Brad Eather (00:01.72)
Hello and welcome to the Selling Creative Podcast, a podcast exploring creativity's role in sales and business. I'm your host, Brad Ather, a digital communication sales strategist, helping establish businesses and sales teams sell on social. Now, I'm sure we can all agree that being a kid was fun. We've all got memories of taking off and building dirt jumps, giving characters and role playing with our favorite dolls.
or simply making up a silly game with whatever materials we can find around us. But as we get older and we grow into adults, I'm sure many of us would argue that life gets subjectively less fun. Well, my next guest would argue that that doesn't have to be the case. That play as an adult is actually central to building stronger workplace communities, problem solving, and learning and leadership. So if...
Having more fun sounds like your jam. Please welcome to the show, Chief Play Officer at Lead With Play, Erin Faehrmann Welcome.
Erin Faehrmann (01:05.069)
Hi, thank you. So great to be here, Brad.
Brad Eather (01:11.138)
Well, I'm glad you could join us. Erin, just want to put this conversation into perspective for the audience. Your expertise is essentially around change management. Is that right?
Erin Faehrmann (01:26.402)
Yeah, that's my day job these days, yeah, business change management.
Brad Eather (01:28.91)
Yeah. So with respect to play, could you could you I'm sure there's a lot of people thinking what what is a chief play officer. So could you sort of give us a little insight into what your role as a chief play officer is?
Erin Faehrmann (01:37.678)
Mm-hmm.
Erin Faehrmann (01:44.47)
Sure. Thank you. So yeah, Lead with Play is my social enterprise. It employs one person, me. That's it. It's just me and my cats and my husband when I rope him in. And prior to the current day job I have and running my social enterprise, as well as a bit of a portfolio career, I was the chief executive officer of a national youth nonprofit. And so you inherit titles when you go to organizations. They give you a title. You apply for a job.
But when you start your own company, you can call yourself whatever you like. So I went from being a chief executive to a chief play officer. Because when I started Lead with Play and helping adults, former kids, bring more playback into their lives and their families, their workplaces and communities, I wanted to live and breathe it. So what better way than to call yourself a chief play officer? So it is just a CEO, but it sounds cooler. And there are heaps of us around the world. You can Google chief play officer, know, call yourself whatever you want.
But yeah, so it just means that I run this social enterprise working with adults in lots of different contexts, helping them explore how play might help bring them back to themselves, back to more creative thinking and back to more connection and genuine psychological safety. Everybody's getting real. We're not all being too nice. We're really kind of increasing the heat to solve complex problems, have difficult conversations and play is really great at helping with all of those things.
And that is for anyone who knows what business change management is, often paraphrase it as saying I just help adults process their big feelings about what's changing. A lot is changing in our worlds all the time. My job is to help folks move through change in a way that's going to help us achieve business outcomes while not causing damage along the way. And a lot of that is having emotional reactions and talking through what the future is going to look like. And I'm lucky that in my day job, yeah, I get to do lots of playful ways of doing that.
Brad Eather (03:39.04)
So why do you think we as adults feel like we need to ask permission to have fun and play?
Erin Faehrmann (03:48.118)
Well, it's a really good question. It's just designed out of us. You think about, you know, you said before childhood, it's a really mixed experience for lots of folks, but most of us experienced quite high levels of freedom and autonomy to kind of choose where we sat, how we sat. You could hang upside down on your couch, you could swing off a tree, and then you go to school and you've got to sit at desks and you have to do, I live near a school, so I hear the lunch bell all the time. It just triggers me. I'm like, to eat. As an adult, like we
do get to choose a lot of those things and we did before we went to school. But we kind of get all of this choice and autonomy designed out. Then there's school uniforms so you can't dress how you want and you can't speak up when you want and you're told to be nice to people but you don't really know how to yet because you're a kid. And so as we get older we kind of unlearn a lot of that in the big part of our day. And then we have to kind of work out how to be
different when we're not at school, like we get to be our real selves and that just translates into work. When we're at work, we're our work self. When we're not at work, we've got to redo ourselves. call it, you know, contact switching, like personality switching, the whiplash of like, woohoo, I'm out of work. I can go do what I want. I can be who I want. Well, often that we don't even realize that we're fitting molds, that we don't switch back. We just stay there like, this is work me. I guess this is me now.
And a lot of folks tell me, I do a lot of crowd sourcing celebrations, like where people have tried to do play in professional settings and it's tanked, it's not gone well, or celebrations where they've tried and it's gone well. And why don't we do it so much? And what I hear fairly consistently is there seems to be a relationship between professionalism and emotions that don't mix. It's not professional to have emotions. You know, you've got to be professional and that means not being emotional, not...
challenging people openly about ideas and directions, not laughing in the workplace or wearing like silly clothes. And so I think we often in lots of industries learn that they don't go together, they're oil and water. And my work is to try and re-blend them, bring them back so that you're not spending so much energy on personality switching, on trying to work out how to have cultural safety because you've designed it out and bring more of ourselves to our everyday.
Brad Eather (06:09.582)
Cause you've touched on a couple of things. One of them is you sort of outlined the experience of the freedom to be yourself in the workplace. And I think that what that comes down to is workplace culture. And you gave me a couple of resources to read before we jumped on the podcast and.
Erin Faehrmann (06:31.054)
Did I give you homework?
Brad Eather (06:34.434)
And some of the things that I sort of learned around play in the workplace were just four bullet points. Leadership, motivation, collaboration and resilience. And I think that all of those speak to a positive workplace culture. So I was wondering, like, what advice would you give to leaders that are perhaps hesitant to introduce play and that freedom?
into their organization.
