Introduction
Creative thinking is one of the most consistently valued skills in the modern workforce. And yet most corporate training ignores it entirely.
That’s a problem. When learners think creatively, their motivation increases, and knowledge transfer improves. The research backs this up. And while you may never get budget approval to teach creative thinking as a standalone topic, you can design your delivery in a way that actively fosters it.
To help you do that, here are four tips you can use immediately to build more creative thinking into your training sessions.
1. Prime the Topic Before the Session
The unconscious mind needs ingredients before it can start cooking. Think about it like a slow cooker. You add everything early so the flavors can blend over time. Without that early input, you’re asking participants to generate ideas on the spot with nothing to draw from.
So, how do you prime a topic as a corporate trainer?
A few approaches that work well:
Send out one or two questions via email a day or two before the session. Give people something to sit with before they walk into the room. You can do the same thing with a short video or reel that poses those questions beforehand.
If you don’t have access to participants before the session, you can still prime effectively in the room. Before breaks or lunch, tee up what you’ll cover next. Tell participants what topic is coming and let them sit with it. When they come back, their unconscious minds will have already started working through it.
All of these approaches do the same thing. They give the unconscious mind time to process before you ask it to produce something. That’s where creative thinking in training sessions begins, before jumping into a topic.
2. Be Intentional About Your Environment
The environment you train in directly impacts how creatively your participants can think. This one surprises many trainers, but the science is clear.
In high-stimulus environments, the conscious mind is working overtime to process everything around it. That leaves the unconscious mind with very little room to operate. And the unconscious mind is where creative connections get made.
Imagine you are in Times Square. Billboards, traffic, crowds, giant screens flashing in every direction. There’s too much input for your brain to do anything other than keep up. Now think about a quiet walk through a suburban neighborhood. Not much to process consciously. Your mind starts to wander. It starts connecting unrelated ideas. That’s where creativity lives.
In an everyday training session, you can’t take people on walks through the ‘burbs to foster creativity. But you can reduce unnecessary stimuli. Your slides should be clean and readable, not a wall of text that competes with what you’re saying. Think about the lighting, ambient noise, and what’s hanging on the walls.
Virtual trainers, this applies to you, too. Cluttered virtual backgrounds, information-heavy slides, and background noise all pull conscious attention away from the ideas you’re trying to plant. A more focused environment creates more room for creative thinking in training, online, or in person.
3. Pay Attention to Timing
When you schedule your training, it matters more than most trainers realize.
Research suggests that cognitive peak times for most people fall between 1.5 and 5 hours after waking. If your participants wake up around 7:00 AM, the optimal time to run your session is roughly 8:30 AM to 1:30 PM.
For shorter workshops of 1 to 4 hours, try to stay within that window as much as you can. For multi-day programs or full-day onboarding, you may not always have control over the schedule. But be as intentional as possible about your start time, even when you can’t control everything else.
Your participants’ ability to think creatively and retain information is directly tied to when you ask them to do so. Scheduling a creative activity at 3:30 PM on day two of a multi-day program is different from scheduling it at 10:00 AM.
4. Build In Active Reflection Time
This one is less obvious than the others, but it might be the most impactful.
Active reflection time gives participants a dedicated moment to think creatively, break down ideas, and come prepared to contribute. Whether that means sharing in a group discussion, working through a scenario, or connecting ideas they’ve been sitting with, those quiet moments do more work than most trainers realize.
Two to three minutes. A clear prompt. A moment to write down a few thoughts. That’s it.
Here’s some context to help this land. Many of the most significant scientific discoveries in history occurred during moments of rest. The periodic table was developed by Dmitri Mendeleev in a dream. Newton reportedly developed his ideas about gravity while resting under a tree. Einstein described many of his breakthroughs as arriving during periods of daydreaming.
These weren’t people who forced the answer. They let the unconscious mind do the work.
Your participants are no different. When you build reflection time into your training sessions, you give their unconscious minds permission to make connections. Not just to recall what you said, but to think creatively about how it applies to them and what they might actually do with it.
Putting it All Together: Conclusion
Fostering creative thinking in training sessions can be accomplished without completely overhauling your training content. Four easy tips will get you started: priming the topic early, designing a low-stimulus environment, scheduling sessions during cognitive peak hours, and protecting time for active reflection.
Each of these works on its own. Together, they create the conditions for deeper learning and better knowledge transfer, which is the whole point.
If you want to see these four tips in action, watch the full video here:
4 Ways to Foster Creative Thinking in Your Training Sessions
Each of these works on its own. Together, they create the conditions for deeper learning and better knowledge transfer, which is the whole point.
You might also find this helpful:
How to Use Analogies in Training
And if you want more practical resources like this, check out the Free Corporate Trainer Crash Course inside the Corporate Training Companion Community.
“Career development can’t be entrusted to people who themselves aren’t being developed.”
Until next time.
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