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In this article, we’re looking at how each of our play personalities can be utilized in our work environment to access our creativity. If you are familiar with the two articles posted recently on creativity enhancing techniques, you will find that some of these techniques are included here, but looking at some which specifically suit each play personality. There’s also a completely new creative problem solving technique mentioned and a link to Dan Roam’s book which covers it in detail.
An important thing to note, exactly how each person finds ways to utilize their play personalities to enhance their creative thinking and innovation in the work place is going to require some self-reflection and self-discovery, as I’ve said, it’s an inside job. Obviously, our unique creative expression is unique, so no one else can figure this out but you?.
One more thing before we go on, if you find that the work you do is completely at odds with your play personalities, or you can’t find any ways to bring play into your role, then I’d say you’re in a very incongruent line of work. I’m not an advocate of doing rash things like quitting jobs or changing careers abruptly, it’s just the more I research this, the more I find that when our work incorporates some aspects of our preferred way to play, the more productive, motivated and happy we are. This also means we will be more successful, and have a blast while we’re at it!
So, we’re going to go through the different play personalities from Dr. Stuart Brown’s work, and look at how each one can be incorporated in a work situation. We’ll cover four in this article and the final four in next week’s article. Most of us will be naturally drawn to the roles best suited to our play personalities and already be utilizing them in our work anyway, so we’re really just drawing attention to this.
As we know from a previous article, the Joker is a very handy character to have around in any environment, work, family or social, and this play personality is well suited to just about any work place. Obviously, making jokes, playing pranks and generally goofing around is the access point for these characters and their creativity. Luckily for the Joker, this can be done quite easily in a work environment without raising too many eyebrows. Unless of course, your joker gets carried away and creates havoc with their kidding around. What makes us laugh is often balanced on a very fine line between OK and going too far. Jokers dance along this line constantly and when they feel like it, bulldoze right across it just for the amusement of watching the fallout.
At work, jokers can play quietly in their own minds by creating amusing scenarios from whatever they’re observing, they can share their jokes with others verbally, through body language or even make funny facial expressions to co-workers in a form of silent comedy. Posting a funny cartoon on a work notice board or emailing it to co-workers is a way of engaging this play personality. Our joker is not engaged in laser like focus whilst conceiving these various funny activities, instead they slip into the soft focus of creative thinking. They’re experiencing the seven elements of play we looked at last week, including being in their zone, improvising, etc. Usually, a joker is unable to keep anything that may cause a potential laugh to themselves, because in sharing, they get even more joy from it. Sharing the joke creates the connection with others that makes this play personality such a valuable asset in a work place. Engaging others in this kind of collective play can also shift people’s focus and release stress and tension very effectively.
We’ve discussed mental priming previously, it’s one of the creativity enhancement techniques that is a great tool for Jokers in accessing creative insights. Using our imagination is key here! Take the problem and imagine it from every single humorous angle you can. Like making a mental movie in the form of a comedy, to a side-splitting verbal portrayal of the issue like a stand-up comedian, or a funny physical expression of it in your face or body. As you play these out in your mind, notice if any of these exercises lead you to possible solutions to the problem, or even new avenues to explore to find the solution.
Another option is to let the problem rest at the edges of your mind and immerse yourself fully in some form of kidding around, then come back to it later and see if any new insights have surfaced. Our creative play very rarely gives us the answer to our problem on a silver platter; it gifts us significant hints and insights which then require our focused attention to discover the meaning and method in these little gems of wisdom.
This play personality can also fit easily into almost any work environment, although they are particularly suited to ones which are related to physical activity, like health and fitness, sports, dance, performance etc. Because this personality gets into a play state by physically moving their bodies, this can be a little trickier in an office environment. Just getting up and walking to get a glass of water is not going to be enough to get a Kinesthete in a physical play state, but walking around even a little helps them to shift focus and hits the mini-refresh button.
I have a friend whose work incorporates exercise as part of the work environment by getting a personal trainer in a few times a week. Anyone who has managed their work so that they can leave their desk for the hour can go and do an intense session at the expense of the company. Another option is making lunch breaks flexible so people are able to do something physical like a gym session or yoga class halfway through the day. For a kinesthete, this can be a great help if they need to get a blast of fresh energy and rush of blood to the head.
For a Kinesthete to access their creative play state, they need to be able to move in whatever way they most easily slip into their zone. Again, not going to be easy in an office environment, we can’t bust out our moves to “Thriller” or start reeling through yoga sun salutes at work. The only way the Kinesthete is going to be able to access their play state through movement at work is if the job entails physical movement or allows for it somehow during breaks or by incorporating it like I mentioned above.
There are two creativity enhancement techniques that work well for the Kinesthete, both involving mental priming. But they will need a very flexible work environment or will have to do these outside of work hours. The idea is to cram as much as you can on the topic of your inquiry, then go and do something that completely immerses you in another mental space whilst physically engaging your body. This mental space can be one of two things. It can be space where you are still able to contemplate the problem you are working on, but only have it floating vaguely around the edges of your consciousness and then allow yourself to get into flow whilst doing whatever physical activity you love. Observe if, during or after the activity, any new insights have surfaced.
The other mental space allows for no further contemplation of the problem at all during the physical activity. For example, one of our readers, Matt, goes rock climbing. If he tries to think of anything else he’s going to lose his footing, so his mental space allows for nothing but total focus and presence on the task at hand. At the end of the activity, observe if any new insights have surfaced. These techniques are the kinesthetes way of “listening to the quiet girl/guy in the room”, in which you totally engage your conscious mind with something and give the unconscious space to share it’s insights. An added bonus for the kinesthetes creativity enhancement is that if they’re exercising outside in a natural environment, studies have shown that both plants and the color green increase our creative thinking – huzzah!
