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InfoQ Homepage Podcasts Portia Tung on Coaching, Playful Leadership and the Importance of Play at Work

Portia Tung on Coaching, Playful Leadership and the Importance of Play at Work

In this podcast recorded at QCon London 2019, Shane Hastie, Lead Editor for Culture & Methods, spoke to Portia Tung from the School of Play about agile coaching, helping individuals and organisations adopt a playful leadership style and the importance of play in the workplace.

Key Takeaways

  • Being a coach is learning to become your whole person so you can enable others to live at their full potential
  • The characteristics of playful leaders are they take calculated risks, they look after their people and are results focused
  • True Play is fair play, safe play and being a good sport even in tough
  • Playful leadership is a collection of tools and techniques that enable you to adopt a playful mindset, even when under pressure
  • There is scientific evidence that laughter IS a great medicine

 

Show Notes

  • 00:43 Introductions
  • 01:18 Exploring the genesis of agile coaching – XP has a role of XP Coach, Scrum has the Scrum Master
  • 01:50 An agile coach needs to be a methodology expert
  • 01:57 The range of skills includes consulting and mentoring
  • 02:18 Coaching is a very different skillset, opposite to consulting
  • 02:24 Coaching is non-directive, supporting the client to make their own decisions 
  • 02:46 The confusion about the roles has been allowed to perpetuate because there is a perception that a coach can be paid more highly
  • 03:24 Portia’s professional coach training experience
  • 03:31 “Who you are is how you coach”
  • 04:01 Being a coach is learning to become your whole person so you can enable others to live at their full potential
  • 04:11 The skills needed for professional coaching include listening, empathy, communication, building trust
  • 04:21 The importance of establishing the coaching contract – offering coaching, not doing so by stealth
  • 04:39 Coaching requires caring about others
  • 04:48 If you don’t like people you probably shouldn’t try to coach people
  • 05:07 The key to coaching at an executive level is being truly congruent in yourself
  • 05:18 Exploring how leaders are seen and perceived in an organisation vs how they behave
  • 06:03 Characteristics of playful leaders – they take calculated risks, they look after their people and are results focused
  • 06:28 How playful leadership can be misunderstood when conveying bad news
  • 07:14 Playful leadership evokes skills around risk-taking and creating a safe environment
  • 07:22 True Play is fair play, safe play and being a good sport even in tough times
  • 07:32 Tools for playful leadership include Real Options thinking, negotiations skills
  • 07:57 Playful leadership is a collection of tools and techniques that enable you to adopt a playful mindset, even when under pressure 
  • 08:12 It’s a lifestyle choice – follow your passion, know your personal values and use that as a compass
  • 08:38 Using play science to enable people to experience multiple intelligences, different ways of learning
  • 08:53 Examples of different intelligences in action
  • 09:22 We still continue to judge children and adults by just one style of intelligence
  • 09:26 Portia’s ambition to bring play science and play intelligence to schools, the workplace and to families for the betterment of society
  • 09:51 Why playfulness matters and how people often react to the ideas
  • 10:15 The time in our lives when we develop and grow the most are when we play the most, probably up to about 7 years old
  • 10:44 At around age 7 most children stop singing in public and become self-conscious
  • 11:02 Play as a catalyst and sharing experiences of playfulness in an unplayful environment
  • 11:32 Change happens one person at a time
  • 11:52 Play and work are not opposites – play leads to creativity and innovation and joy
  • 12:10 Work gives us purpose and competence
  • 12:23 The literal translation of the Cantonese word for work (san-yee) is “Meaning of Life”)
  • 12:38 The responsibility to play well and to work well at work
  • 12:58 Play evokes many emotional reactions in people
  • 13:20 People who did not play enough between the ages of 0 and 5 may have a brain that is 30% smaller than those who did
  • 13:50 The need to challenge the perception that work must be serious because it’s dangerous
  • 14:29 Answering the question – how to help organisations become more humanistic
  • 14:38 A playful culture has to come from the top and from many levels in an organisation
  • 14:48 A playful culture allow us to make mistakes without finger pointing, allows for learning and is like being in a playful family
  • 15:08 A playful culture depends greatly on its leaders (at every level)
  • 15:28 To nurture a playful environment leaders need to play more themselves
  • 15:36 The need to rediscover how you play and what you enjoy
  • 15:48 Make time to play – play more, play with friends, play how you like
  • 16:05 They key to play:  as long as you enjoy it, it doesn’t harm you and it doesn’t harm others and you have a sense of wellbeing at the end of it
  • 16:21 When you’re playing you’re curious
  • 16:28 Neurological research which shows that when you’ve engaged the “curious part” of your brain you cannot feel anger or hate towards another person16:44 How Portia brings playfulness into teams she works with
  • 17:02 Some of the benefits from play at work
  • 17:12 Play as a vital part of our wellbeing
  • 17:24 Examples of playfulness in meetings
  • 17:33 Advice on bringing games into work
  • 18:10 The shortest distance between two people is a smile
  • 18:27 A smile if often all it takes to know if someone is well-intentioned
  • 19:00 Laughing releases hormones that dampen pain, and then releases hormones that promote healing
  • 19:21 Laughter IS a great medicine

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