Shameless Leadership · 2026-07-07 · 31 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
18 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Sarah Dean uses her personal journey of reconnecting with fun after becoming a mother to frame why fun matters as a leadership strategy. She defines fun through specific qualities: it's energy-generating, emotionally generative, includes playfulness or novelty, promotes freedom over obligation, keeps you present in the moment, and creates connection. Her summer fun list - from paddle boarding and pickleball to implementation weeks for creative work - illustrates how fun looks different for everyone and can even include work-related activities if they meet these criteria. For high-achieving, outcome-oriented women especially, fun often gets sacrificed in pursuit of productivity and metrics. But Dean argues this backfires: without fun, you deplete your own energy, become less desirable to work with, and ultimately make your work harder. The episode establishes fun not as frivolous but as essential fuel for sustainable leadership and team cohesion, and promises practical reconnection steps in the conversation ahead.
Fun is energy-generating (leaving you with more energy than you expended), emotionally generative (evoking positive feelings you don't access elsewhere), includes playfulness or novelty, provides freedom over obligation, keeps you present in the moment, and creates meaningful connection to yourself or others.
High-achieving women tend to be outcome-oriented, production-focused, and box-checking driven, which strips the fun from activities. They're also often waiting to 'get back to normal' after major life changes like motherhood, missing the reality that they've become a new person who needs to rebuild fun intentionally.
Fun energizes you personally, makes you more desirable to work with, creates better team connection, and ultimately makes your work easier and more effective - the opposite of what many assume about productivity.
Yes - if they meet the criteria of being energy-generating, emotionally generative, providing freedom, keeping you present, and creating connection. Sarah's implementation weeks for creative project work feel fun to her even though they're professionally focused.
Reflect on what generates energy in your body, what emotional states you access through different activities, and notice which things feel chosen rather than obligatory. Your fun will likely look different than others' and will shift across life seasons.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode consists primarily of personal anecdotes and generic observations about fun (e.g., 'fun is energy-generating,' 'fun creates connection') repeated across multiple frameworks. While the host presents five steps to reconnect with fun, these are intuitive platitudes (remember what felt effortless, notice your energy, run tiny experiments) that lack novel insight or research-backed evidence. No substantive new idea about leadership emerges that a thoughtful operator wouldn't already understand.
fun things are energy generating, even if you have to expend energy to get them
fun creates connection. And so whether it's a connection to yourself or to someone else, or to a challenge or to an achievement
The framing of fun as an underrated leadership skill is not new; the pop-business literature has circulated this claim for years (see research on psychological safety, joy at work, etc.). The episode recycles well-known concepts like emotional contagion and cognitive flexibility without presenting fresh thinking, counterintuitive arguments, or first-principles analysis. The content reads as motivational self-help repackaged as leadership strategy rather than original intellectual contribution.
emotional contagion is a thing. Whatever emotion you bring to the table, your team is likely to adopt
fun drives creativity, problem solving, innovation
This is a solo host episode with no guest. The host (Sarah Dean) is a podcast host and executive coach, but the transcript contains no external expert, practitioner at scale, or operator with demonstrated track record in the specific domain being discussed. This disqualifies the episode from guest caliber scoring in a meaningful way.
I'm your host, Sarah Dean
This show is for women, transgender people, non binary folks
The episode relies almost entirely on the host's personal stories (dog diarrhea, Target giggles, triathlons, pickleball, puzzles) and lacks concrete data, named companies, metrics, or evidence about fun's impact on team performance or business outcomes. There is no research cited, no case studies, no salary data, no retention metrics, or specific examples of how fun drove measurable organizational results. Claims about emotional contagion and leadership impact are asserted without source or evidence.
there was this really stark realization as my son surpassed that first year mark where I was like, am, um, I just never gonna be fun again?
