By watching children, we can observe an enthusiasm for learning, for play and for making mistakes but in our educational system and working environment, we are encouraged to see the world in black and white, with correct and incorrect answers, following rules and protocols. We are discouraged from play and experimentation and have lost our own understanding of how we learn.
In my own experience, understanding topics such as contextual safeguarding and exhibiting professional curiosity, was not an easy skill to acquire and in many of our practitioners asking them to think the unthinkable appears beyond their reach.
Emotionally Bruised Learners
Many of us are emotionally bruised learners, so education and learning create feelings of failure rather than joy and the concept of curiosity is something that feels unsafe to practice.
As organisations, we are being asked to increasingly look beyond the ‘obvious’, whether as part of the new patient safety strategy or in buzzwords as part of leadership. Curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking are all now skill sets that we need to be able to master.
We have to encourage our workforce to play, to experiment, to formulate questions that activate learning, to re-frame problems and slow down our decision making to explore and discover. We need to share ideas with others and identify new possibilities.
Dr Steve Suckling blogs are great resources to consider why we need to explore and think differently – https://themaslow.foundation/category/steves-thoughts/ and how our imagination is critical in reaching our potential. https://themaslow.foundation/expertise-and-imagination/
Brian Sutton-Smith, a dean at the University of Pennsylvania stated that “THE OPPOSITE OF PLAY IS NOT WORK; IT IS DEPRESSION”
Serious Play and Meaningful Work
Serious play and meaningful work generate ideas, improve performance, motivate, and should be a critical workstream for businesses.
These concepts enable:
- The ability to participate
- Being able to learn and develop
- Produce creativity and fun
- Provide inspiration and vitality
Stuart Brown, MD, author of Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul, Penguin Books, 2009 and founder of the National Institute for Play: https://www.nifplay.org/about-us/about-nifp/ promoted play as an absorbing activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of self-consciousness and sense of time. It is self-motivating and makes you want to do it again.
We need the newness of play, the sense of flow, using our imagination, and the energy of being in the moment that play provides.
We also need the purpose of work, the economic stability and sense of meaning it provides and being competent in a role that gives us worth.
Through both play and work, we connect with others and generate strategies, we face challenge and exhibit resilience. If we deny our need to play, we succumb to stress and burn-out which is a feature of our current health and care world.
Curiosity as a Skill Set
Wisdom comes from combining our factual and procedural knowledge, our life experience with situational awareness and utilises active open mindedness with reflection to value view points, appreciate and aspire to change.
In order to create meaning, we need to understand our own minds, the minds of others and the eco-systems in which we exist and ask questions.
Doing what we have always done may feel safe, but it prevents the spark that can lead to new possibilities which can be created through curiosity.
Curiosity improves decision making because it reduces our susceptibility to stereotypes and to our cognitive biases, it fuels our engagement and collaboration with others and fortifies our resilience by prompting creative problem solving in the face of uncertainty and pressure.
Innovation
We encourage staff to “innovate,” yet what does that truly mean? https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/innovation/
The art of innovation is the creativity and curiosity to think outside known parameters and systems. In order to embark on such creative journeys, health and social care organisations must look inwards and ask ourselves questions.
- Where in our organisations, do we value inquisitiveness and play?
- Where in our protocols do we value common sense and intuition?
- Where do we discuss our different perspectives and balance tradition, risk taking and innovation?
In order to change the world, we need to campaign for the right to be curious and use our imagination and play as part of our roles and responsibilities.
So lets co-create play, curiosity and meaning making together
Understanding our own play personality can help us look at ourselves. Am I a collector? a competitor? a creator? a director? an explorer? a joker? a story teller? or use movement in play?
By participating with others and sharing our thoughts and feelings, we can think about how we all come to different choices. By exploring these together, we can generate insight from the analysis of other people’s perspective. By being active learner we can participate in shared activities, ensuring we can understand how we can find a shared meaning and distributed cognition.
As an active learner identifying new ways of being able to approach activities and manage both negative and positive social interactions such as judgement or self-critical thinking helps us feel safe in exploring choices and enabling new possibilities to emerge.
So what Key Performance Indicators capture our culture.
Having an appetite for knowledge and shared understanding creates curiosity. By contrast, when are not curious, we become deceived, acquiring false beliefs which generates rigid structures trapping us and making us feel anxious and distressed.
As leaders and entrepreneurs we need to move beyond the open door policy or our reliance on dashboards and create new mechanisms on how we measure success.
I propose the following:
- Hearing Laughter
- Creative Enjoyment
- A Common Sense of Meaning
- Caring Contact
- Inspirational Activities
By creating active open mindedness and challenging rigid mindsets, by understanding our own selves and that of others and being confident rather than bruised, we can share our thinking and broaden our range of responses by gaining insights from others.
Learning how to learn | Barbara Oakley | TEDxOaklandUniversity – YouTube
So lets relook at the role of play and having fun together, creating a learning journey and seeing the value in camaraderie and coffee!
