Season 2 Episode 18: The Power of Play

Humanly Possible PodcastEmployee ExperienceThe Whole Human

Apr 4

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With Gary Ware, founder of Breakthrough Play & Jeff Harry, positive psychology coach at Rediscover Your Play

Purposeful play at work is an underrated indicator of productivity, team belonging and team morale, so why are we not talking more about it? Join me and guests Gary Ware and Jeff Harry explore play as the “special sauce” for psychologically safe teams and innovative companies.

Jeff and Gary share their perspective of play from the lens of positive psychology and what organizations and leaders can do to create the right environment to enable spaces where flow and play can happen.

“Play is any joyful act when you are presently in the moment”

— Jeff Harry, Positive Psychology Coach at Rediscover Your Play

Here is what you will learn in this episode:

The role of purposeful play in creating psychologically safe workplaces.
Laughter and experimentation as observable measurements of psychological safety within a team.
The power of “permission to play” and experimentation on a team’s morale, productivity, creativity, and innovation.
Understanding the role of play for humans in learning, growing, and connecting. We touch on the different varieties of play personalities and the importance of a diverse definition of play.
The importance of increasing the percentage of a teams’ total motivation and “flow” work (play, purpose and potential) and the impact on resilience, productivity, reduced turnover and feelings of purpose for team members. (Source: Primed to Perform: How to Build the Highest Performing Cultures Through the Science of Total Motivation).
What organizations and leaders can do to create the right systems and environment to enable spaces where flow and play can happen. Hint: it starts with trust and understanding the people as humans!
The characteristics of an organization that experiences anti-play and barriers to play including: a bias toward success, a bias toward action, a bias toward fitting in, and a bias toward being seen as “the expert.”