I had a giggle fit in the middle of a target on a Saturday night at seven o'clock
This is a monologue episode with no guest and therefore no host-guest dynamic, follow-ups, or challenging questions. The host speaks into a void for 31 minutes with no pushback, disagreement, or probing. There are no moments of productive tension, no one challenging the assumptions, and no evidence of the host willing to defend or refine claims through dialogue. The conversational craft dimension cannot be meaningfully assessed when there is no conversation.
Speaker B: Welcome to Shameless Leadership
I'm your host, Sarah Dean
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
I’ve worked with high-achieving women for over two decades. I think I attract high-achieving women because this is an attribute I deeply relate to - sometimes to my own detriment. One of the things I’ve noticed my clients and I can struggle with is FUN. High achievers tend to take things seriously. Like, very seriously. We are intense and motivated to make everything great, if not perfect. This drive can suck the life right out of what otherwise might have been a footloose and fancy-free experience. Rather than embracing fun as a birthright, high-achieving women in leadership have a tendency to treat fun only as a reward - which must be earned after a remarkable and noteworthy win. It’s as if somewhere along the way, we convinced ourselves that fun belongs to others but not to us. But here's what I've learned: when you connect fun only to rewards and achievement, you aren't just flirting with leadership burnout; you're leaving one of the most underrated leadership skills on the table.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
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Speaker B: Welcome to Shameless Leadership. I'm your host, Sarah Dean. This show is for women, transgender people, non binary folks, as well as allies who are committed to advancing their leadership while also advancing the leadership of those around them. In each episode, we will offer practical tips, leadership strategies, and inspiring stories to help you become a more confident, compassionate and inclusive leader. The truth is, you were born to lead women. What might happen for you if you were to wholeheartedly embrace that part of yourself? So let's start now, together. Hello, Shameless Leaders. Today we're talking about fun. And I had to just send a message to a friend right before this. A friend of mine who I communicate with pretty much every day. We send each other Marco Polo video messages, which, if you're not familiar, Marco Polo is a video messaging app. It's amazing and it's very fun, but I sent her a message and I said, I have to go record an episode on fun. And I am not feeling fun. I just spent over an hour cleaning up my dog's explosive diarrhea in my 13 year old's bedroom in which the explosive diarrhea landed around near, maybe on or in the piles my son set up last night to pack himself for camp. So it was cleaning up the floor, it was digging through piles of clothes looking for elements and evidence of fecal matter. I mean, it was just a whole scene and, and it needed to be done and this episode needs to be recorded. And isn't it just funny when the universe is like, what if we made this happen right now? So I'm laughing at the irony of having to record this after one of the least fun things a person could have to do. But I did put on bright orange readers to record this. So if you're watching on YouTube, you can see my bright orange glasses. This is how I'm bringing fun to this. I was like, either this or I need to go get like the biggest cup of coffee ever or I don't know, like 10 pound bar of chocolate or a couple drinks. I don't know, like, I need to do something. So the glasses were quick and easy and accessible. Orange glasses for the win. So we're going to be talking about fun today. And the reason we're going to talk about fun is because it is an underutilized leadership skill, especially for high achieving women. It is so often the thing that we miss out on in our personal and professional lives. I started having awareness about or around my ability or sometimes struggle to integrate fun into my life after my son was born. So he's 13 and a half now. For the first year after he was born, I kept on waiting to quote, unquote, go back to normal. And I kept thinking, like, I didn't recognize this new mom version of myself who was very anxious about everything. Although that wasn't totally new. Like, I had always been a high anxiety person. But I did know before my son was born what fun meant to me and I knew how to integrate it on a regular basis, even if my fun looked different than other people's. Because everyone's fun is different, right? My flavor of fun might look real boring to someone else. And we'll talk about my flavor of fun in a minute. But I found myself waiting for, like, when I go back to normal, when I become the fun version of myself, kind of like the normal Sarah from before she had a baby. And there was this really stark realization as my son surpassed that first year mark where I was like, am, um, I just never gonna be fun again? Am