In brainstorming sessions — and in improv — no phrase is more valuable than “Yes, and …” The theory goes that criticism kills creativity and increases hostility. Instead, when someone adds a new idea to the mix, a “yes, and …” reply can maintain creative flow and foster a positive, encouraging environment. Just ask Tina Fey.
After years of watching this advice cycle through businesses both big and small, scientists have started to think it could use some revision. For more than 15 years, scientific research has actually shown that dissent, debate, and competing views can spur creativity, not hinder it. Positivity is great, but criticism might be, too.
Whoops. Turns out Tina Fey and the rest of us might need to switch up our techniques to brainstorm and improvise better. Instead of “Yes, and …” maybe we should go for “Yes, but, and …”
Back in 2004 — just five years after the release of that “Nightline” special — Dr. Charlan J. Nemeth from the University of California, Berkeley
researched conflict and creativity with other scientists from California and France. Had this study gained more traction at the time, critique might not have gotten such a bad reputation. Unfortunately, “Nightline” grabs substantially more attention than The European Journal of Social Psychology, and as a result, it’s taken us more than 15 years to listen to Dr. Nemeth and his team. Better late than never, we guess.
To test whether debate was good for creativity (while correcting for cultural differences), Dr. Nemeth and his team conducted their study in both the United States and France. Participants were divided up into groups of five and asked to solve a problem: How to reduce traffic congestion in San Francisco or Paris. In 20 minutes, they were meant to come up with as many good solutions as they could. Some groups were told not to criticize each other’s ideas (“Yes, and …”) and other groups were specifically told to debate and criticize. A control group was told to solve the problem with no additional instructions. After the ideas were collected, each participant was asked to write down any solutions they thought of but didn’t express during the brainstorm and any ideas they thought of after the discussion was over.
And although the difference in the number of ideas generated during the session between the debate and the “yes, and …” groups didn’t reach statistical significance, the ideas participants didn’t express or thought of too late did: Specifically, the U.S. participants came up with significantly more of these ideas in the debate condition than in the “yes, and …” condition, suggesting that culture plays a role in the best approach to a brainstorming session.
It’s also possible that the specific instruction to criticize felt liberating to participants. According to the researchers, “An instruction to do something that is normally forbidden — at least considered impolite — may be liberating in and of itself. Breaking rules, doing the ‘forbidden,’ stating one’s mind directly may be very liberating and even stimulating.”
In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, researchers Roberto Verganti and Don Norman shared suggestions for how to critique with care. According to them, there are some simple phrases you should banish outright: “This doesn’t work” and “That’s unclear.” Instead, specificity is key. If you think an idea won’t work, explain the problem clearly and then suggest an improvement. If you don’t understand the idea, be precise about what’s confusing, and then suggest possible interpretations.
