After 25 years as an entrepreneur in the toy industry, Kirsten Anderson sold her award-winning business, which had been named the “Best Toy Store in Canada,” to bridge her expertise in business leadership and the bottom-line benefits of playfulness in the workplace. Though some call her a Playologist, she’s actually an international keynote speaker and facilitator on the power of playfulness to improve innovation, wellness, culture, and team dynamics. Kirsten is the founder of Integrate Play Solutions, a boutique training corporation working with organizational teams in diverse industries to help solve their messiest challenges using playful methods—the favorite being LEGO Serious Play.
1) What have you found to be the unique benefits of play-based work interventions compared to other traditional forms of group-based problem-solving methods?
When I think about the question, I think about all the benefits of the different methodologies I use. So not just LEGO Serious Play, which, pre-pandemic, was 80% of my business. Early in the pandemic, I moved toward playful methods such as applied improvisation and not LEGO based. During the pandemic, it became clear how important psychological safety is in work, so I got certified in that. I also discovered it is much easier to achieve this when you’re coming from a playful perspective. So I would say psychological safety is an important benefit of bringing playful methods into your interactions with your teams—because psychological safety is key to problem-solving. And, you are basically not going to get any problem-solving done without psychological safety; it’s fundamental.
Two other things come to mind. One is connection and belonging. If we need to problem-solve as a group, having a feeling of connection and belonging as a team—that goal of team cohesion—communication and collaboration are so much easier when we’ve played with these skills up front. Played with listening skills, played with ways to give feedback, and freed up our minds to be creative and innovative, rethinking different processes, products, and services.
Playfulness is also great for supporting resilience. During the pandemic, there has been a lot more burnout, stress, and anxiety. Often during problem-solving sessions, traditionally, people are verbalizing, maybe some using sticky notes, and that’s about it. If we get a bit more physical and there’s a bit more movement, a bit more being active, then we’re going to be that much more creative, our stress hormones are going to go down, and we’re going to be much more engaged. Corporations need engagement for high-performing teams. Engagement is code for play. If a business wants engaged employees, then being in flow during our work and having fun together are necessary elements.
Lastly, play really speaks to inclusion as well. Invitations to play are inclusive, yet you can also voluntarily bow out. When people see others having so much fun, see leaders modeling playfulness, or getting so much out of an exercise, they don’t really want to bow out. You don’t really want to sit back and not participate, especially in low-stakes play. In an environment predicated on inclusion and safety, you’re not risking your entire profession. Play really opens people up to be themselves.
2) In my experience, growing concerns of “forced fun” in the workplace have, to an extent, undermined the value of fun and play when it comes to employee engagement and employee well-being. As an experienced facilitator, how do you ensure participants don’t feel like they are being led into forced fun (and, accordingly, reduce resistance)?
There was a recent article in a major online newspaper about how common LEGO is now in corporate facilitation. The comment section was filled with people saying things like, “I just want to be paid well. Why are you bringing in LEGO?” I believe these comments are as much about not feeling valued in the workplace as they are explicitly about money.
It’s almost like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. If you don’t feel seen, heard, and valued, then anything else, whether it’s team building on a ropes course, in an escape room, or doing LEGO, there will be resentment no matter what you do.
This highlights why building psychological safety first is so important. First and foremost, you start with building psychological safety. Then, you need to make sure play is presented as an invitation, a choice. If there’s already a culture of playfulness, if the leaders are fostering a playful environment, of course, this makes things a lot easier as well.
Once employees accept the invitation, they’re able to take off their professional masks. Play is a space of nonjudgment. So the absence of judgment and the fact that the invitation was accepted rescue the feeling of “forced” fun. I would also say that a precursor to enjoying play in a work environment is being able to answer the question, “Why are we doing this?” and “What is the value of having fun together as a team?”
3) What is LEGO Serious Play, and what’s your favorite success story using this unique workshop method?
There are four elements to the process. You start with a deep dive with the client about what their needs are for the session, what their objectives are, and what they’re hoping the participants get out of it. It can be about anything: strategy, direction, mission, values, sales, the possibilities are really endless. Creativity and innovation were super popular before the pandemic. Connection and belonging have always been really popular and continue to be. Based on this discovery session, I create the powerful questions that the group is going to build upon.
