CREATING AN HARMONIOUS ENVIRONMENT
“At heart, we scientists are lucky people: we can play every game our whole life long”
Lee Smolin
We have been reflecting on the basis that teams should be encouraged to reach goals in a harmonious and enjoyable environment. We have conceptualized it in 6 main ideas:
Culture: habitat
Values and working patterns agreed, shared and accepted by all team members.
Empathy: relationships
Colleagues able to stop focusing only on themselves to understand, accept and include all sensibilities and points of view of the rest of the team members.
Trust: safety
The feeling of being part of competitive, congruent and transparent team.
Investment: individual contribution
Evaluate which and how many resources everyone is willing to share in order to reach team goals.
Build: to be and to do
The wish to be part of a team that develops meaningful, relevant and motivational projects
Collaborate: relationships
Involvement in complementary work to reach goals while enjoying the process, learnings, persons involved, the moment and the results.
It is important to think about these concepts when planning a team event, re-think and re-define the objectives of the event in order to design go for the right solution, as mentionned games, when shared, are more fun!
PLAYING: A FULL-TIME JOB
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life”
Confucius
A team game, competitive, collaborative, that thrives on opposition and is based on complex codification could be a sport game or simply a sport. If we include the concept of “business”, these words define the role of an organisation and its teamwork. In any case, both actions:
- Require physical, cognitive and social investment
- Follow goals or are set to solve a problem
- Include rules that have to be known and accepted by everyone involved
- Require abilities, attitudes, strategy and luck
- Require interactivity
- Generate stimulations that help you gain skills that foster personal development
- Are based on the participants, who are responsible for their results and learnings
- Have an important emotional part, the key for success
- Are dynamic and evolutive: participants have to adapt themselves to the changing characteristics, rules and functions
- If played, quality relations will be created and therefore it will be easier to count on creative, pro-active, compromised and stimulated participants
When we ask ourselves why we play, we tend to answer that we play because it is fun. This is the big thing with playing: although it is a multifaceted teaching resource, its deepest secret is the simplicity and the human need to experience it.
The recreational activity is an essential concern for every person, and it is a sign of health and enjoyment.
