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