The key to work is play Caitlin Quarrington
play and playfulness are crucial
elements
in helping to transform work i think
many of us
see play and work as antonyms
that they live on separate ends of a
spectrum but i began to wonder
what if we brought those concepts
together and merged them so that play
and work
can peacefully co-exist and that the
ways in which we approach
work could be playful and integrate play
and that’s really where my research and
interest began
when we create cultures of play we can
really transform the ways in which we
view
work itself when i started on this path
on this research i found the most common
question i fielded for my friends and
family
was what do you mean by play and there’s
two ways in which we can look at play
there’s both play as recreation which i
think is probably the more common way in
which
we think about play whether that’s a
pickup basketball game
or maybe sitting with a group of
colleagues or family members and playing
a board game
see play is separate from work but
there’s this whole other area of
interest for me as well which is
how can we bring play into the work that
we’re doing
where play becomes the way in which we
approach
work tasks so not just place separate
from work
but integrated fully into work itself as
well
play theorists over the last hundred
years or so have worked really hard to
try and create some common language and
understanding around what
is play so that when we’re talking about
play
that we’re not feeling this question of
how do you define that and what does
that mean
and there’s really three common elements
of
any play experience and it’s those three
elements that i’ll use when i’m talking
about play in this talk
the first is that play is fun the second
is that it’s
approached with an in the moment
enthusiastic attitude
and the third is that it’s interactive
you might be wondering what are the
benefits of taking this approach
i think the first has to do with
emotional well-being and this was part
of why i was interested in the first
place
in exploring play and what that means in
our professional lives
that emotional safety and security
that sense of well-being it’s both a
precursor to play
where it’s an essential to be feeling
that that safety and security
before we can truly enter fully into a
play experience but it’s also an
output of play i think most of us can
think back to feeling those endorphins
being released
from engaging in playful experiences and
so it becomes a cycle in this way where
both that emotional well-being precedes
the play
as well as an output and there’s
very real evidence around that emotional
well-being that comes from play
i think that’s a very protective factor
both in our professional and in our
personal lives
so for thinking about how can we create
cultures of play
and how can we move towards fostering
this playfulness and moving towards
bringing play into our day so in the
work of ron richard at harvard
he was focused on creating cultures of
thinking he set out factors
in terms of what would create cultures
of thinking in the same way
we can create cultures of play by being
attuned to those factors that would
support
play and playfulness things like setting
aside intentional
time and physical space in which play
and playfulness can be practiced
as leaders how are we modeling play how
are we showing our peers and the people
that we work with
how to practice play by practicing
playfulness ourselves
as educators we do this all the time
with our students
modeling the types of behavior and the
ways of being that we would like to see
and similarly we can do this with
colleagues and in our professional
context
to model what we hope to see because we
see the benefits of play and playfulness
things like routines and expectations
those permeate the walls of a physical
space
as well as that that intangible culture
of a workplace
we see that when you enter into a
building or into a space where you know
a playful team is present
there’s a real feel to that you sense
that also when it’s
absent and so i think as we move towards
creating cultures of play
this is something that we are
intentional both in the routines
the things that we do but also the
physical space how do you set it up in
such a way
that play and playfulness is welcomed
and that we’re embracing that and moving
towards it and reaping the benefits of
it as well
when we start to take that mind shift
into our professional lives but also all
the other ways in which we as
humans live and do things together
whether it’s our families our sports
teams book clubs
all the different ways in which we as
people are together
and accomplishing things together i
think that’s when we can start to create
some really exciting
change because when work is no longer
negative
and we’re creating cultures of play
everywhere we go
that’s when we can truly transform both
our personal
and our collective energy
you