Everyone gets a chance to build. Everyone gets the exact same LEGO set. You don’t get your set at random. It’s something that’s been designed by LEGO, specific sets that include a lot of opportunity for metaphor. Everyone builds, and everyone shares. Each person gets equal time to build, and then they have about one to two minutes to share the story of their LEGO creation.
What is beautiful about the process is it’s like peeling an onion. People start to tell the story of their LEGO and how a red brick represents their boss, this orange brick over here represents something else, and this flower over here might represent my goals. They’re telling a story, and as the story develops, more layers come out. Things they didn’t think of are being unearthed from their unconscious as they describe their design. They’re like, “Oh, and this could mean this, and this could mean that.” It’s so fulfilling to witness and experience.
The part I love the most is the epiphanies that come as people start to tell their stories. Everyone shares with an equal amount of time, so you don’t have someone dominating the conversation. After everyone’s shared, they might write down a few highlights from their thoughts on a post-it note or take a picture of the result. The next level, especially when we have longer to work together, is opportunities for consensus building and making connections between the models that were built—actual physical connections as well as metaphorical ones. The whole process is beautiful.
One success story I remember with LEGO was with a university admin team. The university has two campuses. Some of these employees had worked for these separate campuses for 20 years but had yet to work with their colleagues from the other campus a twenty-minute drive away. By the end of the session, I heard participants say, “I felt love in the room” and “I felt like a part of a family”. These were just some of the amazing emotional connections that wouldn’t have happened without the use of LEGO Serious Play. The two teams that were historically physically apart were finally able to come together, facilitated by this session that opened them up.
4) What are some strategies you’ve used successfully for those who are looking to engage with the world more playfully, but have seemingly lost their way?
I start with trying to understand why people aren’t playing. You have to understand the resistance to disarm it. The top reason I see for resistance is fear, fear on multiple fronts. The top fear is the fear of judgment—fear of judgment from colleagues, partners, and peers. People also judge themselves for fear of not being productive. “If I stop working, or slow down, will the competition get ahead of me?” In these situations, we need to disarm the idea that play is only for after work. That’s just a lack of updated knowledge, I would say.
Luckily, there is now a lot of new information to share regarding the benefits of playfulness: neuroscience, academic research, positive business outcomes, etc.; all this new evidence is helping to create a swell of cultures that see the value of play at work. When people finally experience the benefits of play for themselves, and you have a good solid debrief afterward, it usually becomes rather easy after that point. A well-designed debrief is often the missing piece, after a playful intervention. If someone leaves not understanding the benefits, why would they become a believer?
When talking to people about adding more playfulness into their days, whether at work or home, I have them think back to their childhood when everything felt new and fresh; in this space, there is wonder and awe everywhere. Curiosity creates a very playful mindset, and in turn, makes you much more open to possibilities, more open to exploration, and more open to acceptance of changing things up.
In this work, we also use improv mindset strategies, like “yes, and” as well as adding on novel elements. For instance: “What if we changed things?” “What if we flipped things around?” If you open people up to all the things that bring them joy, connection, and flow, it’s likely to end well because they see the benefits ripple effect throughout all aspects of their life.
5) As the interest in creating enjoyable and playful work experiences grows, what do you see in the workplace that’s encouraging, and how do you hope things will continue to evolve as work-life progresses toward the future?
In certain communities that I’m involved with, I feel like there is a corporate trend toward more human-centered leadership. I can’t speak for all industries, but what I do see is encouraging. It appears many industries are leaning toward people being more valued. I have hope for the future when I see that, and when I see Human and Culture First conferences, it looks like the play movement is evolving and growing.
My first keynote was in Europe in 2016 at a play conference. Back then, it felt like there were maybe 100 of us focused on professional play, maybe 200 of us around the world. This was an impression not based on data. Now I bet there are over 1,000 people that are specifically looking at play at work, and the idea of play for adults. I don’t mean people that are working with kids, teenagers, or senior citizens. I mean specifically around the value of bringing playfulness to the workplace, including the boardroom. Play is now proven to have positive effects on the bottom line, so it’s good that companies are waking up slowly. The “sleepy giant” is opening one eye to see that play has value, so hopefully, we’re on a path to a more playful corporate world because of those bottom-line benefits that are a win for all. And when I say bottom-line benefits, I mean financial, but I also mean bottom-line benefits for employees, because these two things definitely coexist well with play. It’s my mission to see a world of work where we do that – play well together. That’s actually what LEGO means when you translate it from the abbreviated ‘leg godt” in Danish—Play Well.
