Mind mapping to create groups

Mind mapping facilitates team formation by making choices visible, empowering participants, and creating a more autonomous group dynamic compared to random methods.

Why Mind Mapping?

I strongly recommend using mind mapping with software like MindManager, XMind, FreeMind, or Freeplane in an educational context.

Mind mapping, for example, enables brainstorming—encouraging people to speak up by emphasizing the importance of their words as they are written on-screen in real time. This way, ideas become visible to everyone and are structured, quickly and effectively revealing the group’s collective intelligence.

Mind mapping is a highly versatile tool with many applications, but for this article, I’ll focus on one specific use: team formation.

In educational, professional, or collective intelligence settings, we often need to form groups. For instance, with 30 people, we might need to create 6 teams of 5.

The Classic Method: Random Assignment

Random assignment is often used, and we trust it. This allows people who might not have chosen to work together to learn to collaborate. This is quite valuable, but it’s not enough.

An Alternative: Mind Mapping

I propose a method using mind mapping, which offers additional benefits compared to randomly formed groups. On the mind map, we use the term “teams” rather than “groups.” I find that “team” encourages action and collaboration, whereas “group” merely suggests an assembly without a defined objective.

If we need to form 6 teams of 5 people, we label them: Team 1, Team 2, Team 3, Team 4, Team 5, Team 6. Then, we ask participants: “Tell us your first names. Who wants to be in Team 1?” Gradually, we place names in each team.

Some hesitate to declare themselves immediately, while others do so right away. The process can take time, with hesitations and negotiations. Often, someone switches teams after initially choosing one.

The Importance of Taking Time

During workshops or training sessions, I’ve often seen instructors or facilitators say, “Alright, that’s enough—let’s move on. We’ll assign people like this and that’s it.” But I’ve always insisted on taking the necessary time. It might seem like a waste at first, as there’s a moment of adjustment—sometimes lengthy—where participants negotiate: “Who am I with?”

Thanks to the projector, everyone sees the teams forming progressively. Choices and compromises arise through individual and collective reasoning. Sometimes, people deliberately choose to join colleagues with whom collaboration isn’t necessarily easy.

A Tool for Social Construction

The time taken to visually form teams using mind mapping—and their formalization (since mind maps have an official appearance)—is also a moment of reflection and construction of each person’s place within the collective.

Finding one’s place in a group is complex. It’s not always reassuring, but it can also be an opportunity for adventure, discovery, and choosing to step into the unknown. By allowing participants to choose their teams, we empower them, fostering a constructive process for the work ahead.

These teams are chosen and built collectively. We are responsible for our place, and thus the resulting group dynamic is entirely different from that of a random draw or an instructor’s assignment.

I’m not saying this team formation method is “better” than others—each has its merits. It brings significant autonomy and social accountability, which is desirable for certain projects. Of course, the experience of randomness can also be valuable—I’m not making a value judgment. The method should align with the goal, and above all, we must recognize that how teams are formed is not neutral; on the contrary, it lays the foundation for future work.

Using mind mapping to form teams is a technique that, to work well, requires time. It’s not just a writing tool—it’s a tool that facilitates the journey toward one’s social role.