Erin Faehrmann (07:05.388)
Yeah, such a good question. guess knowing that why you're doing it is so that you're going to help people to show up authentically and have conversations really honestly to get the best outcomes from the most people. So if you're grounded in your why, you know that's why you want to do it, then it's just a solution to that. There are a lot of folks who work in the professional play setting who focus mostly on the play. I focus mostly on the why. What are you actually trying to achieve? That's how Erin
You run Lego workshops, I want you to come in and run a workshop. I say, I can, but why? What are you trying to achieve? If you just want people to play with Lego at lunchtime, I'll just bring the Lego in, it's fun, they can just play with it. But what I'd much rather do is purposeful play. Let's achieve something while we're doing this. And you're just changing the way that you do your normal work. So as long as folks are really focused on, why do you wanna do that? Is it so that you can build connection and cultural safety in your teams? Is it so you can flesh out more creative ideas?
Is it so that people feel more comfortable speaking up when times are tough? Then, okay, let's look at what that looks like. And you can talk to me about then what play modalities and what kind of games and tools we can add in there. Or you can go to chat GPT, Google it. There's a million options once you know your why, because if you don't know your why, it's a bit like any kind of cultural change programs. You just go, they're doing yoga, let's do yoga.
Google does beanbags, let's do beanbags. And you've really got no idea if your investment is actually achieving what it is that you want to achieve. Yoga and beanbags are useful if what you're trying to achieve are things that yoga and beanbags deliver on. So that would be my advice to leaders. Get really clear on what is it that you're trying to do in your culture. And then from there, do some research or talk to some folks about the different types of interventions that'll get you there. Because there's a million things we could try.
Brad Eather (08:59.342)
And I think from a sales perspective that that kind of approach, you you're trying to identify what the actual issue is and there's sales people out there that might
be looking at adopting a collaborative selling approach. And I think that some of these exercises that I'm sure we'll talk about today could be adopted to actually get mutual outcomes for customers in a more fun way. What are we trying to achieve? What can we bring them through that process in a more fun and collaborative way? What's the other thing that with regards to leadership that I found really interesting was you drew my attention to the fact that
everybody has an individual play style and they're broken up. From a leadership perspective, what does understand or maybe talk us through what are some of those individual play styles and what does that what does that teach you from a leadership perspective about how you should approach this kind of this kind of process?
Erin Faehrmann (09:48.948)
Yeah?
Erin Faehrmann (10:09.1)
Yeah, such a great question. Thank you. So you're right. I'll sometimes have leaders come to me and say, all right, I want some team building activity or a leader recently saying that they're using an internal culture pulse check survey. And that's telling them that the teams are at an all time low for energy and all time high for stress. So that's the problem that they're trying to kind of work towards. Great leaders asking questions about what do I do with that? And so often I'll start with the play styles quiz.
eight adult play styles. They were created by Dr Stuart Brown and his book Play. There's a really great online quiz that someone, called Louise has adapted into like an online personality profiling quiz, know, 10 or something questions and it goes, bing, here's your play style. Like all kind of personality profiling, it's take it, you know,
with a pinch of salt, don't go getting it tattooed on your head or anything, but it's supposed to help inform you and remind you that not everyone's the same. Fun's not fun if it's not fun. So I never promise people they're going to have fun. I say, I'm going to invite you to play. It might be fun. It's definitely going to help us work towards an outcome and it's going to be memorable. I can guarantee that, but you actually might not have fun. Sometimes choosing growth is not fun. So the play styles are there to remind us that there's
that the fun and play what people prefer can vary quite a lot. And if a leader wants to start having those sorts of conversations with teams, like appreciating each other's diversity, understanding people's preferences, how they can work better together, how they can bond better together. So often, you know, it'll be leaders saying like, keep doing all of these forced fun activities like Pizza Friday or Amazing Race Adventure.
games and like people call in sick for them, don't turn up and it's clicky. There's always like six people have fun and everybody hates it, rolls their eyes. You're like, yeah, you're not really having an inclusive team situation that's helping build the team's cultural fit together. You're just kind of reinforcing what's there. So we do the play styles quiz. I get everyone to kind of, you know, put dots on the poster of like, here's the eight. What have we got? Have we got any directors? Have we got any competitors? So the competitors.
Brad Eather (11:59.448)
Mmm.
Brad Eather (12:13.838)
Mm.
Erin Faehrmann (12:25.934)
Competition is, you know, it's a play style. Some people really love to compete with others or even themselves. And they love the amazing race quiz. They love that stuff. I don't have a competitive bone in my body. I used to play competitive sports. I really love to explore. I'm an explorer. So I like to meet people, learn things, listen to pod, listen to your podcast, even though we're like in not entirely similar industries. I just like to learn and know things. I'm curious.
There are creators, there's like artsy people, crafty people. There's kinesithetes. They want to run and jump. Sticking them in a room like a movie night would be just awful. They're fidgeting after five minutes. They want to go for a hike. These people want to, you know, run around. They want to move their bodies and do things. Yeah, there's a whole range of them. And one of the styles is a director. So I always say if you've got a director in your team, that means somebody finds it fun to plan stuff.
Brad Eather (13:24.814)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (13:25.046)
If you've got a director, that's who's planning your team culture days because it's fun for them. Let them do it. Give them the play styles and say, design a play day, a team day. I work in the agile world, agile sprints, our once a year sales huddle. You design that for us. Here's all our play styles. You work out how to hit them all. Let that person do it because they'll have fun doing it.
Brad Eather (13:53.422)
Because I think like during this podcast, one of the fundamental questions that I'm asking is what it means to be creative. And breaking down those play styles, I find what I'm discovering more and more is that creativity is different for everybody. And there's obvious that that play style that is the creator is the artist, the one that's inherently like they're all in on creativity.
And that's the sort of idea that a lot of people have about what it means to be creative. And I'd like to think that this podcast is challenging that notion and that creativity can exist in much smaller ways in your life, whether it is that ability to bring people together and be that director, for example.
or the explorer like yourself, I did the quiz and I'm an explorer too, bringing, researching and getting different ideas and bringing them together to present, know, I think that there's real parallels between these play styles and perhaps the creativity aspect of what people are, how people choose to apply creativity.
