Play On: How Purposeful Play Unlocks Human Potential At Work with Dara Simkin
Dara Simkin - CEO at CultureHero, Purposeful Play Expert
Dara Simkin is a play pioneer, speaker and facilitator, who works with leaders looking to unlock creativity, connectedness and innovation for themselves and their teams. She is founder and Chief Play Officer at CultureHero, and is a thought leader in shifting our understanding of play and its implications for business.
Many of us tend to think of work and play as two separate concepts. We banish play to outside work hours, or as busy working adults some of us barely play at all. Today, Alexis Zahner and I are speaking with a woman who will change how you think about play. Dara Simkin shares how these restrictive, rigid ideas about play do us, our leadership and our business a massive disservice. She unpacks how play is actually an essential component of our humanity, and what we stand to gain when we welcome play into our worklives and beyond.
Her playful, experiential craft as a speaker and facilitator creates an engaging learning space for audiences. The content she delivers is both thought-provoking and entertaining — exploring the transformative benefits of purposeful play and the urgency for it in our working lives. She empowers professionals to embrace the beauty of discomfort, while challenging them to consider the consequences of a life void of play. She has shared the stage with world-renowned play researcher Dr Stuart Brown and IDEO Play Lab founder Brendan Boyle when she created and hosted the 2018 and 2019 Break Out play conferences in Melbourne. She’s also presented to organisations like AGL, PWC, McKinsey, MYOB, MediBank and IAG. Her unique energy and enthusiasm is contagious. She emulates the importance of being playfully bold to bring forth greater connection, well-being and new thinking in the world of work.
Find Culture Hero Leadership workshops, unleashing untapped potential: how play is reshaping the future of work here.
Connect with Dara Simkin, book her for a speaking engagement, and learn more about her important work here.
For accessible access, view the podcast with closed captions below and access the full conversation transcript.
Episode Transcript:
Spk0 Sally Clarke Spk1 Alexis Zahner Spk2 Dara Simkin
[00:00:09] spk_0: Welcome to the We are Human Leaders podcast. I'm Sally Clarke. Many of us tend to think of work and play as two separate concepts. We banish play to outside of work hours or as busy working adults. Some of us barely play at all today, Alexis Zahner and I are speaking with a woman who will change how you think about play. Dara Simkin shares how these restrictive rigid ideas about play. Do us our leadership and our business a massive disservice. She unpacks how play is actually an essential component of our humanity and what we stand to gain when we welcome play into our work lives and beyond. Dara Simkin is a play pioneer speaker and facilitator who works with leaders looking to unlock creativity, connectedness and innovation for themselves and their teams. She is founder and chief play Officer at culture hero and is a thought leader in shifting our understanding of play and its implications for business. This conversation was full of insight and it was deeply joyful for Alexis and myself. I'm sure it will be for you too. Let's delve in.
[00:01:17] spk_1: Welcome to we are Human Leaders, Dara. It is an absolute pleasure to have you with us today. And before we dive into your work and your professional journey, we'd love to get to know a little bit more about you personally first. And the journey that's brought you to this important work that you're doing. Now,
[00:01:34] spk_2: I am originally from the United States. I don't know whether or not you can hear in my accent and we were actually just speaking before the show that I got my citizenship yesterday. So very excited
[00:01:44] spk_0: to Australia. That's very exciting.
