Play is a powerful and under utilised tool for business.
Playing, or being playful in our approach to anything brings new possibilities, new perspectives, new ideas. The qualities we hone on the playground – socialisation, creativity, collaboration – are precisely the skills we need in the workplace… and they can always use a top-up. Playing together unlocks a potent synergy. If you think the time for playing is over, or that you’re too old to do it, then you’re just limiting yourself.
Of course, the playground has rules, otherwise the result would be chaos. Truly productive play has structure. While play is usually fun, it’s seldom ever frivolous. The literature on play is in agreement on this fact too: play always serves a purpose.
There are many hit and miss ways to inject play into your business, but if you show up at a meeting with a box of LEGO® bricks the internal call to play can’t be ignored by even the most cynic of souls. You’re guaranteed to get a group of people thinking in a new way, accessing parts of their personality that haven’t seen the light of day in years… and that’s just the start. LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a robust and proven meeting facilitation method that utilises the common language and cross-cultural power of play – and the virtually limitless possibilities of the LEGO® brick – to aid creativity, problem solving, decision-making, communication and collaboration.
It allows every individual to contribute to a team-wide challenge, taking a stake in a shared outcome and collective experience. Through the use of metaphors, stories and spatial visualisation it creates fresh insight and brings results that everyone can believe in, because everyone has been heard. It’s also AWESOME fun.
The Science of Play
Here at Ruby Red Coaching & Consulting we have a passion for the Science of Play and not just because it tells us what we instinctively know to be true. Neuroscientists have proven, over and again, that Play is of immense value at the heart of creativity and innovation in a corporate context. The LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method in particular is rooted in neuroscience.
More typical ways of working in groups rely on assertive verbal interactions. This can give undue weight to certain points of view and create a culture of ‘winning and losing’. This can prevent parts of the group from expressing themselves and critical insights can be lost. Working with your hands as individuals engages the entire group and assures full participation.
Furthermore, the so-called “working memory” of the human brain, the conscious information from the eyes and ears that is held for immediate use, is pretty limited. Whereas information gathered via the hands interacts with 70-80% of the brain. These neural connections allow you to subconsciously retain more information than would otherwise be possible.
Using the hands in any learning process creates thoughts and ideas with more detail, bypassing typical modes of thought and accessing new ways of seeing the world. They also come with an emotional charge and as a result, these ideas are more easily understood and remembered.
All decision-making involves an emotional element but the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method brings this process to the surface, allowing the individual to become conscious of these feelings and act on them.
Our Playing with Purpose and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® workshops, tailored for businesses and private clients, rock clear, transformational outcomes. Using a combination of right brain creativity and left brain rationality, we help reveal the productive sweet spot that thrives in-between. Each workshop is transformed into a development experience that’ll kick those old-school training and brainstorm sessions in the ass.
Ruby Red does fun, but don’t be fooled by the froufrou… there is hard science behind everything Ruby Red Coaching & Consulting does. There is a rock-solid business case and objective rationale for Playing With Purpose. Want to find out how Play can transform your business? Give us a call – go on, it’ll be fun.
