#46 | Team Building at Work: How Play Improves Collaboration and Performance

Speaker A: Welcome to the HR Dialogues, a show where we talk about HR and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Dieter Feltman, and today I'm joined by Alex, the CEO of Barometer XP. Welcome to the HR Dialogues where we learn from people practitioners as they navigate the emerging world of work. Alex, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: Alex, tell us a little bit about yourself. What brings you to the HR Dialogues today?

Speaker B: Yeah, I am on a mission to make the workplace more welcoming for people, more people oriented. Um, I think there's been a shift away from what type of environment do people need to thrive. Um, and that's not only you know, work life balance and having clear um, instructions about what's expected from them, but also so that they feel like what they're doing, the things they're spending so much of their time on is something that's meaningful to them and making an impact to the world and that, that matters to other people. And I think we've really gotten away from that and through a lot of very twisty, turny, unexpected uh, turns in my career trajectory, um, have ended up being a co founder in a company that uses game based learning and game based or play based problem solving to help leaders and teams succeed better together, succeed faster together in a way that is motivating and engaging and rewarding for everybody.

Speaker A: Before we jump straight into the episode, we'll be talking a lot about the power of play and how HR leaders can utilize play when we start thinking about things like team effectiveness, um, and bringing it into the organizational culture. Uh, Alex, what got you into this theme of play and game based learning? Um, what did it spark for you?

Speaker B: I've always been a very experiential oriented person. I have a performing arts background, dance. And so much of that is, so much of that time is spent essentially playing with other people and trying to figure things out and trying to elevate each other. And I've always loved that collaborative environment, um, that like let's put on a show, let's do something together and the pride that you feel when you've all accomplished that. And I think it's something without even realizing it that I sought once I got into my professional life. Um, you know, I started in a totally different career. I started in public health and health policy and as I moved up into more management level positions I started noticing how, how much the work environment.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And wanting to have good relationships with their colleagues, but that's not, it takes work to make that happen. It takes a level of intentionality for everybody, especially people in leadership positions. But every single person is responsible for what the culture and infrastructure is and how it actually works on a day to day basis.

Speaker A: I think work environment has become crucially important because I think there's obviously different facets to it. It right in terms of your daily experiences, the cultures, the behaviors that we reinforce. Um, I come out of the organizational design domain, so I always think, you know, most things are an organizational design challenge and, or design and culture very, very tightly tied at the hip as well. Um, so Alex, I want to get into the conversation. When we think about engagement or effectiveness or flourishing workplace environments, I think there's various ways to describe that. Start by helping us understand why HR leaders should be thinking about play as a vehicle to get there. Now, I'm going to play devil's advocate a little bit here and say, you know, we are all serious. It's all about, you know, the processes, the systems, the outputs, the productivity we put in place. If I have to ask you, Convince me in 30 seconds why play is the vehicle to get me what I want. What would your pitch be?

Speaker B: Oh, uh, I've been waiting for this question. There are two big things. One, the most commonly cited reason that people leave jobs is because of management and leadership, that they don't feel like they're getting the support that they need. That's an HR concern. You want to reduce turnover and by investing in people who are going to be managing, whether they're managing projects, whether they're managing. Hm. So leaving it to chance whether people build strong relationships with their colleagues, that's taking on a lot of risk that people will feel really isolated. So doing things to foster those connections not only motivates people because they, you know, they feel like they have somebody on their side, they have someone to talk to. But it actually, and I can give direct examples, it, um, people want to collaborate with people that they like. They will go out of their way to help each other. They'll go out of their way to come up with new ideas that can help the company. So investing in better leadership and better relationships reduces turnover and increases engagement. And I can't imagine why any HR person wouldn't want those things.

Speaker A: So I think there's also for me, you know, a couple of things that you've mentioned that I really resonate with. I think definitely the one, and we know from the research and the data as you've quoted, that the relationship between your direct manager or leader and the individual is crucially important for a whole Bunch of things around engagement, motivation, clarity, safety, belonging within the organization. I think the point I want to double click on a little bit more is I found working whether it's with executive teams or working with, you know, general teams with people from various different backgrounds, when you facilitate a lot of those discussions, you almost need to get people out of their stereotypes and preconceived ideas of what good looks like in a team. Now I can imagine that utilizing more of a play based type of approach is helpful in thinking about team effectiveness and team dynamics. But I would love your view on it because I get the sense people get stuck, um, very stuck in. It's the job description, it's the archetype I need to be, it's the expectation that people have of me. So how do we use this to almost get people unstuck a bit?