[00:01:46] spk_2: Yeah, I came here 13 years ago, I did a bit of pr and marketing when I was at UNI I was always really into the idea of like event planning and things like that. And when I came to Australia, I got sponsored for a marketing job and I worked for a group of bars and I did events and promotion and marketing and things like that. And it served me for two years. Did it right. Got my pr and then I went on to become a life coach and I did a lot of facilitation in my life coaching around how to manage stress and looking at anxiety and just trying to have a bit more of a joyful approach to things. I actually always tried to create a character when I was facilitating back in the day. So I had one workshop that I ran around how to tame your inner critic. And I dressed up as a lion tamer because I often think sometimes we approach mental health from a very, very serious lens. And while it is absolutely serious, I think that we can incorporate a bit more of a lightness to it, to make it more approachable. And so for me, it was a really nice way to cut the thick air in a way by incorporating these kind of silly characters. And when I was doing these facilitation pieces, I was turning 30 at the time. So this was about eight years ago and I wanted to throw an epic 30th. So I threw a camp where my best mates called Camp Simkin and being true to being American. It was a summer camp. We went away for the weekend, there was color teams and we did Tug of War and relay races and kickball and it was such a fun time. We even have the little badges that said Camp Simkin and all of them obviously knew that I was a life coach at the time and I'm gonna attempt an Australian accent. They're like, Dora, you should do these camps for your clients. Terrible. Excuse me. And I was like, yeah, yeah, because I actually sorry, I need to work on that probably for my, when I get sworn in. So they're like, oh, you should do this for your clients. And I said, oh, that makes a lot of sense because when I was working with people, one on one, generally those kind of in their late twenties, mid thirties. It's like, oh, you know, what do you do for fun? What brings you joy? What are your hobbies? And a lot of people, especially in Melbourne say they like to go to cafes. Well, that's very fun. It's not necessarily a hobby per se. So I tried to put this summer camp together. I called a camp kid in you and the whole sort of ethos behind it was about helping people, people connect to their inner kid. And I used my sort of pr and marketing background, a half page spread in the age. I was in like concrete playground in time out. And all of these publications, I had three people book the camp. So it was a bit like something was not landing. And I think Australians have seen summer camp in movies, they get it, but there's no nostalgia piece there. Yeah. Instead of looking at it as a failure, I kind of went back. I spoke to someone who was in March and they're like, Dara Australians are more likely to spend money on their professional development than their personal development. Which for me was quite a big aha moment because I think in America you've got like your guru, your Kinesia, your life coach, you're this, you're that and everything else where I feel like that's kind of cottoning on a bit more in Australia. But I end up putting this weekend on. I had already been out of pocket. I had the place, the caterer, all the things. So I went out into my community and begged 12 people to come and it was just the kind of having a bit of an M V P around. Can I change people's mind about play? Like, how can I get people to go from thinking that play is like fun and games and silly and dogs and sports to thinking that it's really deeper around vulnerability and openness and empathy and curiosity. And at the end of the weekend, we had to check in and, and everyone kind of got to that conclusion. For me, I really knew that I had landed on something juicy. And then from there, I started to look at how to design these programs to bring to enterprise. So that is my long camp camp simkin journey from go to woe of how my business was formed.
[00:05:24] spk_0: Amazing journey, Dara, I think that's such a wonderful observation that you made about how mental health inside and outside of the workplace tends to be something that's just very heavy. It's something we talk about a lot at human leaders and as a a burnout researcher, it's something that I speak about as well. And you're kind of already inspiring me to take maybe a different lens to these kind of discussions with people around, you know, looking after a mental health. And so I'm curious to sort of dive deeper into your work. You're founder and Chief Play Officer at Culture Hero Best title ever. And you bring purposeful play to the workplace. And I'm really curious about this term, purposeful play. Can you share with us a little bit about what it means and what it might look
[00:06:05] spk_2: like? Absolutely. When we think about play, there is this play that we do for its own sake, it's enjoyable. It's fun. It's exciting. But when we look at how to bring that into enterprise and actually create outcomes and create a reason why people and businesses are going to invest in something like this. It's around this driver of purposefulness of being deliberate, of being intentional. Because while I think team building has its place, businesses can spend a lot of money on team building. It can be fun. It's really about connection. But I do find that I kind of like in team building as if you did a really intense like psychedelic journey and then you don't know how to integrate it back into your life. So you have this profound experience with all of your workmates. It's super fun. You're like out of your comfort zone, you've done whatever you've done and then you go back to the workplace and it's literally the same old shit, right? For me, purposeful play is about the integration of those playful experiences. And what we do is not necessarily so much like kind of slapstick play where you'd go on a treasure hunt or do an amazing race or something like that. We actually use a lot of what is applied improvisation or business improv where we're using all of the sort of maxims and learning is that an improviser would use on stage to bring that into the workplace. And one of the big key learnings of improvisation and when you think about business, you're improvising all the time, you are literally thinking on your feet, especially now in this day and age. There's so much uncertainty that you're literally having to adapt constantly. And so if you don't have the skills to improvise in a confident way, then I think you're really missing out on a lot of opportunity to lead with purpose. And in improv, there is the age old learning of saying yes and, and the true about building on other people's ideas. And I'm not sure if either of you are familiar with the concept of yes and I see like grins and nods and, and thumbs ups. It's such an incredible way to cultivate a sense of collaboration, to bring confidence in people, to build on ideas. Because I think I make this joke when I first came to Australia, there was a lot of which is a little bit less intense than no or no. But can I just
[00:08:09] spk_0: like translate for our international audiences? So what has just said is which is yes, no. So it's, and if I'm hearing correctly, it's this kind of idea of, I don't wanna, I'm basically saying no, but I'm softening it a lot. Is that, yeah,
[00:08:22] spk_1: it's a let down.
