Get in the Flow State: What Jazz Can Teach You About Collaboration

No one, not Charles Mingus, Art Blakey or Dizzy Gillespie is born a great bandleader. We are not deeply conscious of others. We need to train our minds to be that way. After all, Harvard professor Dan Gilbert has found that aimless thoughts occupy our minds 46.9% of the time.

And so if we wish to be better collaborators in any organization, we need to establish what the philanthropist and author Jeff Walker calls the "flow state."

The jazz analogy is an apt one for Walker, who serves on the board of the Berklee College of Music. Walker says that when he first learned to play with other people in jazz bands and wind ensembles he realized what a flow state was all about - he had an important part, along with others, "in producing a song that none of us by ourselves could play." And so this created a common goal.

So what does this mean if you're not a jazz musician? How can you find the collective flow state and become a better creative problem-solver?

Do you like to eat and drink? Sharing "minds and spirits as you share a meal" is one recommendation Walker has for establishing a flowing conversation in which everyone listens and everyone participates.

On a personal level, Walker says you can train yourself to be more deeply conscious of others through mindfulness, meditation and contemplation. There are even sites online that offer instruction on meditation for free, such as headspace.com.

If you don't think this is right for you, consider how, in terms of collective problem-solving we are constantly "hampered by conflict, dissension, confusion, and mutual incomprehension." Remember that your brain is devoted to 'aimless thoughts' nearly half of the time.

However, think how much more efficient any team would be if individuals take ownership of their own thoughts and become more present. "If we're in flow state more frequently," Walker says, "we're all going to be more effective.

Transcript - One of the areas I'm really interested in is getting groups of people to work together in a flow state. A common place where you forget time. That it's fun, interesting and highly productive. Now when I was in seventh grade, I walked into the band room wanting to learn music. They handed me, because I had braces, a tuba and said this is what you're gonna play. Okay, great. And I started learning how to play with others and started playing in jazz bands and wind ensembles. And so what I started feeling is that I was an important part along with others in producing a song that none of us by ourselves could play. And so this common goal of working together was produced by a musical experience. And so that's kind of how I look at that flow state. If you -- actually I'm on the Board of Brooklyn College of Music which is a great music school, contemporary music, but it does a lot of jazz.

So imagine you're in a jazz band and the great skills in the jazz band are to be one, a great player. Got it. But two, to have a managed ego so that you put aside yourself and listen to the other great performers as well. And then you will start innovating, you'll start jamming with them based on what they see and what they say. So how they perform and the music sound that comes out of it is unique and something different than you could have ever done by yourself. We're all in flow state in one shape or form sometime. You've experienced it. Sports figures experience it on the field where they describe things as opening up. The field opens. You can experience that when -- I was an old computer science guy -- when I was working on a computer program, all of a sudden I woke up four hours later having done a lot and kind of lost a sense of time. That's what a flow state is. It tends to -- there's a lot of skills and tools -- a lot of tools you can use to get into a flow state more frequently. We've done research at Yale using FMRIs to analyze what goes on in the brain. And you can see when people are in a present state more frequently using contemplative skills.

Directed/Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Dillon Fitton