Today's post comes from Josh Ruff, an innovation leader, teacher, coach, and craftsman. Josh has designed and run global innovation programs at Hyatt, he coaches executive education programs at the Stanford d.school, and as a member of Stoked, a design and innovation consultancy, he helps teams reimagine how they work and awaken their creative state.

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Diversity can be a team’s greatest asset, but it requires intentional self-awareness to unlock the full potential of the unit. I’ve recently taken inspiration from Daniel James Brown’s analysis of the complex psychology that’s found in competitive rowing. 

In The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Brown writes, “Even as rowers must subsume their often fierce sense of independence and self-reliance, at the same time they must hold true to their individuality, their unique capabilities as oarsmen or oarswomen or, for that matter, as human beings. Even if they could, few rowing coaches would simply clone their biggest, strongest, smartest, and most capable rowers. Crew races are not won by clones. They are won by crews, and great crews are carefully balanced blends of both physical abilities and personality types.”

As a team convenes to generate ideas together, to explore a large quantity and variety of solutions that solve for a specific problem, the creative potential of the group is strengthened by the unique personalities and life experience that each individual brings. Gregarious jokesters energize the group with a dose of humor. Verbal processors keep up the momentum, offering new angles. Internalizers quietly take it all in, then drop a truth bomb at the most perfectly timed moment. But if our goal is quantity (number of ideas), how do we tap the full potential of the group to really get ideas flowing?

Brown goes on to highlight the awareness and discipline evident in the most elite crews, “…but if they are to row well together, each of these oarsmen must adjust to the needs and capabilities of the other. Each must be prepared to compromise something in the way of optimizing his stroke for the overall benefit of the boat.”

Finding the sweet spot in a productive, generative brainstorm requires taking inventory of your skills and habits, then being willing to adjust to your team. This takes self-awareness, discipline, and selflessness.

Rather than thinking, “Where do I need to hold back?” reframe this as, “How do I amplify the gifts I’m observing in my collaborators?” I’ve recently observed a trend in teams that hit a special stride in their creative endeavors: they’re constantly building each other up, reinforcing the beauty that comes from perspectives that are different from their own. 

There’s a phenomenon in rowing that’s akin to that special stride some creative teams achieve in unfettered, rapid idea generation – it’s called “swing.” Brown says, “(Swing) only happens when all eight oarsmen are rowing in such perfect unison that no single action by any one is out of sync with those of all the others… The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than for trophies or accolades.”

Related: Complimentary Collaborators
Related: Quantity Drives Quality, Part 2
Related: Have Their Backs
Related: Kelly Garrett Zeigler’s “diversity checklist” on P&P Pod Season 2, Episode 4

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