Speaker B: Yeah. So what happens when a team of people who work together play together first? It never ceases to amaze me. People cannot help but show up as themselves. They cannot help it. And so in playing together, you're essentially creating um, a controlled experiment environment to simulate how people work together. Moving away, sort of removing the need for subject matter, expertise, the particular power dynamics, um, the narrow actions that people can take and they can just be their whole person. And when you see somebody in a new environment, you're going to recognize different things about them that maybe don't come through in the work environment because everybody's way of engaging and their role is so narrow. So you might notice that somebody who um, is sort of introverted and gets their work done but isn't a big contributor actually when they feel more comfortable, when they feel like there's psychological safety and trust, they have brilliant ideas but they're too nervous to share them. And once you notice, oh, these are the conditions we have to create.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: If, then what if what happens when? Before I'm willing to play. And then you get people that are like, can we just figure it out as we go? It doesn't matter if we mess it up. Those tendencies show up at work. You have the person that wants to know clarity on the project, go through everything, think through all of the possible unintended consequences that could happen. And then you have the people that are like, let's just go. And right away you're going to have tension on a team. And so recognizing those differences and figuring out how do we, what's a process that we can all agree on? What are some norms we can all agree on where everybody is satisfied? You know, we don't feel like we're moving too slow just to waste people's time, but recognizing that in order to get these really smart, really m talented colleagues engaged, we need to give them information. Maybe you can send them some stuff ahead of time so you don't have to take up all the meeting time. But those are, those are all sort of process and system changes that you can make once you understand people better. I mean there's dozens and dozens of other ways that what happens in the game directly translate into being able to work together better and create a more psychologically safe, trusting, um, inclusive and supportive environment for people.

Speaker A: For me, there's also a component there about how do you surface some of the underpinning, whether that's preferences or whether that is styles pertaining to work or whether that's ways that people process information or contribute their energy. I think the game or play environment, if I may call it that, I think does help people to get unstuck a little bit out of what they believe their expectations should be. Um, you know, to use a practical example, um, we worked with a client a while ago where we just tried to surface the fact that people process information differently when they are set to be able to explore a task. You know, exactly your point. Some people are the. I'm the big picture, give me the three liner, I'll figure it out, tell me the outcome. And the other people are much more around the fact that these are the steps you need to follow to be able to get there. And you're spot on. It creates conflict and tension that I think is sometimes unnecessary because it's as part of that misunderstanding component. Alex, make it practical for us when we talk about play. I ask you to come and help me. My team is not gelling the way that I wanted to. For example, where do we start with this? How do we introduce it into the organization?

Speaker B: Yeah, and when I'm working with a team, the first thing I need is for them to trust me and that I'm not wasting their time. And so I always like to start with some sort of non competitive, more collaborative and co creative type activity. Uh, so I often do not use the word games if I know that they're skeptics, learning exercise or you know, simulation, which sounds way less fun and sexy but fits into the corporate point across corporately approved words. Um, and do that and then you know, the reflection is the most important piece. You know, how, how are you feeling now? What are you noticing about the energy in the room? And a lot of the time when people Go into whether it's a training, whether it's, um, a meeting, if it's a, you know, something facilitated, they're bringing the baggage of the phone call that they just got off of, or you know, the millions of emails in their inbox, their, their sick kit, whatever it is, they're bringing all that in with them. And unless you do something to presence people in the current situation and sort of set them up for the mindset and the ways that this.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And we have several different tools and assessments to, to look at how do people on a team experience their culture, what do they experience as strengths and what do they experience as challenges. And so then you essentially have, in their own words, the purpose of why we're doing this, to say, hey, I recognize, you know, you guys feel a really strong sense of solidarity and team identity, but there's a lot of misunderstandings, communication challenges, uh, lack of clarity about who does what and when things are supposed to happen. So we're going to work on that. We're going to work on how do we reset our processes, how do we reset our expectations, um, so we can all be accountable to being better at, you m. Know, getting that clarity. And then people are like, oh, okay, there's a purpose to this. But when you get to the reflection piece, it's like, why was that stressful for you? What did it bring out? What are the preferences or habits or tendencies or assumptions that you have made that make this a stressful situation?

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: And you can realize some of that is, is grounded in reality, some of it's not.