I never going back to that person? And then realizing, no, that's not how motherhood works. You don't go back to who you were before you become this new person. And now that seems like a huge sense of responsibility that I knew now have to build this new identity. And for those of you who've been following me for years and years, for 10 years now, you know that that a lot of that junk I was sitting in was really the inspiration and the impetus for me starting the pod, the podcast, the Shameless Mom Academy, which then morphed into Shameless leadership. And by the way, this is episode 999, so check in next week to see what we're doing for episode 1000. But I started realizing that I wasn't fun and I didn't recognize this unfun version of myself. And one of the moments that happened in that early season of motherhood was being out with my husband on a date night. My son was about a year and a half year, a, uh, year and a half old. And we were in a target and we were out running errands, which is not the most fun thing to do on date night. But it felt fun at the time because that's what feels fun sometimes. You are new parents. And I remember laughing about something really kind of insignificant, but like kind of a giggle fit and thinking, oh my gosh, it's me. It's the old me. Like having a giggle fit in the middle of a target on a Saturday night at seven o'. Clock. I just found her. I haven't seen her in a while, like a year and a half. And I had that realization, like, oh, this is what fun feels like in my body. And it had been a really long, long time. And so I've been intentional about trying to capture that feeling since then and how to integrate that feeling on a regular basis. So today is, we're talking, we're going to be talking about what makes something fun and that looks different for everything, for everyone. We're going to be talking about how high achieving women can forget to have fun and we can forget that it's kind of an essential skill and that it has many rewards, which we will talk about. We're going to talk about fun as a leadership strategy and why, if you are struggling to integrate this, that not only is this gonna be problematic for you, but it's also going to make your work more difficult and it's going to make people's desire to work alongside you also less desirable potentially. And then we're gonna also talk about five steps to reconnect to fun if that's something you're struggling with. So where this episode really was inspired was a few months ago, or a couple months ago, I guess I was on a call with a bunch of my business colleagues. I'm in a group, uh, a mastermind group for a bunch of speakers and we have an amazing coach. And I love these colleagues and peers. They're just, they're incredible women. And I was joking about how I'm really bad at having fun because I'm just always very outcome oriented and very like production oriented and achievement oriented. And I need to be checking boxes and getting things done and there needs to be like some sort of like, metric of success related to whatever I'm doing. And that really takes the fun out of things. And so I was joking around like, I'm just bad at fun. And I had just graduated, just finished my master's degree. We were heading into summer and I was like, that's just a really bad attitude to have about yourself. And my friends in the group Were challenging me a little bit. Like, they're like, we think you're super fun, but you don't think you're fun. I'm like, no, I'm not fun. So I made a list that for myself over that weekend of things I want to do this summer to have fun. And so I'm going to share that list with you in a minute. But that made me realize that it's really important for me to understand what fun means for me in any season of life. And that changes from season to season, and that's okay. And it's also important to recognize that my fun might look different than other people's fun. And some of my fun might look like work, but if it has some specific core qualities to it, that qualifies it as fun in my book. And we'll talk about what those core qualities are. So when I sat down to think about what I wanted to do to have fun this summer. So if you're listening live time, it's the beginning of July. I'm recording this on July 2nd. So going into a holiday weekend this weekend. And let me tell you what I'm doing for quote unquote, fun this weekend. I'm going to a baseball tournament with my son in the middle of nowhere in Southern Washington state. Um, but it will be fun because watching him play baseball is one of the things that is really fun for me. If you would've told me this 10 years ago, I would have been like, that could not sound more boring and also like a form of torture to have to sit through multiple days in a row of baseball. And here we are. I'm actually looking forward to it. So when I decided what I was, when I was looking at what I want to do for fun this summer, I made a list of a handful of things. And that list included trips with friends. So I actually already had a few things lined up to do. Trips with friends. I have a friend who's celebrating her 50th. I get to go to multiple celebrations for that