Have you ever day-dreamed? The answer is yes, as sure as I'm wearing my comfy sweatshirt right now. And your subconscious is great at divergent thinking. It takes a theme floating around in your head (important or not) and builds a narrative. Your dream will be unique, often interesting, and sometimes surprising. Your brain follows a strand of story, filling in the details as needed.
Divergent thinking is the same way. You use ideation techniques, some of which I'll explore during another post, to expand the number of ideas you are working with. At the end of a divergent thinking session, you have hundred(s) of ideas that you can refine and combine until you have a working solution to a problem.
Divergence is not difficult when you are in the right frame of mind and are surrounded by people who are supportive. The problem is that some people jump to quickly beyond divergent thinking and straight into the next step, Convergent Thinking. To prevent that, the leader has to enforce rules. Such as No Criticizing Ideas! Even using negative words, such as "but" can stifle a person's creative mind. Using "And" builds on ideas, while not shutting an idea down. Its a classic improv trick.
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