[00:08:23] spk_2: Exactly. And I think that happens often in the business world and when we are trying to be innovative and creative and edgy and really differentiate ourselves in the market, we need to be outlandish and creative and building and building and building and finding that time to really be divergent and iterate and be exploratory. So just going back, I went on a tangent a little bit around the purposeful play piece into improv but it, it's related. Yeah, there's a huge piece around debriefing, around discussing, around contemplating, reflecting and sharing because I think again, that's where the integration piece really comes in. It's like finding the intention behind the play. How did that make me feel? How did that make you feel? How did that make us feel? What did I learn about myself in that experience? What was something that I was surprised by and you know, just having a bit of, of a reflection time around. What did that bring up for me? And I think a lot of times people think play is really accessible, but actually for adults, it's very inaccessible because of the way that we are expected to behave, especially at work. And there's a little bit more breathing room now, especially now with COVID, people are wanting to have more space for themselves, for their authentic way of living and being because we saw behind the curtain with everyone working from home, with everyone's families and all the challenges. I think there's a much stronger demand for that level of authenticity in the workplace. And I do believe that when we bring play with purpose, it creates this openness for that and speaking about conformity and school and wanting to fit in and not look silly and be judged. You know, we take that into our adult lives. And I think, think about play as a muscle, we have very strong play muscles as Children. It's very accessible, but then it's almost like that muscle atrophies because we don't have a chance to work it out as often as we normally would when we were younger. So for me, purposeful play is a really about playing with intention. It's almost like intentional chaos, like we need that chaos and that wild idea space to be innovative. And then we can bring it back in and have that discipline and that execution to make it happen. It's very much about that kind of divergent space in order to converge. I
[00:10:26] spk_1: think what was so interesting that I heard you mention as bald Dara is to me when you mention this idea that teams often go off into an external space and they do team building and then they come back into an organization and there's no capacity to sort of integrate that into that space. And I think what's really fascinating is how the confines and the rigidity of the workplace itself, as you mentioned, kind of stamp out the opportunity for us to play or to have authenticity. And to me what I've learned through your explanation of play there is that it's so much more than the idea of, you know, in my mind, play is about mucking around and being silly and those sorts of things. But what I'm really hearing from you is it's about creating a safe space, space for adults to not have to take themselves so seriously all the time to perhaps approach things from a place of curiosity versus rigidity and rules and conformity to norms. It's a place for authenticity and ideas and perhaps things a little left of center that we might typically find are an, is an uncomfortable concept to bring into the workplace. So I can't help but almost thinking 10 steps ahead. And in my mind, I'm thinking, wow, play is a barrier breaker for things like psychological safety. It's an ok or a gateway to some of these kinds of things. I think there's so much that we can stand to gain when we bring play into the workplace. And I wonder some of the organizations you've worked with sort of what they were like before and after, can you give us an idea of perhaps what people risk missing out on if we don't integrate something like play into how we work
[00:12:08] spk_2: to be honest, there, a lot of the organizations that we do work with already understand why it's important and that's why they create the invitation for it to happen. So organizations who experience a before and after that, as in unfortunately, the case, because those are the kind of the organizations that are very risk averse. And because play is although so innate, so natural, so human, it is a risky unsearched piece around the workplace. And this is something that I'm really diving into now that I've been working in this space for seven years. For me, there's a huge appetite around the research piece of how can I start to work with organizations who want to help prove the efficacy of this? Because unfortunately, at the moment, it is all anecdotal, you cannot find any hard data anywhere, not even probably in chat G BT. All I haven't actually looked yet that says play improves this, this and this by this much or you know, like there's not a lot of cumulative data, like hard numbers that back it up. And I think sometime that's the kind of cell that you need for an organization to feel comfortable about investing because it's not only investing money, it's investing time and a lot of commitment. It's not a band aid thing. And I think sometimes with team building, it is a bit of a tick box or, oh, we're playful because we did this when actually play is very much. It's a mindset. It's a habit. It's a behavior change that has to be embedded in order for the results to really be cultivated and harvested. I've worked with tons of organizations over the last seven years. But to be honest with you, I'm happy to air my dirty laundry here. I've only ever, I worked with an organization for as long as six weeks. There's not been one organization that has been willing to take the plunge with me and my business to really go deep and people say, oh, you know what you do is a bit of a unicorn and people are just not ready for it. And I've been sitting here for seven years waiting for someone to be ready for it. So if you're out there and you're listening and you're a leader and you're ready to take this on call 1 800 play. Just get. But yeah, so I've seen the remarkable effects of the half day engagement or full day engagement or, you know, I've done three day leadership intensives and things like that. I see the transformation in people on a personal level. An example I'll give is a couple of months ago, a couple of my team and I traveled to South Africa to work with the foundation called the Do More Foundation and Play is embedded into what they do. They look at how to use play as a way to help the Children of South Africa and so everything they do is around nurturing them and helping them learn and helping them have access to things like food and so many, it's an incredible organization. And so because play is what they do and what they put out into the world, they as a team know that it's so important. And so they had us come and we did an engagement for them for a couple of days and at the end, we're reflecting and we're sharing. And one of the colleagues