Leadership Lens: Great leaders play more
Play is a powerful tool for leaders to build trust, connection and creativity in the face of complex adaptive challenges, writes change and leadership consultant Erin Faehrmann.
Think about the decisions you’ve made this week. Not simply what you had for breakfast, but the decisions you made in your workplace, your family and your community. Were they mostly simple, or complex? Did you make them alone, or did you seek other voices? Do you know the outcome yet, or are you still waiting to see how it pans out? I’d hazard a guess that they were mostly complex, mostly collaborative, and in many cases the consequences of your decision are still coming.
That’s the nature of the world we live, lead and work in. It’s full of adaptive challenges that cannot be solved by applying standard procedures and technical solutions alone. It requires people to discover solutions collectively and often requires people to change their beliefs, values, habits or behaviours to shift the needle.
And shift the needle we must. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer shows that 43 per cent of us distrust institutions, and only 32 per cent of us are optimistic for the future.
Loneliness is a global problem, with the World Health Organisation reporting that one in six people worldwide are suffering the physical and mental health impacts of loneliness.
According to Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report, 80 per cent of us are disengaged at work, which comes at a personal cost as well as a productivity cost, estimated at $10 trillion for the world economy in lost productivity last year alone.
This is the context you’re trying to lead through.
Adaptive challenges require creative approaches. That’s why play is not just “for fun”; it’s an essential leadership tool. Way back in 1992, research in workplaces in New Zealand demonstrated that playful behaviours in supportive cultures can boost productivity, creativity and solidarity. The very antidotes to distrust, apathy, loneliness and disengagement.
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Neuroscience also provides us with some fundamental answers as to why play works. When we engage in play, our brains give us a dose of powerful feel-good and bonding hormones – dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin and endorphins. These hormones put us in a positive state of mind and make us more open to connection and new ideas, which are valuable preconditions for bringing our best selves to work and working together to solve complex problems.
In adaptive leadership terms, play is useful in both reflective sense-making exercises “on the balcony” and in low-risk experiments “on the practice field”. It invites people to engage in safe ways to take interpersonal and creative risks. You can simulate scenarios and test ideas without having to make a big adult decision with big adult consequences. No one’s going to make you lock in a business case or a product design made of stickers and Lego; you’re just using them as a method to explore the possible landscape and start making choices.
Tammy Baart, a proud Dharug woman and Founder of Blak Ignited, sees play as part of a broader relational approach to learning.
“From an Indigenous-informed perspective, learning is not confined to a classroom, meeting room or written document. Knowledge can be carried through story, observation, movement, relationship, lived experience and connection with Country and community. What workplaces now describe as playful learning can create opportunities to explore, make meaning and learn collectively. It’s not the activity alone that makes the experience meaningful. It’s the relationships surrounding it, the trust that has been built, the choices people are given and the care taken with what is invited, shared and carried forward.”
Like all leadership tools, play requires some practice to apply well. To be an effective leadership tool, play needs to meet three criteria:
- Play is used for a purpose – while pure diversionary play is valid and needs no reason, play in professional adult contexts is best applied to achieve a desired outcome. It might be to solve a complex problem, to support individual wellbeing or to foster human connection. When adults can see the reason and the direct benefits of engaging in play they’re more likely to give it a go or at least not detract from others who opt in.
- Play fosters childlike wonder, not childishness – we can’t afford a world full of childish adults, shirking their responsibilities and playing on the swings all day. Instead, we need to encourage adults to keep an open mind and approach the challenges of our world with a sense of childlike wonder. We need to ask ourselves, what is the playful adult version of me? How do I lead a playful adult life of purpose and impact?
- Play is an invitation that can be declined – forced fun is no fun, and if you try to force your team into “playing along”, then don’t be surprised if they call in sick to avoid it. Tammy Baart cautions that play is not automatically safe or inclusive. “An invitation can still feel like an expectation when it comes from someone with positional power. Inclusive play creates more than one way to contribute and does not confuse visibility, confidence or quick participation with engagement.”
Anthony Pryzibilla, Executive General Manager at Royal Flying Doctor Service SA/NT, knows how powerful play can be and uses innovative engagement practices with his leadership team.
“In the non-profit sector we can’t afford to muck around, we have to make sure our resources are used most effectively to support all our communities,” he said.
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“My leadership team is spread across South Australia and the Northern Territory so we don’t often come together physically. When we do we use strategic thinking tools like Lego Serious Play to stress-test our priorities and agree shared actions. Our team meetings are full of banter and laughter, it’s how we cultivate a strong team culture.
“From the outside, it might look like we’re playing around, but from the inside it’s yielding a stronger more focused team that’s working together to make a bigger difference”.
You don’t need a fancy office with a fit-out budget like Google, full of bean bags, ping pong tables and indoor slides. In fact, the best playground is often nature. Jason Tyndall, CEO of Nature Play SA, believes nature provides an ideal setting for connection and shared discovery.
“Nature is one of the original playgrounds for learning, connection and creativity,” he said.
“When people step outside together, slow down and engage with the world around them, barriers often come down, conversations become easier and new ideas emerge. Nature creates space for the kind of curiosity and belonging that helps people thrive.”
Whether you lead in your workplace, your community or your household, there are a million ways to lead with play. In my work with leadership teams, I’ve used stickers to help decide merger and acquisition strategies, Lego to build a shared understanding of how teams can work better together, and tiny plastic dinosaurs to foster positive relationships.
You might start experimenting with play as a leadership tool by:
- Using check-in grids at the start of your meetings to invite people to take a moment to slow down, share how they’re feeling by selecting from a number of options and focus on the aims of the meeting before you dive in. Search online for pre-made check-in grid images, or take turns making your own.
- Inviting your team to talk about Dr Stuart Brown’s eight adult play styles, identify which ones are their most preferred and talk about how that might change the way you work together. You’ll likely have a rich mix of Kinesthetes, Directors, Competitors, Explorers, Collectors, Jokers, Storytellers and Creators.
- Hosting a team lunch where people are invited to bring a favourite snack or a dish connected to a meaningful memory, place or tradition with an invitation to share the story if they wish. There’s a reason the tradition of breaking bread together is so deeply ingrained in myriad cultures around the world.
Whatever you try, approach it as an adaptive leadership field experiment. If you don’t get the benefits you were hoping for that’s ok, play is supposed to be a low-risk way to test new ideas and increase your failure tolerance. Adapt and try again. Our complex times need brave leaders, and brave leaders play more. Play on!
Erin Faehrmann is the Founder and Chief Play Officer of Lead With Play, a social enterprise that helps adults to lead more vibrant lives, workplaces, families and communities. With more than 20 years’ experience leading change across education, government and the not-for-profit sector, Erin has developed a particular interest in how play, connection and creativity can help leaders tackle adaptive challenges and strengthen workplace culture.
Leadership Lens is a monthly column produced alongside the Leaders Institute of South Australia. Click here to read the series.
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