that are out of town, which is very exciting. I'm going to Maui just after the summer. Not in the summer, but after the summer, which I'm very excited about that. So I was like, okay, trips with friends. Like, these are things that I really love. So I'm excited about that. Water sports. I love anything on the water, near the water, in the water. So I am excited this summer to do some open water swimming, which is a form of workout. And for me, exercise is fun. And so open water swimming is Kind of like lap swim, except for there's no lap lane. And I used to do this all the time for triathlon training. I've done triathlons over the years. Many times in my twenties I did them for a number of years and then I took like an 18 year break and returned to triathlons a few years ago and did them two summers in a row. It was really great. When I went back to school, I stopped. But I really love the open water swimming where you like go out into a lake and you just like swim out and swim. You know, maybe you swim across the lake and back depending on the size of the lake. Of course. For me, I have access to lakes near me and open water swimming is really fun. So that's the water sport. I love paddle boarding, paddle boarding with my 13 year old. And also he's old enough to paddle his own board so I don't have to have him on my board or tow him on another board, which is so physically challenging and exhausting. So for both of us to be able to go out, I also have some friends who paddle board, so to be able to go out with them. So getting out on the water, that's going to be fun for me this summer. The next thing on my list of fun for the summer was pickleball. I grew up being really bad at sports, like really, really bad. And I didn't play sports by choice ever because I felt like I was so bad at them. But there was one area in which I excelled a tiny bit. And when I say excelled it means I was like barely mediocre. But that felt like a real win compared to everything else. And that one area was racket sports. So if I had to do something that was like soccer, volleyball, basketball, uh, like any of like the PE sports. No thank you. But where I excelled was in racket sports and kind of developed a little bit of a passion for badminton. At one point in high school, like my mom got us a badminton set, which was probably the only athletic adventure my mom ever invested in for my sister and I in our yard. And so I was not great great, but I did find joy in it. And so now I'm picking up pickleball. And I reminded myself, wait, you actually liked racket sports when you were younger? Like what's with this pickleball craze? And so we co own a cabin in the neighborhood in which we co own this cabin near the mountains. There's a clubhouse with pickleball courts. And so I, with my family, we've started playing pickleball a little bit and we're real bad and it's a ton of fun and I'm just enjoying the being bad at something and really loving it and having fun with it. So that's one of the other things I'm doing for fun this summer. I'm doing puzzles this summer for fun, so I have a huge stack of puzzles. I've been collecting them throughout grad school and just haven't had time. I've done some puzzles during grad school. You know, if you follow me on Instagram, I post them from time to time, but I've been collecting them far faster than I can do them and so kind of like people who have book stacks next to their bed of books they aspire to read. I have puzzle stacks in my office and at our cabin and I am really excited to dig into some puzzles. I love listening to audiobooks when I do puzzles and that's really, really fun for me. So I'm looking forward to that. This episode is supported by Monarch. I am just loving how geeky I'm getting with so many of my women leader friends talking about finances recently. Anything from trying to figure out budgeting to getting a better understanding of investments and taking like accountability and responsibility for investments and long term investment investments in retirement. Like all the things, it's getting kind of fun. Something that used to feel really daunting to me is actually feeling a little bit fun now. And it's because I love being able to see what's coming and not feel like I don't know things, not feel like there might be scary surprises around the corner. Monarch is a great help with this. So Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything, accounts, investments, saving goals and spending. And you can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off just $50 with the promo code Shameless. So if you have spending goal, savings goals, or if you're wondering about spending trends, Monarch is exactly the app you want to be using to track all of that. What I think is so empowering for women in middle age and as we're looking toward the later stages of our career and toward retirement, is really understanding our money and understanding where it's at, where is it tucked away, where are there gaps where there's not money tucked away that we need to be knowing about and planning for. Having responsibility around money is such a deeply empowering thing and I think it's especially critical and crucial for women. So I want you to go check out Monarch and see how Monarch can help you have a stronger sense of your financial picture and also of your financial future and trajectories. They also have amazing AI tools within Monarch that are going to help you with seeing things like spending trends. And maybe if you have unexpected spending, uh, streaks or spending peaks, they're going to give you a weekly AI recap. So you're going to be able to see again things at a glance that can be really, really helpful that maybe you would have otherwise missed. So I want you to go check out Monarch has to offer. You're going to use the code shameless@monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com code Shameless
