Marilyn Barefoot learned the technique she now teaches from Tetra Pak—the company, not its namesake packaging. Barefoot, who spent most of her career in the advertising industry, was set to work with 600 of the firm’s employees at a conference in the south of France as part of the independent agency she then owned. “They asked me to come to Scandinavia for a few days in advance, because they wanted to train me in the facilitation style that their people at Tetra Pak were accustomed to,” Barefoot recalls.

What Barefoot learned was a way of coming up with new ideas based on the divergent-convergent thinking process created in the 1950s at the University of Buffalo-based Creative Problem Solving Institute (CPSI) conference. It’s a technique she now shares with corporate clients that hire Barefoot Brainstorming, the consulting and training firm she founded a decade ago.

Barefoot’s favourite part of working in advertising was ideation, the “blank page” that needed to be filled with solutions to a client’s problems. Here are a few things you can learn from her about fostering creativity in your company.

1. Lead by example
Leaders who are committed to the creative process inspire their teams to do the same. “Right from the very top, [leaders] have to embrace the idea of innovation,” says Barefoot.

It’s also important to create a culture where failure is celebrated, not stigmatized. “You won’t be chastised,” Barefoot says you need to communicate to your team. “Nobody’s going to look at you and say, ‘That’s a really stupid idea.’”

One way to lead by example is to make ideation a routine part of your company’s schedule. “[You can] encourage it by having people sit down and do a regular spitballing session,” suggests Barefoot. “Bring in an interesting lunch, and have [a few] people sit around it and throw around ideas.”

2. Make people comfortable
The biggest obstacle to creativity in most companies is fear, says Barefoot. It’s unusual for people to come into a brainstorming session with a great deal of enthusiasm, she notes. Most people are either open about their fear of participating, or disguise their misgivings by dismissing the process as a waste of time.