Erin Faehrmann (15:09.452)
Yeah. Some of my, the folks that I know who are salespeople are often explorers because they are exploring how somebody's needs will be met in different ways. What's the product or service mix that's going to meet your needs? What's hard for you? What's great for you? Where are you headed? And I'm really, that's actually really fun for me to know that. And then to try and solve that creative problem of how could I support where you're going? How can I work out your price point?
much you're willing to pay for that. And so you are creating while you're exploring all of these possibilities about how you can put a product and service mix together and or go into partnership with someone or win them over, like sell them the idea that play is a legitimate professional practice. Like, so I'm normally selling his ideas in business change and in my social enterprise, I'm often helping to sell a vision of a future or a solution to a problem they might not even realize they have.
I know you feel comfortable where you are right now, you understand your processes and your systems, but for reasons we need to shift and you're selling this future world that they're like, but I don't want to change, I want to stay where I am.
Brad Eather (16:23.02)
I think like it comes back to the change management piece like progress is so uncomfortable sometimes so you know trying to put yourself in a position to actually improve is going to be uncomfortable and I kind of like the approach of bringing play into that because all if some if an organization has been used to doing one thing for a long time and it's not working anymore
getting a whole bunch of people on board and heading in the same direction. That's challenging. You know, how many times I could, I've been in organizations before where change has meant redundancies. And, you know, I think that someone coming in and actually guiding people and, and encouraging people or what's the inspiring people to move towards the same goal. you know, it takes that,
It brings everybody along the ride and actually means that you can use your own resources without having that fear of redundancy hanging over your back.
Erin Faehrmann (17:22.284)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (17:29.58)
Yeah, it's the reality, like in change management, we can't be false prophets. We have to be really real with people and everybody in the world of change management, there's often this model of, they call it ad-car, but it just means every collective change is the result of individual changes. So let's talk about that situation. Sometimes there are changes that lead to redundancies and people know that that means they might not know yet, is it me?
I don't know, it might be me or it might be Brad, one of us is gonna go, who knows? And that's very real emotional response. And so the change that we're helping inspire people is for them. Like this organization has to go forward and it has to do that and it has to end up with only one of us here at the end of the day. That's what it has to do. What you have to do is find the opportunity in this change because you can't come along on the companies, you're like, I'm really glad the company's.
working better and I'm not here anymore and I'm out of a job. Like that's, you can't ask someone to be behind that. But what you can do is say to them, what does this change mean for you? What does the future hold for you then? If not here, then where? How does this create an opportunity for you to be elsewhere, reskill, do different things? Where's the opportunity in this change? Because it's happening potentially anyway to you. Or how can you be more open to the options? This is a creativity and innovation is just being open to options.
Brad Eather (18:27.18)
Mm.
Erin Faehrmann (18:50.882)
So maybe I'll still have a job, maybe I won't. If I don't, what is that? What doors does that open for me? If I stay, the company will be different, I might have a job, but what doors does it open for me if we're upgrading this, moving there, changing locations, combining things, whatever. There's opportunities in all those things. As much as there are downsides, you have to live with both of them.
Brad Eather (19:12.792)
So we're talking about resiliency and I think there's always a little bit of, there's the individual in these situations and then there's workplace, right? So maybe just to bring it back to play, how does play influence the individual's ability to adapt to change in a situation like a big merger, for example?
Erin Faehrmann (19:15.747)
Yes.
Erin Faehrmann (19:34.446)
Mm.
Erin Faehrmann (19:39.17)
Yeah, great question. So we'll take it back to the animal kingdom that a lot of young animals, mammals, lions, tigers, cubs, puppies, whatever, they play because they're learning social norms. They're learning how far can I push my brother before he bites me back. So it's scenarios. You're just running simulations and you're testing the boundaries of things. And so it's a safe way to experiment with something.
and say, okay, so you know, I can imagine as we're talking like, I can imagine running some kind of workshop either one-on-one or in a group and we're simulating. what if we get merged and acquired? Let's play out how that looks. Let's look at the stuff that's tough, but then also let's open some doors on opportunities. So you're simulating, you're leaning into, you're considering, but nobody's telling you by the way you have to sign off on this at the end. Like it's not a decision-making conversation.
Brad Eather (20:28.174)
Hmm.
Erin Faehrmann (20:30.316)
It's an exploring conversation, looking at boundaries, seeing it from different views, hearing from other people. And often you'll come out of those conversations going, that one big awful thing has been acknowledged. It's still there. And I now have 20 potentially cool things that we've thought through, considered, leaned into that I hadn't even looked at before because I wasn't, I was doing it through this fear. I was doing it in meetings.
You have a consultation meeting where people write things down and it's like a list and then you've got to sign off on it. In play, we're trying to design more freedom, less structure. And we're saying that we're not writing this stuff down to say, Brad, on section two, when we did the Lego share, you said, it's like we're simulating, we're exploring. So it increases the resilience because resilience is about understanding, will I be okay no matter what comes?
the core concept of resilience is you can go through tough times but the confidence in yourself that I will be okay whatever may come that's resilience whether there's a lot or a little going on for me and so when you're playing and simulating and talking through and hearing other people's perspectives and really spending some time thinking it through then you're more likely to increase your confidence that okay I've seen what could come
Brad Eather (21:36.718)
Hmm.
Erin Faehrmann (21:51.874)
I think I'm a bit more ready for it than I would have been if I hadn't even engaged in it, didn't talk to anybody about it, didn't hear other views on it. So just exploring what could be possible.
Brad Eather (22:02.028)
Yeah. So that that's an example of like, recognizing a problem of moving forward. And that's probably, I don't know, maybe some, one of the first steps that an organization might need to figure out what's actually happening and where the problems lie. But I think that if we're moving forward through the, the organization sort of process, the next sort of thing would be motivation, right?
So how would you say that integrating play into workplace contributes to sort of that intrinsic motivation among employees to give them their, to be able to trust that they are motivated to just continue going on the path that they're going on, you know, because they are intrinsically motivated by what the company's doing.
