Episode #3 Today on the playground we are going to talk about Leveling the Playing Field, what we learn in play that we might consider in our personal and professional worlds. When was the last time your day was totally predictable? Unchanged? When you didn’t have to consider other ways of balancing priorities, time, commitment, people, planning or organization? Changing direction and newness can be hard, and often times it goes against the traditional well-structured plans laid for reproducible, predictable management of people and organizations. So if the definition of diversity is "being composed of different elements"… are we not surrounded by different elements every day? It’s what we do with them, respond to them and behavior around or about them that is important. Let’s go back to the playground or ice rink in this case to see an example: "Sticks in the Middle" as told by my husband Ken Heather about the corner rink and how the call of "sticks in the middle" decided who you were going to play with. What would happen if we just put everyone’s stick on the ice? What if we learned to adapt, flex, and change according to where the stick lands? What if we created a system where we “just played” without titles, and picking sides? What if we said this is your team … work with their strengths.
https://soundcloud.com/adsummitph/come-out-and-play
Words: Abi Aquino of MullenLowe Philppines
Music: Jasper Perez
Artist: Quest
Recorded, Mixed and Mastered at Soundesign Manila, with special thanks to Raul Blay.
I believe that we are all capable of leveling the playing field, but we are often pushed to make the teams uneven because we are afraid there isn’t enough for everyone. And This model of scarcity keeps us from balance.
But just like hockey we need to practice – and play is ground for practicing these skills – new people, new ways of doing things, new ice, new skates, new neighbors,
And when we play we fall down, we make mistakes, we say things wrong, we grab the wrong stick , we forget a puck ( although I’m told that never happened), we get home late, we freeze our feet, we get in fights, we negotiate, we find our way….
But we don’t practice enough, and when we haven’t practiced change and coping and navigating newness then the bar for tolerance, gets very low…
So that everything new, new people, new ways, different moves, new languages, new faces, new noises, new workspace, new colleuges, new ways of doing, new process…
Our bodies and are minds are not prepared for it, and so we react like we would to anything we might perceive as dangerous… we freeze, fight or flee…
We become very sensitive to newness and this sensitivity comes from of lack of practice in adversity. Play is practice for adversity and difference.
Play is where we learned to play with who was on the team because that is where your stick was, and to bend a little when things weren’t perfect. And we learned to create the playing field for everyone…not just to level it.
What if we practiced changing direction, and falling down, and navigating new, un standardized , unknown and uncertain a little more?
Just a thought from the playground today but consider Can play through our lifetime change the fierceness of our reactions to people , experiences and places different from who we are and where we have been?
Come on in this playground is for everyone
With greatest thank to my incredible husband...