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Speaker B: My next element is fun. A fun is going to Cannon Beach. So this is something that we used to do every year for many for decades after my husband and I met, I think probably from the time we met so we met in 2003, I probably started going to with Cannon, going with his family to Cannon beach in 2000, maybe five, 2006. And then we went every year until he got laid off in 2023 and then with his layoff. And then last summer we had a bunch of other things we were doing as a family and it just didn't work out. We haven't been to Cannon beach in a while, so we're going back this summer. This is one of my favorite places on earth. It's on the Oregon coast and I'm really excited about that. That will be really, really fun. And we're meeting some of our family there, which will be really fun as well. And then the last thing I'm doing for fun this summer, not the last thing, but the last thing I scheduled as I was making this list was implementation weeks. Now this one's related to work. Won't sound fun for most of you, but for me this is fun. I used to be really diligent about blocking call free time on my calendar, whether it was a chunk of days or a whole week on a regular basis. So it might look like, you know, every month or every other month I would block a whole week and not take client calls so that I could spend time time developing content and working on program development and working on speaking and presentations and things that just. I really wanted open brain time to dig into and be able to get creative and get excited. And I stopped being boundaried with that as I had to just kind of, you know, collapse more things into less time. With grad school especially, um, as I've taken on a lot more coaching clients in the last year or so and with that crunch of time, it's been. I've been trying to fit like big projects into tiny blocks of time, which is really hard. So for the next three months, July, August and September, I have blocked one week each month as implementation weeks where I can just have open time to dig into projects and do big things and think and be creative in really expansive ways. And that feels really fun. And yes, it is work, but also that's really fun work. For me, it's like sitting on my couch with my laptop in my pajamas, endless coffee, the dog snuggling at my feet, the sun coming in the windows, and just being creative and letting myself have expansive time to think and ideate and come up with things and strategize. And so I'm really excited about that. So as you think about what fun looks like for you, you might look at what I just mentioned and say like, wow, those things all sound horrible. Or you might find elements in there where you're like, oh, that sounds like fun to me. Regardless, I want you to think about what makes something fun for you and then how can you start to generate some of those things for yourself and how can you use those things strategically? So what makes something fun? I started coming up with a list of what makes something fun. And I also did a little bit of research on this. But the first things that came to mind for me is that fun things are energy generating, even if you have to expend energy to get them or to do them. So for me, like I said, I love work. Working out for me, that's fun. Like, not always. There's definitely times where I'm like, oh, I don't feel like doing it. But there's elements of working out that feel fun even though they require energy or something to be physically challenging. There's stuff that's mentally challenging to me that feels energy generating. So when we're looking at fun as Something that generates energy. It's something that, when you're done, it is giving you more energy than it is depleted from you, even if it is taken physical or mental energy to do it. So it feels restorative in nature. Like, there's a net sum where you're like, ooh, I wanna do that again. That was great. Even if there were moments that felt a little bit hard. So, like, this happens with me, with skiing all the time. It might be really physically exhausting, but I'm like, oh, that was so fun. So you feel better after you've done it than you felt before. That's one element that it's energy generating. Another for me is that fun is emotionally generative. It elicits emotion and feelings that aren't elicited in other ways. And so for me, sometimes that's a sense of