Erin Faehrmann (22:58.08)
Yeah, great question. Well, I guess the first thing that comes to mind when you ask me that is the work of Dan Pink from probably 20 years ago now that talks about motivation. The three factors that lead to it is autonomy, mastery and purpose. So if an individual human has autonomy, mastery and purpose, they will be motivated. They are motivated. And it's similar to the models that my previous work I mentioned, I a youth not for profit was working with teenagers in really difficult situations.
to help them take control of their own lives, no matter what was going on around them. And there was some really awful stuff going on around these kids, these teenagers. But we would teach them through these leadership programs that no matter what comes your way, you have to lead yourself forward in life. You can navigate what comes. And a lot of that was helping them increase their autonomy, their mastery and their purpose. What are you here for? What are you trying to achieve? If you know what your part of the puzzle is, then
Automatically that makes it a lot easier to play. If you don't know, like, you know what, could just not turn up to work today and no one had noticed. That's not very motivating for people. The mastery is the skills. Like, okay, I think I'm pretty good at my job or, you know, always challenging myself to keep growing and learning, but I'm not out of my depth. Like I kind of, I know what I'm doing and I can get on with doing it and keep challenging. And then the autonomy is do I have control over the things?
about how I do my job, where I do my job, what, yeah, and for some people it's what they wear, where they sit, whether they're working from home or the office, whether they drive the company car or their own car, whatever autonomy. Am I allowed to discount for a customer or do I have to get three managers to approve? Like can I, do I have autonomy to manage this relationship in this moment or not? And so the more we can up those three things, the more we increase motivation. So we talked about play helps with mastery because you're exploring.
What could the future look like? What if I did it this way? What if I did that? You know, this is why they have role plays in so many sales trainings. So you're literally just trying to increase someone's mastery so that when they are performing in the moment, they're more ready for it. They've simulated it. So play is really good for that. With autonomy and purpose, all of those conversations around why are you here? What are you doing? How do you fit in the team? What are your strengths? What do you need when you're not at your best? They're the types of questions that I facilitate through play workshops.
Erin Faehrmann (25:17.206)
And all of that helps increase their sense of purpose and their shared sense of purpose. Why are we here? What are we doing? What are we aiming for? And their autonomy around, particularly the one I use a lot is, what do you need to be your best at work? And what do you need when you're not your best at work? I run a Lego serious play workshop around that. And they're two really good questions that people have an opportunity to talk about what they need in terms of autonomy and the support that's required.
So they might say, I need flexibility that on a bad day, I can go home and just work from home with my dog at my foot. Like a lot of people mentioned they want to be with their puppies while they're working. And so it helps people explore like, where are your boundaries? Like, I don't care, I don't have a dog, but I really want to be able to turn up late because it's leg day on Wednesday. It's going to take longer to get to work. Like that's my version of autonomy. And taking it to cultural safety, is just about recognising everyone's different.
Brad Eather (26:05.175)
you
Erin Faehrmann (26:14.604)
And if we can get the job done, but show up how we can be our best while getting the job done, you will get more done. You'll be more motivated because you're not spending so much energy fitting into somebody else's idea of how you should do your job. And Play lets you explore all that in a much safer way than you and I just sitting here, right, Brad, right, what do you need in your job? Come on, list it out for me, mate. And you're like, gee, this is high stakes. You know, we're just.
It's a lot lower stakes. You can kind of talk it through, bring in bit of banter and yeah, it's a lot easier to talk it through that way.
Brad Eather (26:47.512)
think that a lot of people, you know, you just spoke to the camera and sort of role played what a strict manager might look like. People, when they ask questions like that, they don't necessarily know the answers to their right, like, what are they feeling? Like, what do they need? If you ask someone what they need, they're just going to give you an answer whether or not that's actually what they need or not, right?
Erin Faehrmann (27:13.902)
Yeah, often, yeah. Or they'll crack open and you'll go, sheesh, what have I started? It'll go out the way. No, everything's fine, or like 10 hours later, after life history.
Brad Eather (27:17.703)
I like
Yeah.
Brad Eather (27:28.78)
I just, I just think that, having that space to be able to explore that question, you know, what do you need? yeah, I think that's really beneficial. Even if you do it by yourself and, and just instead of what do you need to say, okay, what I need right now is to go and think about what I need and then, and then, and then bring it back to the table. Right. Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (27:51.795)
Yes!
Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we had that answer? I don't know about you. I often talk about like on my best days, on my best day, I would do something like that. And many days I would just sit there like a stunned rabbit and go, I don't know, everything's fine. Yeah, it's a great point. So a hack and, know, heaps of your listeners will know this already and they might not know the term for it though is parallel play. So a lot of the play work that we're doing is drawing on the principles of parallel play that you're not
looking face to face straight into each other's eyes. So this is why folks often say, it's easier to talk to their kids when they're driving because, you know, passenger here, you're driving, you're not looking at each other. It's why people do walk and talks. It's why lots of things, good things happen on the golf course because people, you know, they're golfing next to each other, not looking directly at each other. So if you ever do want to have a conversation like the ones we're talking about, you know, without play, just go and have that conversation.
Go and sit on a park bench and don't look in each other's eyes because it will automatically increase the psychological safety of the conversation. Just sitting and stare. And it's hard when you're on Zoom and Teams or whatever a lot, you are automatically looking at each other. So I have so many fidget toys here. If someone's asking me questions like that, I'm not looking at them. I'm playing with fidget toys and looking down, even though they're like potentially staring right at me. yeah. So a lot of the play like the Lego series play, the nature play.
Brad Eather (29:16.398)
Mmm.
Erin Faehrmann (29:23.438)
is being alongside each other, not face to face. And that will automatically eliminate some of that. And the other one that folks might have heard about is liberating structures. There's a one, two, four. So you're giving people time to think. Give them two to three minutes to think in LEGO Serious Play. It's two or three minutes to build. So ask your question. You build something, put some LEGO together. You're not expected to talk or listen. It's just two or three minutes. You just think for yourself. Like, oh, geez, I don't know.
question I've never been asked so I don't even know I'll just put stuff together see what happens and then we pair up in small groups just Brad and Erin talking to each other it's just one conversation it's alright we're not going to 50 people and then we start to open it up to okay now you know what what did you hear at your table key themes so the level of risk and personal sharing is quite low and you can build it because coming straight in with something really yeah being like why is everybody so mad today? It's a really big question.
