With the Montenegro Money Extra, I'm Chris Hill. Whether it's an office setting or a classroom,

it's natural to want to strive for team unity. You don't want fights breaking out all the

time, of course, but is there an upside to disagreement? Jonah Sacks is an entrepreneur

and author. His most recent book is Unsafe Thinking, How to Be Nimble and Bold When You Need

It Most. In it, Sacks explains how everyone getting along can be good for the general mood

in the office, but it can also be a buzzkill for creativity. Fortunately, as Sacks says,

there are ways around that.

Agreeableness has been found to be one of the highest predictors of non-creativity. So,

they've done studies of teachers, for instance, and they asked them how important is it to

teach creativity to your students. And they'll say it's the number one most important thing

we can do. And then they'll say, who's your favorite student? And they will always identify

a non-creative student as their favorite, because creative people tend to be less agreeable.

And so, when there's a subtle culture of agreeableness being important, creativity starts to shrink.

And so, I talk about lots of different ways to what I call gamified dissent, to force people,

to fight it out really hard, kind of like Steve Kerr has them in the arena, and then come

back into a safe environment outside of the brainstorming or meeting session, things like

red teams, where you put an idea out there, and it's the job of some of your colleagues

to rip it apart in every way possible without ripping you apart, is a great practice, for

instance, for being honest with each other, and killing ideas before they get out into

the market, and we learn the hard lesson that way.

I'm Chris Hill. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.