Speaker A: So for me, I think the one piece that you've mentioned is super important. Right. There's still an outcome that you are trying to achieve. And it's something that, you know, I sometimes find it's that very simple question, you know, what are we trying to solve for as part of this particular process? Because I think that does hold people on track a little bit more, that there's sometimes a bit of method to madness, trust the process. I think the second part that you talk about is very much on it is a holistic systemic process. So it exists in a context and it exists in a reciprocal relationship almost that we have between, let's say, you as the facilitator, what's happening in the room, the, the leadership in the room there, et cetera. And then such an important one that I do want to talk a little bit more about is the process of reflection and sense making. Because I often find in these types of interventions, if you don't build that in people. Exactly. To your last point, say hmm M. That was fun, enjoyable. And then they think back but they don't make that connection back to the fact that oh hang on, I was driving behavior change or I was actually doing something different or this was my insight or my aha moment. Um, and I'd love to talk a little bit more about that because something that really shines through for me is you actually do a lot of um, kind of, I want to call it data mining. It sounds like you have an Excel spreadsheet in your session. That's not what I mean. But you actually unearth a lot of qualitative data during the course of what people put on the table and you almost utilize that to move them through the different stages or the phases to achieve that particular outcome. So I would love to talk a little bit more about some of your call it observations when working with groups in this particular way. How do we get leaders to be more self aware? Because I believe that that's one of the biggest challenges we have today in terms of sense making self awareness, people knowing what the impact of their behavior actually is.

Speaker B: Yeah, I, I'm with you completely. I think that is, you know, one of the, at the heart of this, these problems. Um, I, most of the time the vast majority of people are just on autopilot and just reacting to what we encounter in the world. And it's very easy to feel, to feel powerless, to feel not valued, um, to feel. I don't like the term victim mentality. I think that has so many meanings. But just to feel like you just have to deal with whatever is coming your way and when you bring self awareness to it, people realize that we make a million micro decisions every day about how we show up and the way that we show up is going to have a direct impact on. Yeah. Stand on this side of the room. If you're more of a night person, stand on this side. You can be anywhere in between and everybody stands where they are. And then just, you know, how do you know this about yourself? And people like oh well I guess, you know, I really love getting up, you know, with the sun and exercising and that gives me energy for the rest of the day. And there's the people that are like my brain doesn't turn on until I've had three cups of coffee and it's 10:30 and. And just in that people are like, oh, that's why you never respond to my emails at this time. Or you know, that's why you're always trying to push meetings earlier or later. And then you say, how. So how does this show up when you're working with other people? What assumptions do you make about people who are standing somewhere else in the room? And even so, we'll start with something that's pretty innocuous, like tea or coffee, you know, early bird, night owl. But then we'll move to things like, are you more of a big picture thinker or a detailed thinker? Do you prefer to make decisions alone or with other people? Do you tend to process new information out loud or internally? And as you start to move to those real dynamics, people recognize. Oh yeah, the way that I think my preferences are just one of a, uh, mass continuum of how people can show up and everybody's a little bit different and this is. And then they start to see why conversations go a certain way. And it's the simplest thing, but you can debrief it for hours because it's so helpful, first to understand your own patterns and how they show up for you, and second, to look at other people's patterns and the assumptions that you attach to that. And then again, I love that you use our data. I use the word data a lot too. Emotions are data. The way we interactions with other people are data. And so you bring that to the surface and now what can you do with that?

Speaker A: So very often I think there's that reality that you see that there are other people like me or that has similar preferences like me. And then on the other side, there are other people that have vastly different preferences, which is why certain things show up in a particular way. As you've mentioned, what's always astounding to me in these types of engagements and interactions is it does pose a question. And I think for HR leaders, that's a really good one to think about is how do we think about how we build teams? Right. Because I earlier I mentioned, you know, you spoke a lot about meaningful work, work environments, work conditions, you know, coming from the lens that I usually wear around organizational design. How do we design meaningful work? Very often we default to one of the two. We either default towards the fact that we almost build cognitive teams, if I might call it that. That's purely based on the skills that people bring to the table and the experiences that they bring. I have been in environments where people default way too far to the other side, where it's much less about the skill piece and it's a lot more about the harmony, the dynamics that people find. And yet I think in the middle, there is something to be said for it. But to get there you almost need some of these processes that builds out kind uh, of that trust channel for people to be able to get there. So would love your thoughts on how do we incorporate this as an HR leader or as an HR professional listening today into the daily work that I do. Because there's definitely the side of, you know, we need an intervention, there's a problem we need to solve for. But is there something else that we can almost incorporate more into our day to day to bring that curiosity around, play to the surface a bit more.

