I’ll be the first to admit I have also been in positions of conflict. During my time as an elite swimmer conflict was high and ever-present. Nothing ever came to blows; physical violence is never an acceptable solution to conflict, but for those of us who have worked on high-performing teams, we know conflict is part of the job. To be clear, let’s define conflict as uncomfortable communications focused on resolving differences of opinions, attitudes, and behaviors.

I was introduced to the intricacies of high-performing teams during my time at Stanford. Stanford Men’s Swimming had won 6 National Championships before my arrival. And when I joined, we were the defending NCAA Division I National Champions. Every member of that team was an All-Star; we had multiple individual champions and American Record holders on the squad. My freshman peers and I were under the impression we were joining a swim team; little did we know we were also joining a leadership academy with a track record of producing Olympians, Navy Seals, engineers, doctors, and CEOs.

One would expect a swim team to be comprised of a group of individuals primarily concerned with their performance since there’s no ball or puck to unite the group’s efforts, and that is true for many swim teams; however, the Stanford Men’s swim team was extremely cohesive and conflict, grounded in safety, played a major role in that cohesiveness.

I came to Stanford as a bit of an enigma to my teammates. I did not fit the mold on pretty much any front. Most of my teammates came from wealthy White suburbs and swam for big clubs. Not me. I grew up swimming on a small Black, city-funded, swim club in downtown Atlanta. Growing up, I was often the only swimmer to represent my team and attend big competitions like Nationals and the US Open. My perspective as a swimmer up until the moment of arriving at Stanford had been almost entirely through an individual lens. Joining Stanford Swimming was an awakening.

The Stanford Swimming upperclassmen understood the objective was the team championship, and they knew that despite multiple individual victories the only individuals to celebrate at the end of the NCAA championships were the team winners. As a result, they refused to allow behaviors that put the individual over the team or allowed the individual to undermine his own potential. That focus from the athletes combined with the coaching staff yielded incredible results.

His name is Skip

Allen “Skip” Kenney was a sometimes controversial and polarizing figure, but his leadership at Stanford was critical to our team’s success. Skip finished his career at Stanford with 31 straight Pac-10 titles; coaching 134 All-Americans, 72 NCAA Champions, and 23 Olympians. During the 80s and 90s, Skip brought home seven national titles for Stanford. For context, Nick Saban has won six national championships with Alabama, and Coach K won five over 42 years at Duke.

Skip was unafraid of conflict of any kind.

A decorated sniper in Vietnam, Skip came to the sport with a different perspective - to say the very least. In truth, Skip had likely spent more time in battle than in an actual swimming pool, unlike most of his coaching peers. I recall showing up late for 5:30 am practice one morning and having Skip lay into me like you would expect a seasoned Marine would straighten out a young Boot. Again, conflict is uncomfortable communication aimed at resolving discordant opinions and behaviors, and I was extremely uncomfortable.

Skip possessed the toughness you would expect from a Leatherneck yet was equal parts jolly and caring. He brought conflict when necessary but also compassion. I remember, while at Stanford, my father was hospitalized and Skip took great care of me insisting that I go home to be with my family. There were many instances of that kind of compassion from Skip.

Skip was a strong leader who took his role seriously and led the most successful teams to ever represent Stanford Men’s Swimming. The four years I spent swimming for Skip were four of the toughest years of my life, and I appreciate him for helping me to reach my potential as a swimmer and a leader.

Skip would often reference greats like Jerry Rice to inspire the team. Rice, a local celebrity often seen in the Stanford hills during the off-season, represented the ideal athlete for Skip, one who possessed tremendous talent and also an incredible work ethic.

Skip’s comfort with the art of conflict rubbed off on the team. After my first chew-out session courtesy of Skip, I had a couple of seniors chime in on how I should handle myself, show up on time, and not give Skip any reason to create conflict for the entire team because of my mistakes. Conflict was a constant for me and all of my teammates.

As a member of the Stanford Men’s team, you could expect conflict if you underperformed on a set, or did not live up to the expectations of the team in any department. It took me a while to understand these conflicts were not personal attacks but just a part of the culture. You can think of conflict as a manifestation of the corrections needed to maintain a culture of high performance. Imagine conflict as the body’s immune system; when action is required it is quick and definite.

The team understood that to win at the National Championship level every person had to swim their absolute best. If slacking occurred in and around practice that could translate into underperformance in one’s events, which led to losing. Eventually, I learned my lessons and started showing up early for practice and putting in the work Skip and the team asked for. My growth occurred because I felt safe within this culture of excellence. After all, my goals aligned with the team, and I embraced the culture of excellence.

Through a process of learning and growth, I became a leader, and my teammates and I started marching toward winning a national championship of our own.

When I look at the Warriors and Draymond Green, my best guess is there is more at play than can be gleaned from the leaked video. Perhaps, Draymond holds the intangible role of the team’s culture keeper who creates the conflict needed for his teammates to operate at the highest level. Uncannily, wolves bring conflict, but they also bring order and balance to their ecosystems. Maybe Green’s passion, that early in the season, is a sign that the Warriors are not simply satisfied with the title of defending champions and have their sights on another Dub.