calm. When I'm doing a puzzle and listening to it, an, uh, audiobook. My mind is quiet in so many other ways that it never quiets down because I'm very singularly focused and very, like, I shut out so many other things. That feeling of calmness and feeling of, like, singular focus, that for me, that's fun because that's not a feeling I have in a lot of places. I really cherish it. So it might be for you something, um, that's emotionally generative. It might be that, like, you know, being with a friend who makes you laugh until you cry. Like, that's another one for me as well, that it's emotionally generative. Whenever you're doing something that brings up positive emotions that feel really great that you maybe don't access regularly or that can't be accessed in other ways, that is fun, right? Another piece of, uh. What makes something fun is. Does it. Are there elements of playfulness or novelty? So does it generate a playfulness side of you? Does it generate something that's novel? Are you. Does it kind of spark your brain in different ways? Next, there is fun. Provides freedom. Uh, or promotes, I guess, promotes and provides freedom over obligation. And so there's a sense of freedom. Like, I'm choosing this for myself. I'm choosing to. To do this. I'm not doing this because I have to. I'm not doing this to. Check a box. I'm not doing this out of a sense of obligation to myself or someone else. I'm doing this for me and because it fits a need for me that I don't need to explain to someone else. And so, you know, some of my nerdier things, like when I Used to, for fun go to Barnes and Noble and read psychology books like once a week in the evening. And my roommate at the time, this was in my 20s, my roommate at the time was like, you're gonna do what? Like that was fun. So much freedom in that. I'm like, I'm just gonna go sit and read these books. I'm choosing this for myself. There's no obligation. I was working in a psych hospital at the time. Uh, my boss was not like, we need you to go read some psych books. It was fun for me. That's choosing for myself. Even though there was a professional element to that. The other component here is that fun allows you to be present and be in the moment in a different way than other things in your life. So you're able to notice what's happening around you and be more connected to that thing that's happening right now than being connected to what came before that thing and what's going to come after that thing. So you're really in the moment, you're connecting to what's going on and you're not thinking about what happened two hours ago or the mess that you've been in for the last two weeks at work and you're not thinking about what's coming up. You're really in the moment and present and enjoying what's happening right now in lifetime. And that also brings us right to the next one. That fun creates connection. And so whether it's a connection to yourself or to someone else, or to a challenge or to an achievement or to something that you want to accomplish, it creates some sort of connection that is different than, you know, the other connections that you're going to have that day or in this season. So it creates some sort of different kind of connection again that then becomes energy generating or emotionally generative. So those are some things to think about as you're thinking about, like, well, what does fun mean to me? Because I think that we get to a certain age and we think, oh, well, it's fun like going out to nightclubs, which at, uh, 50 and a half years old, Lord help me, no thank you. I have to be out of my house after 8pm I'm probably gonna cry. And so like, it's not gonna, the thing that's fun for me now is not gonna be the fun. The thing that was fun for me 20, 30 years ago. And then we need to look at where, why, how high achieving women forget how to have fun when we are so driven by being known for certain things. And by being doers, it's really easy to forget what constitutes fun, the value of fun, and the benefits that come from fun. When we are focused on our responsibility to others, when we're focused on proving our capabilities and we're focused on, you know, sometimes proving our capacity, when we're focused on productivity and achievement at every cost, when we're focused on making sure that people know that we're reliable and we're responsible and we can do anything, those elements of being high achievers sometimes can drown out the internal reminder that you are more than your achievements. You are more than being great at everything that you do. Sometimes fun is being really bad at something and not doing things that are intentionally not achievement oriented. So thinking through, when did you stop asking yourself, what sounds fun? What does fun mean to me? How can I play more thinking through instead? Like, what am I curious about? What brings me joy? What do I want to try? What would I try if I had no connection to the outcome, which is something I've really focused on. As I went back to triathlons, I made a rule for myself. Like, you're not going to measure anything. When I did triathlons years ago in my 20s and early 30s, I was very tied to