Speaker B: And um, the way people work and the way that they see the value of the people around them is so important. I mean people, you know, we get clients that bring us in like once a year for a retreat and like that's great but like you should be doing this once a month. You should be doing this, you know, even take five minutes at the beginning of your team meeting to just do some type of activity or game that's going to remind us to pay attention to the self awareness and situational awareness piece. Because if, if you're not, if that's not activated, you're just going to default to oh, that person thinks different from me and they're wrong and they're always trying to make things more difficult. Um, so encouraging that, encouraging leaders to feel comfortable doing a game, whether it's in a meeting, whether it's, you know, let's get together for a group lunch and do something fun together. Another piece of it is people tend to avoid hard conversations, but hard conversations are necessary at work. It's a way to practice them. It's a way to build that uh, level of psychological safety to know that if you bring up a conversation that's, that's going to be difficult, you're not going to be penalized for it in any way. Um, people need to know that and need to be reminded of that. Mhm.

Speaker A: I think it also speaks a bit towards the fact that, you know, you almost provide people not only with the environment but a bit of the, the simulated practice scenarios, if I might call them that, for lack of a better word, that they, they start going through the motions a bit more so that when the difficult conversation pops up, I'm doing it from a point of view where I've built trust capital with you already. I have an idea how this is going to land based in or get the best outcome, at least in terms of me tailoring my approach towards that. And I think that sometimes is underestimated a Little bit. Because we try to teach people all these techniques around dealing with conflict and having difficult conversations. I've always felt that they tended to be a little bit more surface level. Um, I think you can go a lot deeper when you start going into the relational component there. And I think especially for HR leaders listening today, we deal with a lot of conflict. Sometimes we are kind of the mediator in the conflict situation, sometimes we are the person bringing the difficult conversation and sometimes we need to balance all these different boxes and um, in high pressure situations. And I actually think starting to instill this kind of idea around, seeing what is below the surface, building things, a systemic process over time, I think that can lead towards a very different type of relationship with your stakeholders. Uh, because I find especially if you're in the business partnering space, we are all running around so often that usually you see me when I'm in trouble, when it's a particular point in the HR calendar or you know, I'm um, reacting to something that has already happened versus almost introducing these things a little bit more.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that the role of HR just keeps expanding m and encompassing more things. And for a lot of people, they get into it because they want to create great in work environments, they want to help people succeed, they want to be part of uh, you know, changing an organization from within. And then most of their time is like looking at data and doing benefits and you know, looking at the cost of different things. Um, and so I think advocating for again taking this design mind like what's the outcome that you want to see in order for the executive of the company to see those outcomes? What does the HR person need to be spending time on? And I mean, uh, it amazes me. I read so many articles about CEOs saying like, we don't know why everyone is so disengaged and tuned out. And their solution is like, well, let's put an even more granular time tracking thing so we can see where people's eyeballs are during the day. And then you, you can't wonder why people are disengaged. You're creating a pretty awful environment. But if engagement really is a priority and you're seeing the downside disengagement.

Speaker A: I think as hr, we very often don't think about the longer term game pertaining to these different levers that we need to pull. Because I think this is very much one of the levers that you can utilize over time to really bring change in how your leaders show up. Um, you know, how you make your values Visible in the organization. Um, you know, I did a lot of work in the mining industry. At some point it was always interesting for me that these safety moments, which basically was at certain points or meetings or during the day, there was this reminder on how important the value of safety now in that environment, it's life and death, but regardless whether you were at head office, whether you were on one of the mines, there was this awareness that was created around how do we do safety together and what does it look like and what doesn't it look like. And I always thought that that was such a clever way just of instilling it a little bit more into the DNA. And I think HR professionals can think about that. And I loved your earlier example to say it's not an annual. We take people away for two days and we talk about these things. It's the micro, uh, decisions, micro behaviors that we start putting in that I think really brings things to life. Alex, my last question before I start wrapping up is, uh, do you believe that play is a good way to build culture?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's one of my favorite topics. There's this idea that the work happens over here and culture is over here and you know, you say your values and you have a pizza party and you have your annual off site and you've done culture and now everybody just focus on work. Um, and that's, that is not true at all. Culture is what does it feel like for every single person, every moment of the day? Do you feel like the other people that you work with? Do you feel like the systems that are in place, ah, the processes that you have are making it more likely that you'll succeed, feeling like other people in the company have your back or putting obstacles in the way. And if people see more obstacles in the way, then it's a negative culture. It doesn't need to be backstabbing. I've worked in places where everybody really liked each other, but the culture was really bad because people didn't have access to the information they needed when they needed it, or they didn't have relationships with people in other departments. So there were bottlenecks and that got really frustrating. Um, the process and the infrastructure is part of the culture. Um, what are they thinking about, what information do they have, what decisions are they making? And then, uh, what's motiv, what's driving their behaviors, what type of behaviors do they take? And then the rows are at the organizational level, you know, intent, um, outcomes. So those are, uh, what, why and how, and a lot another way that it's used is to say you can't blame negative culture on the individual. Like that's just their reaction to systemic problems and you have to address the problem systemically. And so, you know, not only do I see our stuff as uh, games is great for building culture, but operationalizing culture and saying, hey, if you're going to have a conversation where you're um, starting a new project or a conversation about um, you know, what's the ultimate objective or something, the way you have that conversation has such an impact on what the outcome is.