had said, you know, I'm not intimidated by my boss anymore because I got to play with him and I saw him as a person and now I'm gonna talk to him more and not be a afraid of him. And so that hierarchy is inevitably, and you were talking before Alexis around the barrier breaking and that space for more entry, it's an incredible way to break down hierarchy. A couple of other people talked about how they're going to go home and play more with their Children. But what was an amazing story was the head of the foundation. And another couple of leaders had a chat with the stakeholder that evening after the first day. And they had this amazing energetic first day and they learned all this stuff and they had a really embodied experience. And when they went to have the stakeholder meeting, they brought that energy into the space. They engaged in a different way. They did a check in, they played a game or two and they said that it was such a productive, incredibly fruitful experience that they had never had before because they had never really brought play into a meeting. Of course, they did it internally because they knew it's important because that's what they live and breathe as an organization. But to apply it to an external person, like stakeholder for them was probably quite risky. But the benefits were amazing because of the way that people responded. And I think one thing to caveat here is that play is an invitation. We can't ever force people to play. So when we're trying to cultivate a sense of playfulness in an organization, it has to be an open invitation. You invite people to come and whether they attend or they don't, it's up to them. But play is contagious. You can have the most uptight stick up the bum leader that's ever existed. But if you look them in the eye and you ask them, do you want to feel joy? They're not gonna say no. Everybody on the planet wants to feel joy in some way, shape or form. And so once you see other people playing, you feel that connection and you want to ease yourself in. And always when we do programs, we create kind of stepping stones for people to enter in a way that is accessible. It's not about calling people out or making them feel exposed because it is inevitably exposing when you play like this, it's such a vulnerable space because it's so foreign to us now in this kind of rigidity that we know as our workplace. So I think there's just so much rich learning around humanity in the workplace when we bring in this beautiful aspect of play. And I
[00:17:09] spk_0: love that you use the word humanity there, Dara, because that was something that also jumped out as you're speaking for me that you know, it is this sense of seeing leaders, as people, seeing each other as people in the workplace. And I'd love to just take a moment to kind of dig in a little bit deeper to the question of what stops people from taking these steps into the direction of play. Because I think I would theorize that even with research, even with hard data that to show its impact, there will still be potentially a little bit of a disconnect for some leaders in actually implementing that. And my feeling is that that might be partly that fear of really being present and letting go because when you said, do you want to feel joy? I can imagine like I'm a 24 7 joy girl. So you've got me. But there will be, I think for some people, this response of I'm afraid to actually let myself feel true joy in the workplace because I'm afraid maybe that means I'm laying down a mask that I've been wearing or I'm making myself vulnerable to judgment from others in a way that feels very exposed and you use that word too. Are there any other things? I don't know if that resonates for you and perhaps if there are other things that you might think would be holding leaders back from actually being open to this, being a part of their work on a more long term basis.
[00:18:18] spk_2: The thing that comes to mind and this kind of was, I'm speaking to a bit of what Alexis was saying before. It's this idea of seriousness and there is no evidence that seriousness equals success. Really. None. We know that happiness creates success. We know that the well being in the workplace creates success. But this idea of seriousness doesn't make you more successful, it doesn't bring you in more money, it doesn't increase your bottom line, it doesn't keep your people around. And I think more and more there needs to be a balance. And maybe seven years ago when I first started this, I wouldn't have the experience that I do now around the importance of balancing who we are at work. Because I think previously I would have been on my box saying, bring your whole self to work, everybody, all of it, bring your whole self. And I've actually done that in my own organization. And I feel like I've been burned. And I think when you are bringing your whole self, it is a serious amount of vulnerability involved and whether we like it or not work is transactional. Everything is transactional in the workplace, even if your people love you and you're amazing, you still pay them. There's still money involved, like money underpins business and money makes people behave in a certain way. Unfortunately, and I think that we have to just remember that work is a transactional place and we have to have outputs and execute and deliver. And we have people that we have to listen to and all that sort of thing. That doesn't mean we can't allow ourselves to be ourselves in a way that we're kind of pushing our edge a little bit. And I did a talk many moons ago around how you have to cha cha out of your comfort zone. And it's a bit of taking one step forward and maybe one step, step back and maybe two steps forward and maybe one step back and really just toeing the line of your edge in a way that doesn't make you feel like a deer in headlights. And I think that's why like when we get really excited about something or we learn something for the first time, we can sometimes throw ourselves into it so much that whatever happens, like we've been too vulnerable and something's happened to us. And so now we go 20 steps back to where we were before. So I think it really is a lot, especially as a leader of self awareness and emotional intelligence around what are my boundaries and how can I let them breathe a little bit? How can my boundaries expand and contract depending on the situation, depending who I'm relating to, because you're not going to be vulnerable with all the people all the time on every level. So I think it really is a strong sense of yourself around how comfortable I am in a situation. And can I allow myself to just push myself a bit and see how it feels and check in and say, you know, was that something where I felt like I was growing and learning and evolving as a human being or was that really difficult and semi traumatic? And I actually don't want to ever do it again. So I think it really is just about kind of towing that line of discomfort and never pushing yourself so far out that you feel so exposed that you don't wanna ever do it again? Does that make sense?