Have you ever seen a child look at a pool for the first time? No? Well, It is the subtlest magic. Their eyes widen; frozen in a soft gaze, and, for a brief moment in time, they simply can’t look away. Can you remember the first time you looked at a large body of water? Did your heart quicken? Did you squeeze the hand you were holding a bit tighter? It feels like someone you’ve forgotten is reminding you that you’ve met before. There’s something ancient about our connection to water, and it is the most obvious fact, yet, one of our greatest mysteries. Evolutionarily, we all, literally, come from water. Civilizations have been defined by great bodies of water, and for hundreds of years, wars have been fought, laws have been written and stories have been told about this simple, tasteless and formless substance without which we couldn’t survive.

We are inextricably bound to water, bodies of water, and pools are the tiny relatives of those larger bodies; fragments pooled together by our hands sustaining our connections. Yes, water not only supports our bodily functions but also maintains our spirit. An auspicious reverence for water in every human culture permeates the most precious aspects of our human experience, from the birthing of children, to the sacrament of baptism, to the ritual washing of bodies passed.

Water impacts human life on such a magnificent scale that it is codified into our understanding of the world. Water is not only our biological source of life; but also an eternal human symbol. In art, water is a moody Gemini, at times representing peace and tranquility, and in other moments representing a foreboding danger. In literature, it represents transformation, allowing us to more fully understand the journey of the protagonist once she emerges from it.

My first encounter with a body of water was transformative as well. As a young child, I ran and jumped into a river without knowing how to swim. Struggling to stay afloat, I went under, surrendering to the swiftness of the river’s current. Luckily, for me I was saved by my father, Sabir Sr., who was a swimmer. Growing up, my father was not allowed to swim in the public pool of his small segregated Louisiana town, so he learned to swim in ponds and swimming holes.

On the other hand, my mother, Jessica, who grew up in College Park, a small city south of Atlanta, never learned to swim as a child. Had my father not been there that day it is highly likely that both my mother and I would have drowned because she would have undoubtedly tried to save me, and failed. It is an unfortunate fact that children and families around the world drown nearly every day. Our unbridled human attraction to water requires guardrails; knowledge. We need water but we must learn to swim, and it is this body of knowledge that would dictate the course of my life.

After nearly drowning, my parents set out to make sure that wouldn’t ever happen again, and signed me up for swimming lessons at Pittman Park Pool in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Atlanta. Pittsburgh, named for its similarities to the city in Pennsylvania, was one of Atlanta’s Black working class neighborhoods that saw precipitous economic decline after desegregation due to a lack of investment and families seeking better housing and employment options. The Pittman Pool sits in the heart of Pittsburgh and it is the largest outdoor pool in the City of Atlanta. It is Olympic sized; 50-meters long and 25-meters wide; has a separate diving well — 20 meters long by 20 meters wide and 12 feet deep with four diving boards. Pittman was the most fascinating structure I had ever seen, and the most water I had ever seen in one place.

After nearly 40 years, I can still recall the smell of the pool, a powerful aroma of chlorine, lotion and pool water drying on the hot pool deck. But it was not the smell that excited me, it was the sights and sounds coming from the other children around me. The pool deck was incredibly vibrant, with light colored concrete floors and walls reflecting sunlight in every direction. Never before had I ever seen so many other Black bodies, diving and splashing and enjoying the sun and water. I was surrounded by sharks and minnows, cannonballs, jack knives, goggles, giggles and freestyles of every variety. Pittman was my first love and it captured my heart.

Pittman was designed to accommodate hundreds of young bodies, and during those summers everyone from within a three mile radius would go to Pittman. My first day at Pittman was a gauntlet of trials at every turn. Before I learned to swim, I had to learn the process of accessing the pool which was a well defined series of steps likely designed by a process engineer. First, I waited in line at the locker room. Second, the locker attendant passed me a metal basket for my belongings, and an elastic bracelet with a matching number made of brass. Then, I put my clothes into my basket, pulled up my swimsuit, and returned my basket full of clothes to the locker room attendant who would store them. Finally, I would shower and head down to the pool gates and form another line.

The pool gates, heavy duty steel turnstiles, entry and exit, would only accommodate one person at a time. In a small office next to the gates, was a lifeguard with a hand counter clicking with each turn of the turnstile. It was common for the pool to reach capacity which meant you either waited for space to open up or reverse the process and came back later.

Despite my initial attraction to the water, and my inexplicable willingness to run full-speed into a river the previous summer, the specter of actual swimming lessons was too much for me at that first time. On the morning of my first lesson, the pool water looked too cold for my tiny frame, the morning dew still in place from the night before, and the thought of swimming in this vast urban ocean was a bit too daunting. So I did what any self respecting kid would. I tried to back out of the deal, negotiating an alternative plan with my mother. I told her we should go back home and come back later when it was warmer. She paid me no mind and pointed in the direction of my swim instructor, Ms. Lois, a beautiful, shapely woman with chocolate skin, a red swimsuit and a warm smile that radiated in every direction. Ms. Lois coaxed me into the pool, pulled me into her bosom and helped me gain the comfort I needed to begin the process of learning to swim. After a few more lessons, it became my mission to impress her with my abilities, calling on her and showing her how I could swim like a tiger shark. Little did I know those beginning lessons would propel me on a swimming wave that I’m still riding.

