Have you ever played a competitive game against someone? A sport or a board game? It brings out your best effort. In a similar way, you can leverage the power of competition to help you gain new insights, develop new skills, and grow as a creative.

In chapter five of The Accidental Creative, I described a practice I’ve used for years called head-to-heads. It’s a meet-up between two people that’s designed to share insights, stimulate new thoughts and provoke good conversation. The discussion can be on any topic – such as books you’re reading, a conference or seminar you attended, or something you’ve been working on that you’d like to share – but the main goal is to “out share” the other person and provide the most value to the conversation. (Think of it as a two person Ignite event.) Head-to-heads are an invaluable tool for personal growth.

Here are a few principles for making your head-to-heads successful:

Set a time and be consistent. Make this a priority on your calendar and don’t violate it. If you’ve set a time and made a commitment, it will cause you to have to prepare. Once per month is the perfect frequency because it allows enough time between for each of you to have experienced something new to share with the other person.

Vary your subject matter. Remember that the goal is to bring something new – an insight, new resource or piece of work – to the table each time to spark conversation. With this in mind, think strategically about the kinds of topics you introduce so that you’re diversifying and challenging one another to think in new ways. A few prompts to help think of topics are: what are you currently interested in or curious about? What have you read recently that would be of interest to the other person? What’s a dangerous new thought you’ve had recently that you’d like to share and defend?

Choose your partner wisely. You want to choose someone who will challenge and stretch you. A good method for choosing your head-to-head partners is to ask, “if I could see inside anyone’s notebook right now, just to see what they’re currently thinking, who would it be?” There needs to be a mutual respect between participants.

Come prepared. Bring about fifteen minutes worth of content to discuss. It can be the main points of a book you’re reading or a lecture you heard, your thoughts about an industry trend, or a discussion about the process you utilized on the work you’re sharing. Whatever your choice, remember that the goal is to spark discussion and enlighten the other person, as they will be doing the same for you.

Will the sparks fly every single time you do one of these? Absolutely not. Just like anything, you’ll experience ups and downs. But I have rarely had a head-to-head in which I didn’t walk away feeling more energized and with some new insight at-the-ready to apply to my work. If you bring your best effort to them, you’ll get the best out.

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So here’s the question: what do you think about this idea (head-to-heads), and if you were having one today, what would you share?