[00:21:12] spk_1: Yeah. And I can't help but thinking that play is something that human beings need to sow beyond the workplace right now. Listening to you talk about that reminds me of all of the times through my adolescence and as a young adult, the messages I got from society at large that my interests, that my personality, that certain things about me shouldn't be brought forward in certain instances that we shouldn't be humorous about certain things like grief or like mental health or that I shouldn't still enjoy riding my skateboard or my surfboard because I'm a 20 one year old person. Or do you know what I mean? We get these messages, I think from the time we were young when, as Children, we're just this pure bundle of fun and joy and we're just enjoying the richness of the present moment. And as we grow, we get this stamped out of us and it's replaced with expectations of who we think we need to be to fill a role. And I just can't help but thinking play whilst I'm seeing and Dara, you're explaining to us that incredible benefit this can have in a workplace setting and in a team setting. But this is just something that adults have forgotten how to do. We've forgotten how to play. We've forgotten how to have fun and in a lot of ways we've forgotten things about ourselves through the process. And I think through that societal kind of pressure of not indulging those parts of ourselves into adulthood. And you sort of touched on this briefly, but I'd love to hear from you if there are any more misunderstanding that leaders have around play.
[00:22:51] spk_2: I think there's that notion of play being frivolous and a distraction and it's gonna take us away from our work as opposed to contribute to it. And one of my mentors talks about how play has apr problem because what you've just explained. Alexis. I think when we start to enter school and we start to sit in rows and we start to walk in the line and we start to have a time schedule and we have homework. And like you said, that rigidity starts to creep in so early and there isn't rigidity play. There are boundaries though, I think as well. When you think of a playground, a playground has boundaries and we as human beings, especially as Children. And I'm a new mom. I have a two year old kids need boundaries in order to feel safe. And so as a leader, it's up to you to create those boundaries. But how tight are you making them? Because I think there's a way to create a boundary around play that says this is what it looks like for our organization and this is the amount of space we're gonna give to it. And this is how much we're gonna use it in this area and for collaboration and for teamwork and for well-being or whatever it is and, and really define it because I think play is such a, I don't know if it would be like, you call it ephemeral or ethereal, but like it's kind of like love. I've worked a bit with Doctor Stuart Brown who's an amazing play researcher. And when he talks about play, he talks about how it's very hard to define and you'll find hundreds of different definitions of it because it is so big like grandiose when it comes to being a human. Just remembering that that play is not this like crazy out of control situation where people are gonna be bouncing off the walls and like taking their pants off or whatever it is. You know what I mean? Like they can be contained and that's where that purposefulness comes in Amy Edmondson who coined psychological safety. And I love how you made that connection before Alexis around psychological safety and play because it really is this low stake environment for people to be able to explore like there's no outcome attached to it. So we can use that learning and that way of being in that low stakes environment to then apply it to a more high stakes space. It like, remember when we did that thing where we played yes. And or when we did that game, we felt this way and it helped us do this, we can apply that to the way that we have a meeting or the way we engage a stakeholder. And so it's almost like you have to, again, create those opportunities of playfulness at the start and be really deliberate about it and create that space in order to then make it more of a fluid habit. Again, it's like that muscle, you don't just like go and run a marathon, you have to go and start out with a couple of kilometers. So it's play is very similar in the workplace, you have to just try it on and see how it fits in your organization because every organization is different, every culture, every leader. So play is not this blanket thing that you can just inject in. Like here are the five steps of how to bring play to your workplace. Like that's not the work that we do. There's not a custom solution, sorry, there is customizable solutions per culture. That's not like an off the shelf is what I meant to say. It's not an off the shelf kind of five step program. So just kind of summarizing what I was trying to say around. What else do we need to kind of know as leaders or misconceptions is that play has boundaries that we need those boundaries in order to feel safe. That's how we cultivate a sense of psychological safety that play can be applied to more serious, more challenging moments in time to create more lightness and accessibility. And it really starts with permission. I think it starts not only for leaders to give permission to their people, but for them to give permission to themselves. And that's what you were talking about around this idea of pleasure. A lot of people are gonna think that they don't deserve to have pleasure, they don't deserve to feel joy or they have to be doing so many things and being busy and as a leader, it's just connecting to yourself and saying what makes me feel good. And oftentimes it's going back to your childhood and saying, you know what? And this is like a silly example, but it's like, I used to love riding horses as a kid and I have not ridden a horse in 20 years. And so you damn it, go back on that horse pun intended. So I think it's just, it's not everything all at once like that amazing movie that just won all the Oscars. It's not everything everywhere all at once. It's a little bit at a time.
