Jennifer McClure`

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Written by Jennifer McClure

How to Make Work Suck Less By Making It Fun with Jeff Harry

Impact Makers Podcast Episode 067

These days, every workplace expert and futurist worth their salt is talking about The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, burnout, and dwindling employee engagement levels.

Some are even offering solutions to these problems, including showing more empathy, focusing on improving access to mental health benefits, offering more workplace flexibility, and suggesting increased communication from leadership.

But I’ve not heard anyone suggesting that we can address these issues through introducing more play and fun in the workplace – until I met today’s guest, Jeff Harry of Rediscover Your Play.

Jeff is passionate about making work suck less, and he does this by assisting leaders in building a workplace where individuals learn how to tap into their true selves, to feel their happiest and most fulfilled–all through play!

Topics Discussed In This Episode:

  • The two questions to ask your leaders to understand your company culture.
  • The difference between forced fun, and introducing play in the workplace.
  • Why allowing yourself to get bored is the key to unlocking creativity and innovation.
  • How to address quiet quitting through play.
  • Why psychological safety is required before introducing fun or play into the workplace.
  • The reason why meetings suck, and what you can do to fix it.
  • How what drove you back when you were a kid can really answer  questions like “How do you  want to show up in the world?”
  • How can you cultivate the next great idea?
  • How to add more play to your grown-up life.

IMPACT MAKERS PODCAST – EPISODE 67

Key Quotes From This Episode:

“What is the worst behavior you are currently tolerating [in your workplace]? Because that sets the tone, that sets the culture.” ~ @Jeff Harry

“Allow yourself to get bored the way you got bored as a kid. And then, when you get bored and…you’re not being inundated by information or not looking at information, then just see what ideas start to come up.” ~ @Jeff Harry

“Challenge the status quo because clearly it’s not working for a majority of people if we have such high disengagement, such high absenteeism and, such a movement around like anti-work or Quiet Quitting.” ~ @Jeff Harry

People & Resources Mentioned In This Episode:

Workplace from Meta

Rediscover Your Play 

Jeff Harry LinkedIn 

Play-Well TEKnologies – Teaching Engineering to Kids

Gary Ware – Breakthrough Play

Impact Makers Podcast Episode 67: Building a Culture of Mindfulness and Supporting Employee Mental Health with Headspace CPO Désirée Pascual

Braver Angels

harkness.ai

Lauren Yee – Cultivator of Curiosity

Show Sponsor:

This episode of the Impact Makers Podcast is sponsored by Workplace from Meta.

Everybody’s talking about the metaverse these days, but Workplace from Meta is different – I mean, the clue’s in the name, right?

Workplace is a business communication tool that uses features like instant messaging and video calls to help people share information. Think Facebook, but for your company.

It’s part of Meta’s vision for the future of work – a future in which your job isn’t just something you do, but something you EXPERIENCE. A future in which we’ll all feel more present, connected, and productive.

Start your journey into the future of work at workplace.com/future.

Connect with Jennifer:

Send her a message [https://jennifermcclure.net/contact/]

On LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifermcclure

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Categories: Employee Engagement, Leadership, Podcast
Posted on October 20, 2022

Written by Jennifer McClure

Flipping The Script: Conflict Isn’t Bad, It’s Good

It’s probably safe to say that nobody likes conflict.

But, it’s also true that conflict can be helpful – maybe even necessary – if you want your ideas to become the best that they can be, and for disruption and/or innovation to occur.

Conflict Produces More And Better Ideas

In fact, studies performed in both the United States and France examined the role that conflict played in generating and producing creative ideas. The researchers assembled participants into three separate experimental conditions (minimal, brainstorming, and debate) and formed them into teams within those conditions.

Each team was tasked with generating ideas for the same challenge: how to reduce traffic congestion in the San Francisco Bay Area. Teams in the “minimal condition” were given no further instructions and told to develop as many ideas as possible. Teams in the “brainstorming condition” were given the traditional set of brainstorming rules; paramount among those rules being the notion that all judgment should be suspended and no idea criticized or debated. Teams in the final, “debate condition” were given a set of rules similar to brainstorming with one important difference: they were told to debate and criticize others’ ideas as they were generated.

When the results were calculated, the winners were clear. While teams in the “brainstorming condition” did generate more ideas than the teams given “minimal” instructions, it was the teams in the “debate condition” that outperformed the rest. Teams that debated their ideas produced an average of 25% more ideas than the other teams in the same period of time.

— Why Fighting For Our Ideas Makes Them Better

If conflict and debate can help us produce better work, and come up with more creative ideas, then why do we do we tend to avoid it like the plague?

Because we often do it wrong.

The good news is that we can fix that. The best leaders seek out conflict, and also establish ground rules and cultures where healthy conflict can occur.

Leaders Should Own Conflict

I recently watched a DisruptHR Talk given by Amanda Ono – VP People & Culture at Resolver – at the December 2017 DisruptHR Toronto event about the importance of embracing conflict in the workplace. In her Talk, Amanda makes some great points about conflict, including:

Conflict isn’t bad. It’s when it gets wrapped in ego and blame that it’s bad. Otherwise, it’s about peeling the onion to understand why incompatibility exists, and airing genuine fears and concerns.

As the Chief Excitement Officer of DisruptHR, I’ve watched hundreds of DisruptHR Talks (there are currently over 1,700 online), and this one ranks right up there as one of my favorites.

Amanda takes a traditionally held belief (conflict is bad – avoid it), and flips it (conflict is good – seek it out). She makes the case that it’s time for us to embrace conflict in the workplace, so people can create their very best work.

Teams Need Conflict

I love Amanda’s message, and encourage you to take 5 minutes to watch her Talk.

Then, go out and encourage some conflict in your workplace. 🙂

Surviving The Kool-Aid Hangover: Your Team Needs Conflict & How HR Can Make It Happen | Amanda Ono | DisruptHR Talks from DisruptHR on Vimeo.

Categories: Effective Communication, Leadership
Posted on February 21, 2018

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