3 Tips For Better Mind Mapping Sessions

Teaming up for a brainstorming session can very well be the most productive and beneficial thing for the growth of your team and business. Good mind mapping and brainstorming sessions can take your project management and leadership skills to a whole new level.

Not matter what you team is working on, effective brainstorming followed by good presentation of all the key ideas in the form of a mind map is essential if your team wants to achieve its goals. For example, if you are working on a new product, you can make your own mind map, and then start taking input from other members of your team to build and branch out that mind map. This way, the idea can be further improved, and every team member will feel empowered after giving his input.

Here are some effective mind mapping tips to make your mind mapping sessions great with clients.

Come Prepared

You should complete your homework before coming to a brainstorming and mapping session. You should also provide your team members with all the information needed to speak at the session with authority. Providing all the participants with details can help them in determining the strengths and weaknesses of the project, and lay them out before you as soon as the session starts.

You can also do yourself a huge favor by doing competitor research prior to the session. This will allow you to see the unique selling points of various competitors, and might help you in developing the same for your own clients.

Keep The Technical Stuff For Later Discussion

Brainstorming and mind map sessions are a part of creative process, and you should let your team to settle down with the creative process before moving to the specs. Your mind map should only contain main ideas linked together, and not technical terms like specs and other such things.

Additionally, in the first session, avoid focusing too much on the technical points. Spend some quality time with your team to let them form good relationship and understanding of each other. This lets their creative juices flow freely. 

Even when starting, do it by discussing the most basic and fundamental ideas to create an equal footing for all the team members. You can gradually make the mind map more specific by adding the technical terms once the general concepts are out of the way.

Begin With Questions

If your mind map includes finding solution to a particular problem, you can begin by asking some relevant questions. Asking the relevant questions can help you in kicking off a project with ease. The questions must be industry specific, and should lead towards a good solution of the problem at hand.

You should also let your team members contribute to the mind map by suggesting new ideas. This will further help in improving the creative process and mind map. There are lots of mind mapping applications available these days that you can use.