[00:26:51] spk_1: I think the boundaries is such an important point because I think for me, that to me feels like it could be the biggest misconception. Well, if we stop letting people have fun, where does it end? Are they silly in business meetings? And I think it's this misconception that play is constant silliness or bringing humor where it's not needed. It's the boundaries is what makes it a functional piece of workplace culture. I think. So, I'm really glad that you explored that for us.
[00:27:16] spk_0: And I think also what you mentioned sort of at an individual level data as well as I think we often think of in order to grow, people need to be right outside of their comfort zones. It's like the comfort zone is some blob and there's this dot You know, another mile away and you've got to jump there. And I think I remember years ago a friend telling me you know, it's not about leaving your comfort zone, it's about expanding it. And I think finding ways through play to start to sort of shift the dial on where a, a level of comfort lies very intrinsically, then flows over into how we interact with each other, how we run meetings, how we're treating each other as human beings. And I can't help also that I think that there's got to be a little bit of an interplay between the trust and respect that is required for a sense of psychological safety. But play could be maybe even a tool for building that sense of trust and respect amongst in ourselves, our own capacity to do something that we didn't maybe think we were capable of. But also in each other
[00:28:07] spk_2: play is being a human. We literally would not survive if we didn't play. Every animal on the planet uses play as a way to navigate their environment to learn and become their thing. You know, like every time you see a puppy or a bear cub or any small cute little thing they're always playing. I mean, monkeys are a great example of that. And what's incredible about human beings is that we are what's called neotenous. The is the idea of forever playing like human beings never actually inherently stop playing. There are forces of environment and circumstance that can create that. But we are inherently playful and that is how we have continued to innovate and evolve in order for us to play, that's how we've gone to the moon and that's how we're building robots like that is play. You know, when organizations want to innovate and be on the cutting edge of things, you can't do that unless you create a space for creativity to flow and creativity is the doing of the being of play. And when I was a life coach, you have this model of be, do you have, who do you want to be? What do you have to do to get there? And what will you have when you're there? And I've kind of adapted it into the play space of saying, OK, if you want to have innovation and you need to be playful in order to arrive there. And so this kind of notion of being playful is again cultivating that mindset and going back to this thing of like silliness Alexis is, you know, there's a big difference between being childish and childlike. And so when you think of a childlike curiosity or a childlike sense of wonder or a childlike sense of adventure, that's the things that we want to cultivate in business and humor also has its place. There's an incredible talk by John flees from Monty Python about creativity where he says the best funeral that he ever went to was a celebration of life where there was humor and jokes being cracked and the the celebration of something that is usually quite song number can totally be shifted by incorporating a sense of humor and lightness. I think what I found, especially being in Australia for the last 13 years, there's a very strong sense of self deprecation in humor and I think it comes from the English. No offense. And I just think that that level of like taking the piss here can sometimes get in the way of having that more authentic way of interacting and playing and I'm gonna take the piss out of you, which ha ha ha is really funny, but actually, it's generally quite hurtful on the receiving end. And so I think we need to remove this idea of like taking the piss being a playful thing. And I don't know if you need to translate to others in other countries so suddenly. But yeah, it's just that kind of like having a go at somebody or I just keep uttering Australian is, but, you know, practical jokes and that kind of thing I think can really skew our way of approaching play in a way that is authentic and real and open. So, yeah, I
[00:30:49] spk_0: love that. I think it's really important to identify as well that when we're talking about play, we have all these sort of preconceptions about it and what I'm hearing is it's, those are ways of, I think creating more distance between human beings. So for example, taking the piss, having a go at someone, which basically means low key or even, you know, sort of ironic and insulting people or sort of pointing out some deficit is really quite distancing. And I think there's so much potential as you've described. And I love that you mentioned also that this is our innate state as human beings. This is how we are designed to be throughout our lives is actually a way of creating more connection of feeling, more seen and heard for who we are and really bringing that authenticity, which can have huge, you know, ramifications at work. But also beyond now, I'm curious, Lex, I'm gonna volunteer both of us. Now, we're happy to be guinea pigs. We're wondering if you could maybe walk us through purposeful play exercise that you might do with your clients just so our listeners can get a bit of a feel for what this might look like.
