Imaginary Worlds and Team Problem Solving
“So who do you think would win in the air soccer battle? The griffins or the octopus in octo-bubbles?”
As we were on a little road trip recently, my son asked me what had happened to my imagination — he was really worried about me. We’d spent most of the drive exploring his imaginary world, and he realized that I’d never shared my imaginary world with him. I reassured him that it is just that we mostly talked about his imaginary world, but I reassured him that I have a very healthy one as well. I told him that as I got older, maybe my imagination was a little less fantastical, but still quite intact. In fact, I grab toys on my desk and “space out” regularly to start working through my problems.
Underwater Axolotl Soccer
Back in his imaginary world, the axolotls and octopus were competing in underwater soccer (we were cheering for the axolotls, if you must know.) In between the play-by-play of the match and worrying about the apocalypse, we talked about how important imagination is for our development and critical thinking.
Did you know that you activate the more complex functions of your brain more effectively when you daydream than when you stay rooted in linear, conscious thinking? Allowing yourself to daydream gives you access to more regions of your brain — and specifically the regions that are better at complex problem solving. (Instinctively, you know this… those random “aha” moments often come when you are driving or in the shower and your mind just wanders.)
Channeling Team Creativity
Daydreaming for individual problem solving might feel accessible, but maybe you have trouble imagining a team sitting around daydreaming together. If you aren’t inclined to bring in the recliners and stare at the clouds together, there are other ways of activating these crucial regions of the brain together and then taking the next step to integrate it into your joint efforts.
Key ingredient #1: bring in a different “channel” — most people spend their day in the “work” of writing and/or speaking. But we can imagine and draw. What if the topic at heart was imagined as a living, breathing creature? Let’s learn about it!
Key ingredient #2: the land beyond imagination — if you just Invite everyone to share, you’ve created excitement but not moved towards meaningful action. The deeper work begins when you amalgamate, then slowly and carefully apply this imagination to the problem at hand. In my jargon, I call this “bringing down the vision.”
Get the team ready for this
Inviting your team to this shared visioning can seem simple, but there’s a few other key ingredients that make this successful. You need an inclusive foundation with trust and open communication so that people are willing to let their imaginations run wild while others are nearby.
Finally, ensure you create a thoughtful process for sharing out so that folks can build on each other (amalgamate and evolve) rather than deciding on a winner. (Though if we are back to the underwater soccer match, my son is rooting for the axolotls).
Permission to imagine
I share a lot of tools here, and sometimes they are deceptively simple. I’m sure you can imagine your team doing this drawing. Yet in my experience coaching teams, this is most powerful when the team sets this in context of how to “be” with each other — the drawings are more expansive, and the explanation and deepening go further.
To come back to my interaction with my son: he feels a permission to be vulnerable in our relationship that allows him to let his imagination spill over into our conversations. Teams are the same way: they need to work towards a team ethos that supports a vulnerable enough space to let imagination run wild. Does your team have this permission? Consider checking in about what you are willing to do with your team to create that permission.
The Team Diagnostic is a tool I use with teams to open up conversation around the level of trust on a team (among other attributes), and build the collective understanding of where the team can stretch into leveraging these sorts of tools, and I’d be happy to demo that with you any day.
