One of my favourite quotes. As I’ve used more and more play in my sessions I’ve come to see the power of play.  The power to engage those disinterested, the power to speed up learning and the power to show us who someone really is.

Several years ago I was leading a session for a group of graduates on the topic of group dynamics.  We used an activity called the red/blue game.  It’s a game where trust and communication is tested between people that thought they knew each other.  In the debrief at the end one graduate was quite aggressive and it was probably one of the hardest debriefs I’ve had for an activity.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago and I was speaking with the client from that graduate program. He mentioned that of all the graduates they’ve had over the years, the only one they didn’t work out was that graduate that couldn’t control himself after that activity.  The power of play to show us who someone truly is.

Early in 2014 I was helping another client this time with a graduate pre-employment program.  It was a group assessment of sorts.  Part assessment and part development.  The main aim was to assess who they wanted to offer graduate positions to but also to provide some learning and development to kick start their careers.  I ran a game/simulation with the theme of setting up a base on the moon.  It used lego and a competitive vs. co-operative framework.  Lots of elements of play.  And boy did it show some people’s true colours.

With the cost of recruitment and development and the dangers of promoting the wrong people to management, I see such an opportunity to use play to discover who someone really is.

Is there room for play in your company?