[00:31:46] spk_2: My pleasure. So this is gonna be a little bit chaotic because that's what we've been talking about. A bit of playful chaos. So this is a pointing game and what I'm gonna ask the two of you to do and those listeners at home or wherever you are. I want you to look around the room and I want you to out loud, point at something and say what it is and then move on to the next thing and point to it and say what it is and do that for 30 seconds or so, I'll bring you back when you're done but look at something, point at it and say what it is and move on to the next thing. OK.
[00:32:14] spk_0: Bracelet. All right. Pen bottle, coffee cup, free microphone, photo
[00:32:19] spk_1: frame TV, no
[00:32:22] spk_0: shade kettle microphone,
[00:32:25] spk_1: keys,
[00:32:26] spk_0: laptop.
[00:32:26] spk_2: Great. All right. Now what I'm gonna ask you you to do this one's getting a little bit trickier. I want you to point at something and call it the thing that you saw before. So an example would be you're gonna start looking at the ceiling and say nothing and then you're gonna point to the ground and say ceiling. Then you might point to the wall and say ground, then you might point to the window and say wall. OK? So start by pointing at the roof and saying nothing, point to the ground and say ceiling and then go from there. All right, ready go. Nothing.
[00:32:55] spk_0: Business card slip, bracelet, microphone, coffee desk lamp shade. I got it
[00:33:03] spk_1: wrong. Get a mountain bike.
[00:33:09] spk_2: All right, great. Well done. Third round. Final round, I want you to point at something and call it whatever you want. OK? So just point at something, call it whatever you want. Move on to the next thing and then that will be the end of the game. So ready go. Spaceship
[00:33:22] spk_0: guy, pajamas dog, tiger pizza
[00:33:29] spk_1: music,
[00:33:30] spk_0: uh Mustang
[00:33:31] spk_1: Beds, hairbrush
[00:33:33] spk_0: sur s
[00:33:35] spk_2: All right. Well done. Bring it back round of applause. So let's have a debrief which of those games of the three was the
[00:33:44] spk_1: hardest I was gonna say for me calling something. The second one calling something by its incorrect name because I hate getting things wrong. Yeah. Ok. Great. I don't like making mistakes. It's so uncomfortable. I've just realized
[00:33:59] spk_0: right. If I was in front of someone, I do know that it's a mug. I'm just calling it for this guy. Like I'd have to be defending. All
[00:34:05] spk_2: right. So in such a small 32nd to a minute exercise, there's already been so much exposed about the way that you show up in the world. So not wanting to be judged, wanting to justify one, not wanting to be wrong. So these are like I said before, there's such rich learning in having these sorts of activities and then actually going in and digging a little bit and talking about them and it really depends on the person. Some people find when I run these exercises, the third activity is really difficult because it requires a sense of like uncensored imagination. And what I'm curious to know is when you were calling things random things, did you put sort of boundaries on yourself? Maybe you wanted to call something Apple twice but you didn't because that would be dumb or was there any kind of inner dialogue or inner critic around calling something something or did you put any rules on yourself? If
[00:34:52] spk_0: I'm completely transparent? I think my brain was like, let's think of cool things to say, like, not just like boring book. I said Tiger and then I heard like, say surfboard and I was like, surf. So I think it was, I put pressure on myself to sound cool. It's just so embarrassing to it. It's not embarrassing. And I
[00:35:07] spk_1: think for me, the immediate response was I felt like I needed to be able to visualize what I was trying to say. So I just took my mind from inside my office and then put it in the front yard and I was like, what's out in the front yard? And it's like, well, grass sky cats, like I almost needed a logical reference point. Like I couldn't almost fully let myself just say whatever
[00:35:27] spk_2: is that OK though? Oh gosh,
[00:35:29] spk_1: it feels comfortable. I don't know if it's right or wrong, but to me, it feels comfortable to have like a comfortable reference point
[00:35:35] spk_2: and actually like, that's not wrong. I would say it's right. You just played the game in a way that felt natural to you. And I'm sorry, Sally, I realized when I said it's not embarrassing. I totally discredited your feelings and I apologize. What I meant to say is that if, if it was embarrassing for you, it's like, you know, an unveiling of what are our sort of like creativity scars or kind of play scars in a way, it's like something has happened to you in your life that has like led you to have to feel that way or feel exposed or feel embarrassed or feel in control or feel like you needed to do this or this or that. So definitely, there's so much to learn and having these robust discussions, even though it's taken us three minutes, it does actually show a lot. Amazing.
