When presenting new ideas, in a group setting, we often have an urge to judge and criticize. If we focus on 3 principles and 4 steps we can be a lot more effective and successful.

Key Principles

One of the most effective things we can do when working with others is to listen with intent to understand. This is opposite from our normal instincts to listen with intent to respond, or debate, or to probe. The other principle that is extremely effective is to leverage our differences and utilize different perspectives to improve whatever we are doing. Finally we want to remember to be proactive and lean towards us taking action, instead letting circumstances or other people be responsible for what we do.

Keeping the above principles in mind as our goal, there is a method called “Creative Reaction Feedback” with 4 steps that can help us.

1 Presentation

A person presents the idea(s) that they have prepared. The presentation should include information about what the presenter understands about the audience, their potential objectives and concerns about the topic in addition to the actual topic elements. For example, if the topic is about going to the moon. The presentation can cover the concerns that building a rocket is hard, costly, and dangerous. Then it can cover how the team should build a rocket to go to the moon.

The audience listens with intent to understand, making notes of what they understood and also jotting down questions they may have for anything that was not clear. They do not interrupt the presenter during the presentation.

2 Clarifying Questions

Once the presentation is complete, audience members get to ask questions with the sole intent to understand. Questions that challenge, shut down ideas, or try to earn points are discouraged. The simple way to remember this as an audience member is to say to yourself, “I want to understand”

For the moon example, the audience could ask “When you say the moon, do you mean the actual moon orbiting the earth?”.”Do you foresee people traveling in this rocket or is there some other goal?”

3 Likes

State what you like about the idea. Point out parts of the idea or presentation that appealed to you and why. Often it’s helpful to take turns in the group to give each person a chance to state one or more likes for an idea so everyone participates.

For the moon example you can say “It’s exciting to go to the moon”. “I like that we are thinking big”

4 How Do We Questions

Finally it’s time to bring up challenges that you see. State challenges using proactive language instead of reactive language. Ask “How do we…”.

For our moon idea we can ask some “how do we” questions such as “How do we make money for such a business” (Finance question). “How do we build such a rocket with people and knowledge sufficient to do this?” (Implementation Question). “How do we figure out how long it will take to do this?” (Management Question).

“Crazy Ideas” Can Become Real

Using the above method we can methodically discuss even the craziest of ideas such as “let’s build an Island made out of chocolate”. When we used the above approach during a training exercise with the above method, we actually came up with an interesting viable business to do this.

I have a feeling that when Elon Musk said, “let’s build a space company to go to Mars and launch a car into space”, some form of “Creative Reaction Feedback” was used to make this “crazy idea” a reality.

The main lesson here is not to dismiss stuff, be proactive, listen to understand, leverage the team’s differences, and try to develop the idea to see where it leads you.