Explorers show up in any area of life, someone who embraces this play personality fully is usually at the forefront of innovation in their chosen field because of their intense curiosity and desire to explore new frontiers (quite a lot has been written about this common character trait in some of our most recognized leaders in business, and it’s really worth knowing about so I’ll do an article just on this at a later date.) The explorer play personality can be engaged on numerous levels, mental, physical, emotional or spiritual.
Mental exploration loves researching, reading, spending time pondering new possibilities, and pushing the limits of common knowledge and constantly questioning it. Physical exploration needs to be more hands-on, like a typical explorer who ventures into ice capped mountains or sweltering jungles. It can also be like an engineer or an artist, engaging their explorer play personality by physically exploring the possibilities of the medium and materials they’re working with.
Emotional exploration can involve any form of research and learning about, or contemplation and experience of our emotional and psychological landscape. This can be done through short courses, formal study or personal inquiry through experience and reading, research, and contemplation. Spiritual exploration can involve all aspects of the first three, it can be a mental, emotional or physical experience, but the person is exploring through the lense of understanding themselves and life from a spiritual perspective. This form of exploration can incorporate all of the others because any activity can be used as a form of spiritual exploration whether it’s reading, yoga, meditation, washing the dishes, building a business or catching the bus.
It can be quite easy for an explorer to access creativity and innovation as they are naturally curious, and curiosity is an extremely important aspect of creativity. When explorers can connect the work with some form of exploration and engage their play personality, it’s easy to shift into explorer mode and get into the state of flow where creative insights are more available. Because the explorer is often using their mental and imaginative faculties in their play, they can engage their play personality at work a lot more easily than some of the others.
The trick is for explorers to look at any problem or issue they’re faced with and then imagine exploring the problem from their preferred perspective, whether it’s from an emotional, mental or spiritual perspective. That means, if you are an explorer, and you know how you already engage this aspect of your play personality, use these same exploration techniques that get you into a play state to problem solve, whatever gets you in that state of flow. This could be reading, researching, personal experience or reflection and contemplation. If this play personality can turn a creative problem solving issue into a grand exploratory adventure, then chances are they’ll engage easily with it and enjoy the process.
If you like to explore physically, it helps if you can add a physical component to your work, so you can tangibly explore things, this means being able to physically manipulate the different components of a problem. If you can’t add a tangible component to your problem solving, imagining physically pulling apart the problem and laying all the parts out in front of you and perhaps re-assembling it, or seeing what else can be made from the separate elements, can help. Drawing basic symbols on a piece of paper helps with this process, this can be an amazing tool for accessing new insights and creative problem solving.
If using symbols and images sounds like a useful tool, there’s a great book by Dan Roam, called, “The Back Of The Napkin.” It’s all about solving problems and selling ideas with pictures. It’s a brilliant resource, and for all you Seth Godin fans, Seth gives it a big thumbs up.
We’ve discussed this play personality in detail in a previous article, and we know Competitors play to win, and usually do. In order for a competitor to access the play state of optimal flow, they need to turn things into a competition. Doing this keeps them engaged, and gives them something to strive for, it gives them a clearly defined goal. Competitors are very good at reaching goals and maintaining laser like focus when it comes to reaching those goals, but creativity often requires dropping into what I call a “soft focus”. That is, slipping into a holistic way of thinking rather than linear and sequential, the latter is the realm of clearly defined goals and winning and losing.
The trick for the competitor play personality is to get into a play state in whatever they’re competing at. As long as a competitor can make it a game, and play authentically, the hard edge of competition and laser like focus can give way to the fluid form of creative play. This play personality can easily be engaged in the work place, as anything can be turned into a playful competition.
I’m not highly competitive, but it’s fun to play and I run my own funny little competition with this weekly column. Every week, I check the number of article Facebook shares and retweets, and comments and see if I can “beat” the other writers. Of course, this is ludicrous competition, because I haven’t got a lot of control over whether or not I “win”. My competition relies a lot on the whim of readers and if they feel like sharing the article or dropping me a line at the end of the article. Of course, I have some influence, if I wrote something totally boring or absolutely amazing, the response rate is affected. But the whole thing is just a fun game for me, the point of my seemingly pointless exercise is to put me in a play state when I’m sitting at my computer, as well as giving me some feedback on what’s interesting to the audience and what isn’t. One of these days, I’ll write such a brilliant article, I might even “beat” Yaro in the “race” (that’s going to be difficult, whenever he publishes an article, he wins by a mile!)
I’d better add a disclaimer here, I always reply individually to comments, but this is not related to my game/competition. I do this because I think if someone has taken the time to leave a comment, responding to them is an act of appreciation and acknowledgement. It’s kind of like my own code of ethics, and some of my responses get very animated if I’m really excited about the conversation.
Once again, thanks for reading this article and sharing any insights or experiences you would like to at the end. I’ll be watching the tally to see if I win or lose this week 
Cheers, Neroli.
Neroli Makim is an internationally acclaimed artist, author and speaker on Creativity and its relationship to personal fulfillment and professional success. She educates people about Creativity, what it is, why it’s important and how to access it within themselves. For more information, visit http://www.yourcreativesuccess.com/.
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