[00:36:17] spk_0: Thank you so much for walking us through that. And I think that's like just really beautifully showing us how something really show it really brief and something that we can do literally right here, you know, at our desk, wherever we are to connect with. And I love that kind of piece of like how it makes us feel because I think that really then unpacks a lot of the automatic sort of subconscious behaviors that we might have or ways that we have of responding to things in certain situations and revealing those I can imagine. I can, you know, you can see it could be very impactful for then the next meeting that we have together, for example, bringing that consciousness to it. So thank you so much for that exercise.
[00:36:51] spk_2: Yeah. Yeah, my pleasure.
[00:36:53] spk_1: Yeah, I found that really valuable and I found that the connection between our responses, seemingly unrelated. You were able to really draw that out of us. Is that right or wrong or how does that make you feel? And I think Sally and I have both worked as coaches and we've done a lot of work in self awareness, both on ourselves and with other people. And it can take some time to sometimes get to those stories and you just sort of brought those out of us within three minutes. So I'm kind of rethinking my approach to helping people on their journey as well. So thank you for that a lot to think of. And I just want to ask one final question of you dare if I may. And that is what is the one thing that leaders like Sally and I who have just been through this experience can really do right now to actively bring a sense of play into their own life or perhaps into their team's experience.
[00:37:39] spk_2: I think I mentioned it before and I'll just reiterate what I said around just really connecting to yourself around what brings me joy and even maybe taking five minutes to sit down and write it down and come up with as many things as you possibly can. There's no right or wrong answer. It can be the most simple thing of like sitting and reading a book with a cup of tea and not touching your phone or again, going and horseback riding. Every person has their kind of own play personality, which is again, Doctor Stewart Brown's work. It's like, did you love collecting things when you were a kid, go to the beach and start collecting some shells or did you really love moving your body? Well, try and find a local dance night or go to the club with your friend or just kind of. And I highly urge people to look up the play personalities by Doctor Stewart Brown and find the one that, that they resonate with because that's gonna help kind of be their north star back towards what brings them that level of joy. And again, sometimes it's hard to access it because we forgot. And so I think it goes back to that piece of permission and say, OK, I'm gonna give myself permission to feel joy. And oftentimes when we do engagements, we have people. And Bene Brown does this work as well as writing yourself a permission slip where it's creating that level of accountability and you're signing it and dating it and saying, I hereby give myself permission to feel joy for five minutes a day or whatever that is. And then, so that kind of permission really starts innately in a leader. And then it really has to trickle down into giving permission to your people because I think if you're not embodying the importance of play yourself and you're just telling people to play, they're gonna think you're full of shit. So you really have to kind of practice what you preach and walk the walk and not just talk the talk in order for people to take it seriously because you can have a ping pong table in your office. You can have games, you can have all kinds of kitschy stuff. And I've actually had someone previously talk about it being innovation theater because it doesn't really matter if you have that stuff, unless you actually allow people to have time in their day to use it. And again, that's sort of bordering on not so purposeful play. But again, anything that can kind of take people away from the seriousness and the rigidity and give them a chance to just, like get clear and kind of be in a little bit of a flow state and then go back to their work. I mean, we only have attention for 90 minutes max. So if we can understand that about ourselves and you know, give permission for people to get up and go and do something that's for me, what leaders can really do is cultivate that sense of permission for themselves to find play and whatever that is in those small doses and then be able to put that forward and embody it and share it for others to do it too.
[00:40:03] spk_0: I love that. Dara, I think that's a beautiful idea for all of us to really sit down and make a list, an exhaustive list, like as long as we can about the things that bring us joy, reflecting on how much we're doing those things in our lives. And I think also being able to start to feed some of these moments of play perhaps at work and sort of thereby realize this isn't, it's not gonna translate immediately into chaos. In fact, it could almost be quite subtle. You don't even need to announce this as play. It's simply bringing that intentionality to it and that permission. I love that concept as well that we are allowed to start to bring a little bit more of our full souls to work. So, thank you so much for your time. It's been such a delight having you with us on the We are Human Leaders podcast. Thank you,
[00:40:42] spk_2: Dara. I loved it. Thank you so much.
[00:40:51] spk_0: Thank you for joining us for another episode of the We are Human Leaders podcast. If you'd like to engage Dara as a speaker or facilitator for your organization, you can find all her details in the show notes and join our community of human leaders who are changing the way we work. So humans, business and society can thrive at w w w dot We are human leaders dot com. It's been great to be with you. See you soon.