The Leadership Mindset That Drives Engagement and Innovation
At Playgrounded Co we say:
One of the most important jobs of leadership is to make it safe enough to play with work.
You say: Those are some pretty words, but what does that mean?
We say: You must be a witty, wise, stylish and smart leader to ask such a great question. Here’s some more words about those words, we baked them ourselves and hope you like them.
First off, let’s look at this fine specimen of a word. We use the words leadership to acknowledge that leading is an action and not a title. This means that leadership can be undertaken by anyone in a group, and that in healthy groups, it is. NASA’s space program, that saw humans playing golf on the moon, is famous for a system of decision making that pushed authority as far down hierarchy as possible. This was to ensure that domain experts were making decisions and that they were supported to do so by the whole system, particularly those who sat at the highest levels of formal authority. In our day to day we can see the act of leadership as ‘going first’, showing the vulnerability and courage to make change that supports doing awesome work.
Next let’s look at these delicious words. The fact is that in a group, any person has a myriad of jobs, from recognised KPI to informal expectations. Playgrounded Co acknowledges that you have a lot going on as you take the action of leadership, however, there are some jobs that make all other jobs a bit easier.
Which leads us to the main course of our tasty word banquet. We have spoken at length in both prose and poetry about the concept of play, but suffice to say, what we are talking about is engagement with work in a way that allows crafts people to learn as they work. As a wise poet once said:
Humans get meaning from engagement with task,
there's research to show this, but all that I ask
is you acknowledge the truth
that we all know
when you enjoy doing something
you do more of it, so
part of the job of a leader must be
to increase engagement with task, and you know the key?"
Long story short, it’s play. And the best bit about play is that it offers you a two for one: more better and more product AND more learning about craft (and product).
And now for your desert words - the best part of any banquet. Playgrounded Co love the fact that we are talking about safety at work these days, particularly psychological safety. However, we feel it is important to acknowledge that in working in any group on any task there is always risk.
An idea might be rejected
a difference of opinion found or
a plan fail.
The job of leadership is to make it safe-enough that these risks can be taken in a group. This is taken from the work of Donanld Winnicott (Papa Winny C) A developmental psychologist that postulated that the role of a parent is to be ‘good-enough’ to adapt to an infant’s needs and tolerate their frustrations as they do the difficult, and risky, task of learning everything. Adult humans are the same, therefore leaders cannot and should not be expected to do the impossible task of making group 100% safe, but rather to make it safe enough to take the risks needed to create, innovate and contribute to the health of the group and the achievement of mission.
We hope you have enjoyed your tasty set menu of delicious brain words and hope to see you soon for another dining experience.
So, how do you do that in a remote, distributed team?
Prioritise relationship building. Teams who trust each other in a work context, are most effective. You can’t trust someone you don’t know. Remotely, it’s not as simple as hanging out by the watercooler to get get to know someone. Make time to understand people in a way that is fun for you and your teams.
It may sound simple and obvious, but in knowledge work, often what a job is and how to do a job is unspoken and misinterpreted. Build rituals to regularly talk about work in an engaging way, and align around your mission as market conditions change and progress is made
Reflect on how your teams are working together to learn and contain emotions that work - what are people feeling and what does that mean (about work and leadership). Humans will feel things, it’s part of what makes us humans. Working remotely, you often can’t see body language or other cues that let you know how someone is feeling about work. Reflective Practice helps to bring those feels about work to the surface in a way that your team can do something about what’s impacting the work and the feelings.
OK, go forth and lead! 🥇
