Karen: 0:09

Welcome to Employing Differences, a conversation about exploring the collaborative space between individuals.

Paul: 0:16

I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 0:18

And I'm Karen Gimnig.

Paul: 0:20

Each episode we start with a question and we see where it takes us. This week's question is, "Can't you be serious?"

Karen: 0:31

You know, there is a value inherent in the question. And I want to start there, which is the sense that we have that if we're in a meeting, or we're coming together for a project that it is required or that we should be serious. That seriousness is the value we bring with us. And I think it's a good idea to pause and ask ourselves, whether that's a value that actually serves us in terms of what we're wanting to do when we come together in teams and roles today. So I'm going to toss that to you.

Paul: 1:07

I often hear the idea of,"We need to take this seriously." It almost comes across more as, "We need to take this solemnly. We are not allowed to have any fun. We are not allowed to treat this with any sort of lightness or playfulness or anything like that." And and I fundamentally disagree with that premise, I believe that it is possible to take things very seriously to recognize their importance and their urgency, and at the same time, approach them with lightness and playfulness. Because sometimes that energy is the thing that will actually serve us in addressing serious matters. For example, I often teach in one of the workshops I do around conflict, this idea of the team toxins, which is rooted in john Gottman' work. We look at these modes of communication in in groups that are ultimately problematic; well-intentioned and skillfully done. And because what we're really trying to do is help create some awareness in the group and some empathy for the fact that we're not doing these things because we hate each other. We're doing them because their needs we're trying to get met. And we're just doing it unskillfully. That is not something that I find is useful to approach in a heavy, solemn sort of manner. "These are the team toxins. Look deeply at how you disappoint others, how you fail to get what you want." That that doesn't work. So I approach that from a place of lightness and playfulness. So when we do this in person we have got areas taped out on the floor that represent each of these different modes of behavior. And so we start by doing a thing where people identify when they've been in a group and which one has been particularly present And how do they know? And then I always at some point ask them because we've gotten to the point of people being able to say, "Okay, here's why someone who is well-intentioned would still do that," like what the unskillful part is to develop some empathy. And for that, I tell people, "So go to whichever one is your favorite. I mean your go-to. The one you build a house in." And because it helps people to see, like,"Oh, yeah, like I do this behavior, and I can sort of detach from it a little bit." So holding that structure, doing that workshop with much more of a sense of lightness and playfulness serves the group a lot better, because they're going near subjects that are kind of difficult for them. And if we were to go there, in a way that was very serious, I don't think it would be as useful. What I will often say is I think it's very possible to treat serious subjects and serious topics in a way that isn't solemn, in a way that is light and playful, because it can actually help us to engage with them.

Karen: 4:12

And I think that last piece is exactly where I was going, which is the engagement part. So if we're kind of doing the class clown act, to distract to escape, to disengage, to protect, to defend, then yeah, we probably like someone to be more serious. But if we are being playful and goofy and silly in the serious engagement with the group, that's likely to be really productive. And the other thing I want to name here is I've been listening recently to Dr. Stewart Brown's work on play, and the value of not having an objective, not having an obvious product. So when I say staying engaged with the group, I think that's super useful. It may not even mean staying engaged with the problem in a specific on a line to a solution. That playfulness is useful. And he uses the word serious a lot actually. He talks about serious play. And the ability to, to just explore and not be sure where we're gonna land or what the objective is. We're following the joy and the energy and the passion and the excitement and that is what is play. So play can be reading a book, if it's the book you really want to be reading. It can be tinkering with toys and solving a problem. It can be probably not in the workplace these days, but in certainly in children rough and tumble wrestling, and probably that's not all bad for adults either within some safety with each other, finding ways to be; that physical engagement in play. But all of these levels of, as you say lightness, and I think it's a lot about having spaces where we can explore and take risks. And he talks about risk taking behavior that that were children can exhibit risk taking play, they do end up with more broken limbs, but they also end up with healthier psyches going into adulthood. That risk is a factor that we need.