And you'll either go one way or the other. No, we're not. well, I'll tell you why and I'm calling the union. And both are just as scary for a leader. Like, you don't know. I don't want the rant and I don't want the shutdown.
Brad Eather (30:27.084)
Yeah.
Brad Eather (30:35.704)
Hmm. So, I want to bring it back. We were talking about motivation and you've listed the three points. I believe it was mastery, automate, autonomy and purpose.
Erin Faehrmann (30:47.15)
Yep, that Dan pinks work.
Brad Eather (30:49.602)
Yeah, when, when I read, sort of sports leadership books, those themes come up a lot when it comes to creating teams, like, you know, when they're talking about what, goes into creating that, that, that team that's going to make the final and quite often their, their autonomy is a big one and having trust in
your role and having trust that the person next to you knows what their role is. And they're all going to be working together because everybody's got a clear sort of structure. So understanding your role, understanding trust in others. And I think that in the workplace setting, like, you you read those books, that's the top 1%. And maybe we don't necessarily think about being the top 1 % in business always.
But I think what that conversation does sort of push towards is this idea of collaboration and how we can collaborate better within the structure of an organization. So whether it's the marketing team and the sales, which is a conversation that I like to align, you know, it's all about aligning marketing and sales. So what kind of play helps facilitate better communication?
and collaboration amongst those diverse teams, maybe putting it into perspective of that motivation piece. Yeah, what kind of play facilitates better communication and collaborations amongst work units?
Erin Faehrmann (32:27.468)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (32:35.532)
Yeah, it's a great question. I would go back to the why and say collaboration is a solution to what problem? Why are you trying to collaborate? Because if I'm just trying to decide what I want for dinner and my husband starts trying to collaborate with me on that and it's just, no, go away. I'm deciding what I want for dinner. If I'm an executive leader and I've got a really clear mandate from my CEO about what I need to do, I don't want to collaborate on that. I've been told what to do.
Brad Eather (32:48.878)
Bye.
Brad Eather (33:05.294)
Mm.
Erin Faehrmann (33:05.496)
So I guess in the context you're talking about, collaboration is, what we might assume from that is, collaboration is required because multiple people need to come together to be successful. So let's assume that's the context, because it often is, right? I can't do this by myself, I need other people, either skills, other views, more bodies. Like you can't win a football team against a whole site and just one human. I need coverage. So again, I'd go back to like, well, what is it that you're
trying to achieve. Sounds like increasing our collaboration and our trust that each other is doing their part would be useful. Okay well let's see if you got is it an office environment can we take him outside if we can take him outside that's great you know you could do the old classic trustful yeah sure. I always love Lego series play so what I'd probably do is any anytime that people can see that they are only a part of the whole.
Let's be humble here. You cannot do everything yourself. You might think that you've been here longest and you know everything and everyone should listen to you, but let's really make it clear that all of the pieces of puzzle are required to be successful. So I'd probably get them to design like, Brad, everybody build me a little Lego model about your specific role in this company or process or customer relationship. And you'd build a creation and then I'd build a creation.
Okay, great. Now we're going to combine all of those models into a single model. So how do they relate to each other? How do the parts fit? Why Brad, why are you trying to put your model on top of everybody's? Cause you think you're the king of the castle. No, yours is alongside everyone's because see Erin's model here, she's bringing in marketing strategy and that's not in your model, right? So we need to click them together. We'll literally build them together with chains and links and bits of Meccano and whatever. We're going to connect them and you're going to visually see we are a connected group, very different.
humans with different skills and different roles, but we cannot be successful with, you know, maybe we've built a tower with a customer or something on it. It requires all the pieces, doesn't it? So let's reflect on what are all the pieces we bought. What happens? Let's take one out now. What happens if we take Brad out? Remember that time Erin went on leave for three months and everything fell over? Let's take that out. Let's simulate what comes in next time Erin's away for three months. Let's build a model of that. Here, let's build a new puzzle piece.
Erin Faehrmann (35:23.374)
And that's the way you kind of simulate and really help people go, yeah, I do really wish everyone had just listened to me, but I kind of get it now.
Brad Eather (35:32.621)
just visualizing the process.
Erin Faehrmann (35:35.33)
Yeah, it's just, you know, the kinesites, the people with kinesite play styles understand like you have to experience something with your body and you have to listen to other humans and see for a fully immersive change. In this situation, you're often talking about it's not a lack of knowledge. It's often a lack of a difference in belief. You know, it's the hero complex, the burnout complex. Like what is it that's stopping people from understanding that as one human, you can't be everything.
You need other people. know, sales and marketing have to work together. Why don't you really get that? Like, a lot of us get that. It's not, it can't be a lack of data.
Brad Eather (36:10.306)
Hmm. Well, I think maybe, maybe it's
I think that everybody understands that they should be working together. It's asking it's, but it's understanding how they work together. You know, like, like, I think that, often it's
Erin Faehrmann (36:24.706)
Yes.
Brad Eather (36:33.932)
The role of the sales role and the marketing role don't quite understand what each other do. And if you don't understand what each other do, you can't break it down into what's my role and what's your role and how, what's the information that you need to provide me to allow me to do my job quickly and not, and not, you know, so that there's a constant communication thread that's just going to and from.
and everybody's at a speed, let's say, moving towards the same direction and not sitting there twiddling their thumbs, sending emails saying, you said you were gonna do this and the other person hasn't done it because they don't even understand what they were asked in the first place.
Erin Faehrmann (37:20.61)
Yes. And so you're right. This is where again, if a client came in and said, I want to do a team building between sales and marketing, I'd say, what is the problem you think you're trying to solve? Are you solving a problem where they don't understand how the processes interrelate and affect each other? Are you trying to solve a problem where we're pretty sure we know that we need to work better together, but we just don't know how? Are you trying to solve a problem that they don't even know that they should be working together? And they're doing that siloed blaming of like,
Well, if Brad just did what he was told and just followed our procedures and Brad's like, if, well, if they just understood what actually happens in the real world, what problem? Because I mean, the play style, might still be that I'd say we're going to do play styles, we're going to do a Lego workshop and we're going to have a couple of follow-up coaching sessions. Like the intervention might be the same, but the questions are different and how I design the day. And whenever I work with engineers or salespeople, I'll always say like, look, I'm assuming
Brad Eather (37:56.948)
Yeah.
