Energy diversity

Written by Ben Tallon

The school invites us parents in for an afternoon nosey around our kids’ classroom on the last day of term before the Christmas holidays. My two are in reception – ages 4 to 5. Fortunately, thanks to my freelance situation, I don’t have to seek any permission to get away from work and I’m particularly excited to see just how fired up all the kids are ahead of their first dose of ‘last day sillies’ ahead of the Christmas holiday.

It doesn’t disappoint. There’s a crackle around the place I’ve missed. This was often present in workplaces – both in my days of employment (deceased 2008) and in shared workspaces since I went into business for myself. Of course, it’s more inhibited in the adult world. Kids scream louder, run faster, and jump around more. Some have to be ordered to calm down.

Later on, I message a parent friend who messaged my wife to apologise for an outburst from her little one. It was nothing – a little wallop to each of my twins, something to do with a bag of Haribo; a mere overspill of chaos energy. I tell her not to apologise again, that I adore this environment of learning to be human. One year I took leave of my senses and puked all over the living room floor all because I simply couldn’t handle the overwhelm of Christmas. I also recall being thrown down a full-sized staircase in nursery by an overzealous friend. The pre-frontal cortex, the bit of the brain used to manage impulses, isn’t fully formed until humans are 21. So, is there any wonder 4-year-olds occasionally manhandle one another and make wild choices?

This child reminds me of myself at the same age: lots of physical energy, strong for her age, and excitable. I tell her mum that I love all of it, that the range of characters in my kids’ friendship group has already accelerated their development, and physical resilience had previously been a concern for me. It’s challenging enough for parents to manage these little balls of energy without having to worry about the playground parent social dynamics.

This gets me thinking about something I decide I’ll term ‘energy diversity’. How incredibly valuable this can be in the creative process. Of course, this slips easily into the necessity of broader diversity, but in particular, in an environment providing psychological safety, a well-balanced team of minds with varying types of energy will thrive. It might already be a consideration in businesses, but in a world where extreme human characteristics are rapidly demonised or shied away from, I can’t help but think that the most powerful energy combinations are not made.

I think school works as a model. The kids I learned the most from in secondary school were the antagonistic ones. They had no idea about this form of teaching; a missed opportunity I lament. In a recent discussion with drama and English teacher Abby Lucas, she highlighted the fact that the kids kicked out of the other subjects are the first at the drama class door because their chaotic ways, often brought about by early-life domestic issues, are powerful when converted in a subject that values the resulting dirty energy. English, with a broader emphasis on all forms of intelligence – kinesthetic, interpersonal, and so on – could follow suit. For Abby, the curriculum is tighter here, and she has less room to act sympathetically to individuality.

My energy was placid. I had a sense of humour that appealed to the class clowns, but didn’t alienate the quieter kids. I like people, and enjoyed being a part of it all. An in-betweener of sorts. This meant that away from jostling front-facing scenes, the class clowns showed me a quieter side, and they were always far smarter than academia gave them a chance to show. I was empathetic, and my parents always encouraged me to look beyond the facade of surface behaviour to see what was really going on with a person, and access them there.

At 14-years-old, I had no way to consciously know or change this, so eventually, we were filtered into groups according to academic performance and ‘potential’, and the cross-polination I seek in my life and career now was snuffed out. This has been the way for centuries.

We have a way of perpetuating it in the world of work, particularly when employers fear characters who might cause uproar by ‘saying the wrong thing’ or making people uneasy with a fast-paced brain perceived as threatening intensity.

In ‘The Creative Condition talk’ I explore the idea of ‘like-minded’ people, how we must shirk this as a singularity, and fertilise our social networks with energy diversity for the benefit of optimal creativity and ideas generation. And I want it for my kids. To have it, there’ll be a few tears, fall-outs, and the need to avoid limiting myself to the safe, ‘like-minded’ parent clusters at drop-off and collection time.