When was the last time you were genuinely playful at work? If you are like most of us, it might have been a while. We’ve been conditioned to believe that work and play don’t really mix. Not only we’ve been taught to draw a clear demarcation line between work and play, we’ve also been convinced that work is somehow way more noble and more important that play.
But what if truly great work couldn’t happen without a healthy dose of play? What if, unless we can have fun with the work itself, at least occasionally, we can’t really achieve greatness?
Well, this is what I’ve discovered in my research. I asked thousands of people in the past decade or so to tell me about a time they did their best work. And almost every story I heard was a story of three elements we seem to need to thrive at work – fun, meaning and belonging.
This is why I’m so excited to share today’s conversation with Gary Ware, the Founder of Breakthrough Play a keynote speaker, and author of the book Playful Rebellion: Maximize Workplace Success Through the Power of Play. Gary assists teams with unlocking creativity, confidence, and collaboration via experiential methods that drive peak performance. He discovered that combining work and play could be a powerful solution to a lot of intractable problems and challenges we grapple with at work.
In this conversation, Gary talks about the relationship of workplace productivity and play, play as the driver of innovation and performance, the eight play personalities and how we can integrate purposeful play into our workday.