Brad Eather (38:11.747)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (38:19.214)
Many of them are competitive. They like a bit of competition. Yeah, let's throw a bit of that in. Always throw in a competition for fun. Engineers love to build things, so they have a tower challenge. Salespeople love to talk, so I give them like a build why your team's the best and we'll let ChatGPT decide who wins. know, like let them have a bit of fun and competition as well as having those conversations about what really grinds your gears? How could we be doing better together? And there is a concept in
in social complex adaptive thinking that says we have to gang up on the problem, not up on each other. What is the problem? That anytime you hear people go, well, if they just this or they didn't that or as per my email, you're like, well, it sounds like we're ganging up on each other, not the problem or the opportunity, right? Like in sales, hopefully you're mostly working in opportunity space. Like we could have sold them twice as much. We could have got that client and we didn't. And sometimes folks don't see the opportunity cost.
And that's where you kind of, yeah, ideally you want to be working there. Like we're doing okay, but we could be in the top 1%. And people with competitive play styles, they'll be thinking about the top 1%. So if you, yeah, similarly you've got people who like, I mean, we're doing okay, I don't know what the problem is, Brad. I mean, like, can't we just all just like clock off at five and do our jobs? You've got some folks with some competitive play styles. You can like, let's run some stuff that says, what would it look like to be in the top 1 %? Like, what would it take?
Brad Eather (39:27.33)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (39:44.684)
I'm not saying there's any money. I'm not saying we can do any of this, but like, let's just imagine and play with that. Let's just go there. See, because maybe there'll be some stuff we go, actually, I reckon we could do that. Actually, now people are a bit excited about that idea. Okay, but can I bring my dog to the office? Okay, well then fine, let's go. You can work it out.
Brad Eather (40:03.166)
I think that just the nature of how sales is set up as targets, you've got to reach the end of the month and you've got activity targets. Often, from my experience, sales teams can be hesitant to even engage with something like a play day because it's a day off the phones and that's going to directly affect their commission.
And what I think needs to happen is often the sales team need to get their head out of the sand and start thinking about the organization as a whole. And maybe because if the organization's operating at full effect, it's only going to help their sales efforts. Do you know what I mean? I don't, I don't really have a question there, but is it, you have anything? Yeah. Do you have anything?
Erin Faehrmann (40:54.198)
It's a great reflection. Yeah, I do. And it brings to mind my time in the social impact world where there's this amazing quote by Desmond Tutu that says, we have to stop pulling people out of the river and go upstream and see why they're falling in. it's the Eisenhower matrix of importance and urgency. Like a lot of people work on, I mean, my husband works in incident management, so he loves urgent, important, he loves to hang out there. And yesterday someone just said to him, would you like
career as a project manager, we'd love to have you. It's like, no, it's important, but not urgent. That's boring for me. I like the like now, now, now. And as leaders, we're told so often in any leadership training, yeah, okay, sometimes crap will hit the fan. You have to deal with it. It's important and it's urgent. But actually as a leader, most of your time should be on the important non-urgent building relationships, making sure the process flows, the things upstream are working, making sure the integration between teams is running smoothly.
don't have the important urgent issues. If you're hanging out down there in incident management and you're not an incident manager, you're not being a good leader. You need to go upstream. so teams that do invest in that sort of stuff, whether, it's an offsite day or even just the time like Brad, you and I are peers. We should go for coffee once a month. Let's go, let's go hang out and have some coffee, right? I'm not selling to you, you're not selling to me. We're bonding, we're building relationships together, one-on-ones with your manager. Like those are important and not urgent.
things that we're investing in so that you avoid the issues and build the likelihood that you're going to have more opportunities to leverage. And I get it when like the day to day onslaught is there, you're like drowning in the river. Like it's easy to say go upstream Erin, but I'm literally drowning. It's not always easy, but we can keep asking ourselves like, would it be more useful for me to break this tide? And I'd often in the charity world, I was in the charity world, say we were literally sweeping back the ocean.
You can give me another thousand dollars. can train another young person. I'm sweeping back the ocean. Oh, there you go. There's one. Guess what? There's six million that I didn't get to. We need game changing here. This is like every person matters. Of course they do. And I'm glad people get pulled out of rivers. I'm not saying don't pull people out of rivers, but thinking about where you're spending your time and your energy and whether you're and some folks might be like, I don't want to deal with all that back office. at my husband. I don't want to do like long term project management sounds.
Erin Faehrmann (43:18.254)
boring, that's not for me. So again, like play styles and understanding personalities, you know, put that guy on the phones, put that one back in big relationship management or put somebody in between marketing and sales who really wants to get them collaborating and then just feed the information over. Maybe not everybody has to spend all their days collaborating, you know, once you kind of, yeah, know people's aptitudes because they might be not working in their genius zones. If you're trying to force them to be in an office and do things that they don't want to do.
Brad Eather (43:48.43)
Yeah. So we've sort of got to the point now where, uh, I think we can talk about some strategies, maybe put into, into real, put into context, play and actually do a game. So, um, I wanted to like, let's reflect on the conversation, maybe pick a problem. Um, and let's play a game. Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (44:14.614)
Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, I said to you earlier, Brad, really love the best way to get people playing is to invite them to play. Like, have to experience it. Like, I want to play. Well, let's play. So actually, interestingly, you and I both wearing kind of greyish jumpers for anybody that's like driving and not watching. We're both wearing like grey, but mine's got sparkles all over it. Doesn't mean yours has to have sparkles, but this is one of the ways that I'll often encourage people to start playing individually is dopamine dressing.
