Invite several people in a room to work together on a particular topic and observe. After a few minutes, you will notice a downward spiral due to the group dynamics.

Those group influences may completely paralyse the dynamic of your workshops. Here is a list with some suggestions to soften them with some Post-its and with Stormz.

Give some ideas close to the previous ones

group bias Picture under CC BY-SA by Scott Granneman.

You are about to launch a brainstorming session but just before you start, the biggest loudmouth express its views
 And half of the contributions will refer to this subject. What creative inputs!!

Even if this behaviour is interesting to explore similar ideas, this bias should theoretically be mitigated.

Mitigate with some Post-its: Get the participants to write Post-its without talking or showing it to the others.

Mitigate with Stormz: Do not display the participants’ cards by using the screen Author me at that stage.

Choose to discuss and highlight only the first ideas that came out

Often, the discussion is limited to the first reflexions and the same phenomenon can happen during the votes. Ideas further on the list or hidden are not considered. The first ideas become predominant and we miss the (good) ideas that came later.

Mitigate with some Post-its: There is no easy solution; should we mix all the ideas? Reduce the amount? Take a lot of time?

Mitigate with Stormz: Choose the random mode for the cards and the groups. Thus, each participant will have a different screen display.

Being the first or the last one to grade ideas can influence the final result

According to the traditional method, the participants vote one after the other and the first as well as the last member can influence the result.

The first can influence some other participants to vote in the same way. Similarly, if the last one counts the votes and grade the ideas which are close to the top three, he can choose to tip the balance.

Mitigate with some Post-its: In order to avoid that the participants choose the order of turn, change regularly who will vote at first.

Mitigate with Stormz: Everybody will vote at the same time and you can mask the final score until the disclosure.

No consideration for the ideas of people that we dislike

How difficult it can be to consider that an idea is good when we do not like its author!

There may be a conflict of interests between honesty and feelings. Criticize an idea can be profitable, but it must be fruitful.

Mitigate with some Post-its: Do not write the name of the author on the Post-it. Nobody should present his own idea, which is difficult.

Mitigate with Stormz: You have nothing to do! By default, the view is anonymous (except for feedbacks).