Paul: 6:14

And their bones are mostly rubber at that point anyway. One of the things about about play and I've dug into some of this in the past, so I used to do a ton of improv theatre. But I'm still part of a group called the Applied Improvisation Network, which is actually about taking the things that we've learned as theatrical improvisers, and how do we apply them in business, in organizations? What are the lessons that we can take from them. And one of the things that we talk about a lot is the value of play. But one of the things that clues us into the fact that we're in a space of play, is the fact that there is a sense of safety, that we can make mistakes. And I actually love this formulation that I heard recently, that when we were in a space of play, we know that errors will not become failures. So we can take risks, knowing that things are actually going to be okay. We can do stuff to learn, to try things out to go with some sometimes these kind of bold and sometimes ridiculous seeming ideas. In problem solving, this is this is kind of fun. There's a apocryphal story, I'm sure, that I've heard about. It was a group trying to figure out how to keep power poles and power lines clear of snow in Alaska, because they were collapsing under the weight. They're trying to figure out what to do. And so is this group doing a bunch of brainstorming. And the idea in brainstorming is that there's no there's no bad ideas. And in improv, we talk about the idea of "Yes, And." You want to accept people's contributions and build on them. And so they're trying to figure out how they could do this. And somebody comes up with this idea of like, "Well, there's a lot of bears. So we could recruit the bears to clear the snow off the poles," and somebody rather than saying, "That's ridiculous," right says, "Well, how would we get the bears to climb the poles to clear the snow off?" "Well, you know, we could we could put honey, pots of honey at the top." And somebody says, "Well, I like that. Well, how would we get the honey up there?" "Well, you know, we could fly helicopters over and we could put the pots of honey on top.""Well, that's kind of funny. The thing about about helicopters, though, is that when they fly over places like that, it just scatter the snow everywhere." And suddenly, they realize that what they can do is fly helicopters along the powerlines to drive the snow off and keep things from collapsing. But they wouldn't necessarily have gotten there by approaching it in that straightforward and serious manner. It was by sort of riffing off of these things that in and of themselves seemed inconceivable and just ridiculous that you end up next door to an actual good solution to your problem. So it's things like that, that are very playful that can seem not at all serious at all, they can lead to some really great problem solving. I think there's a bunch of things out there on that.

Karen: 9:20

Yeah, so the thing that I get curious about is how to bring serious play, so that we can be serious, into the space and, and one of the things that's really struck me and what I've been reading is the idea of leaders and even just body postures and facial expressions. You're talking about that within safety it is possible to play, but what I've been reading is also the opposite of that, which is that when we show up in a playful stance, that that creates the safety so someone else can play with us.

Paul: 10:01

Yeah, that idea of bringing that sense of playfulness, of that lightness, that energy you bring to the room, send signals to other people that it's okay to do that. And yeah, and you're right, that tells us, "Oh, this is a play space, so this is safe, ao I can actually do these things." We've talked before about negativity bias, and the way that that shows up in our in our neurobiology and things like that. So it's actually, particularly when we're trying to solve problems together because inevitably, what happens with a group? They're getting together because they have a problem they need to solve, they've work they need to do. And so we're coming to that with this sense of like, "They're important things we need to do." And what that does is it triggers a stress response in the brain. And so we get less smart. But if we can do things when we're framing that problem solving, so that the words that we use, the energy that we bring the stance, the body posture, the way we talk about what we're going to do, what we begin and end our meetings with, if those can be more playful, more positive then one of the things that that does is it reduces the stress response in our brains. It can actually help us to solve problems better. And so yeah, when we start the meeting with the incredibly serious, leader saying, "Here's what we're here to do today. We have to solve this problem. And failure is not an option." It doesn't set us up for success. And so recognizing where we can come from, to help create that environment that will actually help us be more successful, I think, is really key.

Karen: 11:36

Yeah, so so I think we're we're getting to with this is maybe the question isn't, "Can' you be serious?" but "Can we b productive with our play?" Can we be in an engaged space with our play? And can we be serious y playful in the same way so hat we're in that sort of useful engaging kind of space as op osed to the disengaged es apism kind of space. But f we can do that that we will educe our negativity, we'll i crease our creativity, we'll inc ease our productivity in the long run, because our problem solving gets better and our b ain stay engaged and all of those things, when we can bri g the energy and this stance of play, and lightness to our w rk.

Paul: 12:25

Absolutely. I think that's gonna do it for us today. Until next time, I'm Paul Tevis.

Karen: 12:31

And I'm Karen Gimnig, nd this has been Employing ifferences.