Brad Eather (44:22.861)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (44:44.642)
Now for a lot of people that's sparkles and colors and whatever, but it actually just means anything that you feel comfortable in. So if that means wearing some fun socks your kids gave you underneath your business suit, then that's dopamine dressing. If it means wearing fun Superman jocks, that's fun. Wear those. It can also mean like sparkles and stuff. So that's a really simple way for every single human to start.
thinking about what can I wear on my body every day that's just going to make me feel a bit better about myself, more confident, more excited, more comfortable, whatever it is. That's a really easy way to start playing. And then when we get into relational stuff, you go, okay, well, there's a couple of quick games that you and I might play. One would help us get to know each other a bit more, build some connection and some trust. There's another one that just exercises our creative thinking muscle and it's a bit silly. So do you have a preference which one you'd like to play right now?
Brad Eather (45:40.824)
Let's get to know Erin a little bit better.
Erin Faehrmann (45:43.758)
Okay, great. So there's a game that a really quick, well, we can play it quick or we can drag it out called Two Things in Common. And what we'll do is we'll just go backwards and forwards asking each other a question. So I'll say, Brad, do you something something? And we're just gonna go until we find two things we have in common. So if we want it to go really fast, I say, Brad, do you breathe air? And you say, yes. And I say, me too. Do you breathe air? Yes, okay. One thing in common already, we're halfway done.
Brad Eather (46:05.102)
Do I what, sorry?
yes, okay.
Erin Faehrmann (46:12.438)
If you want to drag it out, ask really obscure stuff and see how long you can drag it out. So I'll go first maybe. So Brad, have you had breakfast today?
Brad Eather (46:24.47)
I have, yes.
Erin Faehrmann (46:25.984)
I haven't. Okay, it's not a match. All right, your turn. Ask me a question.
Brad Eather (46:28.054)
Okay. Erin, have have you been to Iceland?
Erin Faehrmann (46:34.061)
No. You have? Amazing. Brad, have you, this is cheating. Brad, have you played with kettlebells this week in the gym? We previously talked about this. Me too. Yeah. I'm cheating on that one. Okay. We found one thing in common. Your turn.
Brad Eather (46:35.788)
No? Yeah, loved it. My favorite holiday.
Brad Eather (46:46.114)
Yes, yes I have.
Yeah, Erin, have you mowed your lawn this week?
Erin Faehrmann (47:00.726)
No, have you? It's been growing like crazy. No. We are setting us up to fail at finding something in common. but no, you haven't. Well, then we do have that in common. Yeah. OK, well done. You took a pump there. OK, great. So we've both done kettlebells and not mow down lawn this week. Yeah, and you could play that in like a big conference room and the energy is just silly. And you can see people like.
Brad Eather (47:02.446)
No. No I haven't, so we've got something in common.
Brad Eather (47:21.964)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (47:29.25)
Do you breathe? Are you alive? Game over. That's fine.
Brad Eather (47:32.728)
But the amount of times that I've been in like places where they just said like, look at the person next to you and ask them a question. And it sort of falls flat. I think that's a way better way to get engaged because you know, all of a sudden, it's it's tit for tat. Like, let's let's see. Let's see what we've got in common.
Erin Faehrmann (47:53.015)
Yes.
Yeah, and I always love seeing like maybe one person wants to speed up the game and one doesn't and that's kind of interesting. And often what I'll do is I'll start playing that game with folks and we're like, we'd normally not be recording a podcast. We'd have more time to go, my God, Iceland, tell me about that. You know, we don't pack that a bit more and your lawn is, yeah, you know, tell me about my garden. So it would spark off these conversations. We won't do it today. Nobody needs to hear all of that. But then you get to the point where
Brad Eather (48:03.064)
Mmm.
Erin Faehrmann (48:24.11)
Yeah, usually it's mutual like, okay, let's wrap this up. We've talked a long time now. So yeah, it can really go forever. And again, the the parallel play concept, like in a conference setting, I'll often say to people a play bow in the mammal world is like for puppies, you know, they get down and they wag their tail, bums in the air. That's a play bow in the kind of the animal kingdom. In the adult human kingdom, it's eye contact.
So if I'm in a conference, let's say, or a big sales meeting or whatever, 30 or something people there, I'll say, okay, I'm going to invite you to play a game and you don't have to. If you want to play, all you do is look around and make eye contact with someone. And if you don't want to play, you just like look at your phone and, I'm taking a call. Just don't make eye contact. That's fine. Nobody's going to go, Brad, Brad, look at me. Look at me. I don't force people to have fun because forced fun is not fun. So always say that you don't have to play.
Brad Eather (49:16.611)
Mm.
Erin Faehrmann (49:18.798)
It's creepy to watch people play. if we're doing something like Lego series play and we're going to be here for like 40 minutes, it's just creepy to watch. So if you don't want to play, can you just leave? Just go make some calls or whatever. It's better if you're not here. And that's again, the autonomy because I'm increasing the autonomy. I'm saying you get to choose how much you're engaging and you might come in later or you might leave entirely. But having you here against your will is not going to motivate you or anybody else around you.
Brad Eather (49:39.256)
Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (49:48.152)
Yeah, so thanks for playing.
Brad Eather (49:48.212)
One, no worries. Thanks for, thanks for thinking of a great game for a podcast. one, one of the things that I've seen before, which I, which I kind of like is when you're having a video conference and let's say there's, I don't know, 40, 50 people on screen playing the agree or disagree game. So everybody has their camera on, you cover it with your hand and you ask a question, do you agree with this or not?
So, Erin, do you think that this is the best podcast you've ever been on? You take your hand off. Yeah. And it gives you a really good visual representation of, know, the feeling of the room, you know, it really sort of gets you in involved. I like that.
Erin Faehrmann (50:25.016)
great. That's fun, I haven't played that one.
