Whether you’re planning a large conference or are looking at how to make the most of corporate away days, chances are you could benefit from running specific innovation and collaboration sessions with small groups during your event.
But how many people is the sweet spot for this kind of interactive, collaborative session? And do creative sessions really work better in-person than they do online?
How many people do you want on a team?
When it comes to planning in-person collaborative sessions, it’s important that you get your group size right. Too many and not everyone will be able to contribute. Too few and you risk having a much narrower output of ideas and creativity.
There is the famous story of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos using the “two pizza rule”. All this means in practice is if there are too many people to feed with two pizzas, you’ve got too many people on your team.
It appears there is a general consensus that five to eight people is the sweet spot for the most productive teams.
Teams of this size are able to communicate clearly and often, while also having enough diversity of thought that new ideas are introduced.
From a conference perspective, limiting your collaborative sessions to eight participants could therefore be a smart move to ensure that everyone who attends is able to contribute and feel part of the group.
How is it best to facilitate collaborative sessions?
The number of people involved is only one piece of the puzzle though. How you facilitate the collaborative session is just as – if not more – important.
In fact, research conducted by Gallup revealed that while some teams of ten members or fewer have the highest levels of engagement, other teams with this many people on them have the lowest levels of engagement.
This points to another factor: management. Ultimately, engaged and enthusiastic managers lead to more engaged and enthusiastic teams.
So, in a collaborative event setting, it’s crucial that you choose the right person to facilitate and lead these sessions so that everyone’s voice is heard and to ensure that you stay on topic.
While there are a recommended series of traits for engaged managers that emerged from the Gallup research, the most important for a one-off collaborative session would likely be someone who is motivated and inspiring.
This is how you can encourage the teams that come together in such brainstorming sessions to do their best work.
Do collaborative sessions work best in-person?
While online sessions certainly serve a purpose, there is evidence that suggests we are more creative and innovative when we work face-to-face in such scenarios.
For instance, studies by Stanford University in the US found that video collaborative sessions hampered idea generation when compared to in-person sessions. This is because videoconferencing narrows our focus to a screen, which in turn leads to a narrower cognitive focus.
So, if you want to run effective collaborative, and particularly idea-generating sessions either as part of an away day or at a wider conference, it seems the advice is to limit sessions to no more than ten people (ideally eight), hold them face-to-face and to find an enthusiastic facilitator.