Speaker A: I think to your point as well, I think it, it makes culture less of an academic, theoretical, um, conversation because I mean my personal view is culture is the visible behaviors that you either promote or recognize, um, or detract or punish in your, in your organization. Right. And to your point, culture develops and culture grows and you know, besides then the toxic culture conversation there you will have a culture that will promote certain things and that will kind of kick against other things. And I think this is a really good way of surfacing what that looks like. Um, I was in a very big technology project at some point in time where people built the typical functional silos. Right. The business analysts didn't speak to the quality assurance people didn't speak to the techies that was developing. And we developed an intervention at that point in time through play that actually made them build a silly little robot together. But all the behaviors that we wanted them to start realizing we kind of built into the intervention. So things like we didn't give you clear instructions so you didn't know what to build. We stole your blocks. Halfway through you had to swap your model out with another team and that actually started to highlight people. Just this awareness component around the fact that. Hang on. But we actually do this in the real, real world. As part of that is when I think those connection points is crucially important. And again, and I'm sound like a broken record plate, but it brings us to that sense making piece because I think we don't do enough of that. We don't help people sit back and say, sheesh, this is what this means, or hang on, I now know the following and that's actually why I need to do something different or take something else into consideration, um, as well,

Speaker B: Drawing those connections because the game is going to create, you know, the inner experience, the emotions and the thoughts and the assumptions and people are like, oh, I'm recognizing this. This is, this is what happens here.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I'm a firm believer that the wisdom exists in the room already. Right. So very often it's just your role as the facilitator to surface it and then to help people make sense of it and create the connections where they don't, or at least to shine a spotlight on it. Um, Alex, really loved our conversation. A couple of things that really stood out for me. I think the first one is that um, you know, play always needs to have a set business outcome. And I think that is to utilize play as a systemic, holistic process in order to achieve a particular outcome that matters to the business, whether that's engagement, productivity. I think the second component around the fact that I love that you spoke about is to say how do we build relational trust capital in the organization over time and how do we actually utilize play to start building that into our culture in the small moments and in the small experiences that we have. Love the fact that you also mentioned, you know, sometimes it is about surfacing what is below the surface, bringing it to the front, guiding leaders into that sense making process. A lot of people will be cheering for you for your comment on that. The role of HR is expanding and how do we get HR to utilize some of these techniques to do what they need to do in order to really drive the types of work conditions and work environments that is going to make businesses successful in the longer term. And then definitely your point also pertaining to the fact resonated with me around curiosity and play in your culture can help you surface some of those behaviors. But it has to be a continuous process. It's not a once off intervention that we do once or twice a year. It has to be something that we live every single day. Alex, where can people find you and follow the great work that you are doing and reach out to you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm really active on LinkedIn. Um, Alexandra Sukman. Um, we also ah, the company is called Barometer xp. Uh we named it Barometer because a barometer in science measures pressure in the atmosphere and we think of us as measuring and dealing with pressure in teams. Um, we do every month we have a free open demo, ah, game session that anybody can come to where we show our approach of how do we connect games to specific outcomes. Um, and you can find those under the training and events calendar on our website. Um, and I love talking about this so if anyone wants to email me directly, um, it's alexarameterxp.com perfect.

Speaker A: Alex, thank you very much. And for those of you dialing into the HR dialogues today, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. Thank you please be on the lookout for our next episode. And reach out to Alex to find out how do we incorporate the power of play into our organizational cultures. Until next time, thank you very much. I'm Dr. Dieter Feltman. Goodbye.