metrics. Like, everything I did, I was timing everything and measuring everything. And what's the distance and what's the time and what are your splits and can you do negative splits and like, what's your transition time and how quickly can you put your move from your bike shoes to your running shoes? Like, everything was metric driven. When I went back to doing triathlons a few years ago, I was like, I'm measuring nothing. The goal here is to feel good while I'm training. So every time I go out swim or a bike or a run, the only goal is to feel good. That changed everything for me and it made it really fun. When I ran out for race day, my goal was to have fun by connecting with people on the race course, which for me looked like. Every time a woman passed me, I was like, yes, go get it. Every time I passed a woman, I was like, you're doing amazing. So, like, engaging with people and making that experience really fun instead of competitive. In my 20s and 30s, I spent the entire race looking at the number on the people's legs. So in triathlons, get your body marked before the race. And so you can, if I'm coming up on a biker or a runner, I can see on their leg what age group they're in. So if I would See someone racing who's in my, a female in my age group, I'm like, I gotta beat em, I gotta beat him, I gotta beat em. The only thing I'm thinking about as I'm approaching them this time, when I went back to triathlons, when I saw a woman female racer in her 40s and I was gonna pass her or she was passing me, I was like, get it, sister? Like we are in it together. I would stop and chat with him and be like, oh my gosh, me too. Like, I'm in my 40s, almost my 50s. Like, how long have you been doing this? So making it something totally different, that changed everything for me. Bringing joy into something that used to be metric driven and making it 100% not about achievement, that felt really great. So where do you need to recognize how your relationship with achievement has maybe become too centered and maybe gotten in your way of being able to have fun? And then how can you focus instead on having fun in ways that that achievement is not part of the outcome and that fun is not determined by a certain level of achievement or something that's mentor driven? So start thinking about when did you stop having fun? Or when did fun shift for you, why did it shift for you? And what would it feel like to bring that back? Next we're going to look at why fun is a leadership strategy. So this part's really important. Fun is a leadership strategy for a handful of different reasons. And if we can capitalize on this, I want you to think about bosses that you've had in the past that are fun and fun in a strategic sense. So there's bosses who are fun where you might think like, uh, they're just too light hearted about things. Like they don't. It's actually not fun for me, or it maybe isn't appealing to me because they don't take some things too, you know, seriously enough. From my perspective. You maybe also have had bosses who incorporate no fun, and you're like, does this person have any joy in their life? You also might have bosses where they have an element of fun in the nature of their work, where you're like, that's it. They're focused enough on outcomes and productivity and getting things done, but also they can layer in fun and joy in a way that I want to go along with. And that's what we're wanting to emulate here. So when we're looking at fun as a strategy, we want to be looking at how does fun drive creativity, problem solving, innovation, and what are the things we can be doing in our teams and our organization, in our vision time to be driving that. How does play allow us to access cognitive flexibility during uncertainty? Cognitive flexibility is really challenging if we don't make ourselves practice this. And we are living in a season of constant uncertainty where cognitive flexibility is an absolute must. For me, when I'm out doing things that are fun, it actually lets my brain relax enough to recognize that the level of seriousness and intensity that I put into my work sometimes is actually the thing that holds my work back more than anything else. So when I can recognize that infusing things with joy and fun is the key to unlocking cognitive flexibility and being able to be adaptive and innovative in uncertainty, that's a big win. Joy creates resilience. During difficult seasons. We need joy and resilience now more than ever. So this part's really important. Also. Teams and individuals mirror the emotional states of their leaders. Emotional contagion, which was one of my favorite things to learn about in grad school, I kind of accidentally stumbled upon this while doing research for a paper and was just like, oh, I'm obsessed with this idea. So emotional contagion is a thing. Whatever emotion you bring to the table, your team is likely to adopt. If you are only bringing seriousness and achievement and like high intensity all the time, what is the impact on your team? If you're able to bring play and fun in, what, what is the impact then? And leaders who can create delight can create cultures that don't feel heavy even when times are