stop until the time is completely exhausted, that is why it can be counterproductive to put very long periods of time.

If the session has been very productive and it is felt that the time has been too short, a second round can be held to gather more ideas. Similarly, if no good ideas were generated during the session, the brainstorming should be scheduled for a future session, where it is more likely that the mood of the coach and client will be more optimal for the exercise to be carried out.

The brainstorming allows as many participants as you wish, if you think there are other people who can contribute good ideas during the exercise, do not hesitate to invite them to participate.