After learning to swim at Pittman, I spent every summer of my life there until I was 19 years old. At Pittman, I secured my first job as a locker room attendant and my second job as lifeguard. There was so much to enjoy about Pittman, the games we played, and the lifelong friendships we forged. But, there were also many harsh realities of life that were equally immersive. I witnessed fights, melees of those refusing to be locked outside the gates on hot days, and it was not uncommon to open the pool some days to find the body of a night venturer seeking thrills. Another soul absorbed by the depths.

My time at Pittman had an incredible impact on the trajectory of my life. All of the income I earned in my life from age 14 to 25 came from pool related activities: cleaning pools, lifeguarding, teaching swimming and, eventually, winning races. The skills I developed as a swimmer led to a full swimming scholarship at Stanford University and took me to pools around the world as a professional swimmer. It was swimming that led me to the love of my life, Jenny, who also grew up swimming in Atlanta’s pools. For me, swimming, in pools, has been a conduit to an ancient pastime and a passport to an extraordinary life.

At the time of this writing, millions of children around the country have missed a full year of access to swimming pools due to Covid-related restrictions. There are new cohorts of children who haven’t learned to swim, and the realities of this will have significant impacts on public health statistics. Please donate to organizations like SwemKids.com who are working to make swimming accessible to those who need it most.

Photo Credits:

Two boys jump off diving boards at the pool in Pittman Park, Atlanta, Georgia, August 1974.

ATLANTA JOURNAL CONSTITUTION PHOTOGRAPHIC ARCHIVES.SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES, GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Sabir Muhammad, of Stanford University, becomes the first Black swimmer to hold an American Record.

I just read about the Twitter co-founder’s newest company Jelly and, well, my mind is blown. “The primary goal of Jelly is to increase empathy, and is built more for the answerer than the asker”, said Stone in a recent interview. Empathy? That’s right, Stone is building the company to increase empathy throughout the world. He deserves some recognition. He aims to do this by allowing users to field questions to each other through images and pass the questions along one’s network to help the original asker find her question. The end result aims to increase our capacity to feel what others are feeling and help others better interpret the world around them. This is brilliant and important. Why? Because the world is breaking and we need it.

Despite all of the advances made in social networking technologies there is something missing.

Let me take a shot at describing what I mean because there are two sides to this coin. Instagram makes me feel like a shackled voyeur, forcing me to scroll through the emotional rants and Selfies of friends and relatives to the point where I’ve unfollowed close family members, resulting in less empathy.

Twitter is such a stream of consciousness that if you follow more that 10 people it’s hard to make sense of the noise it feeds you. And don’t get me started with Facebook. Ugh. Snapchat is the internet’s version of a peep show that’s managed to raise $123 M at a valuation of $3 B and counting. While I don’t doubt Snapchat will, at some point in the future, morph into a company that actually makes a difference, it makes me think there is a conspiracy to crush companies meaning to do good and bolster companies, at insanely high valuations, that do nothing but squander our collective time.

So what are the new social technologies that can make the world better besides Jelly? Guess what? Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and yes Snapchat. That’s right. The same technologies that melt our brains can also help us. Like any super power, technology can be used for good or evil.

Here’s an example of a technology being used for evil by a real life super villain. Bashir Assad’s Instagram page . Here’s the opposite side of that spectrum. Syrian rebel forces’ Instagram page . Funny both have about 46 million fewer followers than this family.

Twitter and Facebook have proven to be incredibly transformative social technologies to sweep the planet. I’m not referring to the in-game tweeting of Lebron James’ dunk in last night’s game, although that was amazing. I’m talking about social media’s use as a tool to enable organization and communication that facilitated the swift and dramatic removal of dictators throughout the Arab world. Albeit, the state of the Arab world is arguably in worse shape today than it was under the oppressive regimes of Mubarak and Gaddafi Spring turned to Winter. So perhaps more empathy is just what the Arab world needs right now?

Our future depends on how we use the technologies we have, there is no silver bullet. There won’t be one social technology that feeds all the starving children or protects the innocents from violence. That’s our job, the people. It’s not a hardware, or software problem. It’s a people problem.

As a tech worker, I’m asking all my colleagues to continue to innovate but innovate with a purpose. And as a member of society I’m asking all my peers to continue using technology but use it with a purpose. It’s OK to follow a social activist and it’s OK to tweet about more than last night’s game. You won’t lose your job nor will you be labeled ‘too political’ for pointing out that the atrocities in Syria other places around the world are untenable. Again, technology is a gift, use it for good.

-S