heavy. They can also create moments and experiences that feel transformational instead of transactional. Especially in the world where so much of what we do is transaction based and humans are increasingly feeling like they are just the cost of they are part of transactions and oftentimes they are casualties of transactions. So how can we instead be looking at how we create experiences where there's opportunity for transformation and that comes through that sense of delight? So what can you do to reconnect to fun? We want to be looking at fun not as self care, not as something that's like, oh, a nice to have kind of a thing or something luxurious instead. This is an essential skill. This is part of self expression. It's part of who you are as a leader. So five steps to reconnect to your fun. This is about building capacity for fun and finding the capacity that's probably still there in you somewhere. So number one is remembering what used to feel effortless for you. Remembering what you did as a kid just because you loved it. So maybe it Was drawing. Maybe it was painting. I love doing, like, random little artsy things. Um, I'm so bad at art, but it's just fun to, like, dig into a craft project and let yourself be bad at it. So what are the things that made you lose track of time when you were in your teens or your early 20s? What are the things that make you laugh? And where's our capacity to return to those things? So those spaces where things can just feel effortless or where you can just kind of do them and be experimental and just let it be goofy and adventurous and creative and be in that moment. Next is noticing your energy. So noticing when your energy shifts into, oh, that made me feel lighter. That made me laugh, that gave me energy instead of sucking energy. What kinds of conversations or experiences or certain people or relationships bring that to you? And then how can you bring more of those into your life? Noticing how you separate fun from performance. So your fun might have elements of performance in it. It might be, you know, let's say I get really good at pickleball and I want to, like, win a tournament or something. I don't imagine this happening, but it could. So it, uh, can have elements of performance or achievement in it, but what makes it fun? And then how do you keep those fun elements in there? Would you do the thing if no one knew that you were doing it? If you couldn't post a picture about it? If you never became good at it or great at it? Running tiny experiments. So run tiny little tests, recognizing like, oh, okay, I'm gonna just try this thing out and be totally detached from outcomes and just see what I think. And see if you do something and you're like, oh, I wanna do that again. Did I smile? Did I feel lighter when I left? Did I have, like, you know, learn something new Where I was like, ooh, that kind of sparked something in me. Did time pass quickly? Or did I even lose connection to sense of time? Which can be a great indicator of having fun? Do I wanna do it again as soon as I'm done with it? Fun is often discovered through experimentation. Rather than trying to think through what's the thing I could do that would be the most fun? And trying to, like, strategize it. And then lastly, following curiosity and not commitment. And I think especially high achievers, we can be really focused on following commitment. And, like, if I'm gonna do this thing, I need to do it three times a week at this, uh, time and for X amount of months and forever and ever with these goals and what if you just followed curiosity? What if you just went and tried the thing? So what am I curious enough about to just go try and give yourself permission to go try that. So with all of this, this is a mindset shift. Fun is not something that you earn after the work is done. It's a source of energy and it lets you keep doing your best work. So how can you commit to fun? Being the thing that gives you energy, gives you creativity, gives you drive, advances your leadership, and makes other people want to come along with you. Because of the energy and the fun and the joy that you bring, that the spark that you feel, you're able to also transfer to others. Thank you for being here. Thanks for enjoying this episode with me and I hope you go do something fun. Let me know, email me and tell me all about it. And I can't wait to be back with you next week for our next episode, episode 1000, my 1000th podcast episode. Until then, know that I am right here in this with you always. Thank you so much for being here and allowing me to spend time in your ear today. I take that responsibility very seriously. If you're interested in learning more about my speaking training and executive coaching services, you can go to saradeen.com that's S A R-A-E-A-N.com if you have follow up questions or comments about this episode, please come join me on LinkedIn@saradean.com LinkedIn there's nothing I love more than a listener dropping into my DMs. Thank you for taking the time to show up for yourself today. I see you, I hear you, and I am holding space for you today and every single day.
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