Erin Faehrmann (50:37.902)
Yeah, thanks for that. I'll add that to my little box of tricks. That's cool. And a real encouragement to get cameras on because again, sometimes the vibe is like we're a cameras off team and you're like, OK, cameras on because we're to play a game with our hands. And they're like,
Brad Eather (50:41.612)
Yeah. So it's been.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Brad Eather (50:54.926)
Well, I think, I think that something's that's often missed is like that, that physical you, you're sitting behind your screen. You sit, you're going to be sitting behind your screen anyway, whether you're on the video call or not. So the environment hasn't changed and having something physical like really draws you into participation in, in what you're trying to do. And I kind of like it. It sort of breaks up the
the environment a little bit, you know? Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (51:27.608)
Yeah, I I love a good show and tell or a scavenger hunt. You know, like, OK, everybody, we're going to start the meeting today with a scavenger hunt. Go through it, especially if you know they're all like at home. OK, go find me one memory, one favorite toy and your favorite thing to wear. And everyone literally just runs off into their house and gets their things and comes back. Then you can put them in breakout rooms if you haven't got time for everyone. You're like, OK, go in the breakout room and like show and tell us. I got this and then I found this under my cupboard and then I had this thing.
Brad Eather (51:31.246)
Mm.
Brad Eather (51:47.448)
Hahaha
Brad Eather (51:56.398)
you
Erin Faehrmann (51:57.292)
And it's, yeah, it reminds you that you're human, that you have a life. It's really hard to then go, Brad, as per the policy that you have breached now five times after you've just shown me your favorite thing to wear. Because we're connected.
Brad Eather (52:07.32)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I love, I think that the more and more that communication is happening online, there needs to be, you need to do things to break out of a box. Do you know what I mean? Cause I'm seeing you right now in a square box and you lose the physical communication side of things. There's a lot of things that you lose.
Erin Faehrmann (52:27.576)
Mm-hmm.
Brad Eather (52:41.016)
But there are ways around it to bring it back into a feeling of intimacy, I suppose. Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (52:49.378)
Yeah, to build that trust. Yeah.
Brad Eather (52:51.18)
Yeah. Well, Erin, it's been really fun, really fun.
Erin Faehrmann (52:55.798)
Me too, me too, I'm glad.
Brad Eather (52:58.438)
so the final question on the podcast, as always, from your professional experience, from all the play, I'm really excited to hear your answer. What is your definition of creativity?
Erin Faehrmann (53:12.806)
I think creativity is using your imagination to bring to life something that didn't exist before. And I love that you said before, and I listened to your podcast and it does challenge that notion that creativity is artistic. They're completely different things. And again, I grew up being told I wasn't good at art. Like I got Cs and Ds in art, even though I loved it.
And so it wasn't until my late 20s that someone said to me, just because you're not good at art doesn't mean that you're not creative. And it was a mind blowing moment for me. You're the most creative person I know, Erin, you're constantly solving problems. You come up with new ideas about how we're going to do things, combine things in different ways. That's creativity. And I'm like, my gosh, you're right. When did I forget that? I think I was 12. I remember the art teacher. So anytime you are using your imagination.
to bring to life something that didn't exist before. A connection between a human, a reason that your product meets someone's needs, a piece of art, an idea for a game. That's creativity to me.
Brad Eather (54:17.006)
And I think I was just having a chat with someone a very, very long time ago. And I don't think it was necessarily about creativity, but they, they told me about this exercise that they do, which is just trying to do something unique every day, whether it was going on the same walk and turning left rather than right and seeing what was down that street.
I think, you know, they're the little elements that you're talking about. They're like bringing something to life, putting, just having an idea to go to take a slight detour, to, reach maybe a different destination. I love doing it when it comes. mean, a lot of people do it when it comes to restaurants, right? We've, we've tried this restaurant. Let's try the next restaurant. That's in itself is creativity. You've got, there are literally people out there who
Erin Faehrmann (55:03.714)
Death?
Brad Eather (55:14.348)
have been going to the same restaurant their entire lives and when they go out, that's the restaurant that they go to. And then there's gonna be another camp which very rarely go back to the same restaurant twice. Yeah.
Erin Faehrmann (55:25.894)
Yeah, yeah. And you're an explorer play style. So it totally checks out that you're in the second camp and not the first camp. And it might be that collectors, like there's a collector play style too. So maybe they also are like, we'd let, you know, my husband and I are doing as many different park runs as we can. We're like collecting park runs that we've done. So every week we go to a different place on Saturday morning. And yeah, collector play style. It's like, want to collect all the different ones, all the different restaurants and places to go.
Brad Eather (55:29.558)
Yes.
Brad Eather (55:39.628)
Mm.
Erin Faehrmann (55:54.763)
where there are others who maybe they're storytellers, they'll go back to the same place because they know the people, they can tell stories to the people there, you know, their family restaurants. That's, you maybe that's a happy place and that's fine.
Brad Eather (56:07.854)
Erin, another thing that we have in common is that we both live in South Australia. And one of my favorite things to collect is wineries. 100%. Yeah. Anybody coming down to South Australia for a little holiday retreat, I have plenty of winery recommendations. Get in touch. Yes, absolutely.
Erin Faehrmann (56:18.636)
Well, you're in the right place, my friend. You got lots to choose from.
Erin Faehrmann (56:33.422)
Support the local economy.
Brad Eather (56:36.512)
Erin, if anybody wanted to get in touch with you, what's the best place to do it? How can we find you?
Erin Faehrmann (56:42.668)
Yeah, I mostly hang out on LinkedIn, Lead With Play. It's a little pinwheel logo, black and white logo. So you'll find me there. My last name is hard to say and spell, but it's been on the screen for the last hour or so. So it's right there. But yeah, I am Lead With Play Erin Famann. You can find me there as well. Email address is leadwithplay at hotmail.com. It's that easy. But hit me up on LinkedIn and yeah, we can get in touch, talk about all sorts of cool things.
I have a Calendly that people can book in for one-on-one play coaching. As a social enterprise, I just want more adults playing. So most of the time it's pro bono or low bono or free. I want to just get people started playing and then hopefully they don't need me anymore. So yeah, reach out if you want to have a chat about that.
Brad Eather (57:24.696)
Nice.
I will put those details in the description wherever you're finding this podcast. Everybody thanks for listening to the Selling Creative Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure you like and subscribe and in the meantime, happy selling.
