The Gift of Play with Portia Tung

Alexis:

Hey Portia, how are you? And can you tell us a bit more about you and your background?

Portia:

Salut, Alexis. Delighted to be here today. I work as an executive coach and executive agile coach, as well as a play researcher. And I'm doing very well under the circumstances that we're all under at the moment.

Alexis:

I'm doing very well under the circumstances — you need to tell me a little bit more about that. What changed in your work with people and teams?

Portia:

I presume we're referring to the pandemic and how my work has changed. What's been fascinating is that with everyone going online, we've actually changed the way we interact with each other — but more fundamentally the way we perceive and treat each other. One of the things I've noticed is that, certainly in the people I interact with, there's a lot less shaming of not knowing how to do technical stuff online, but much more supportive and nurturing ways of interacting with one another. In many ways, that's been a gift from COVID, Alexis.

Alexis:

It's an interesting thing to notice. Before the pandemic, would you say that the majority of your time was working face to face with people and teams, or were you already working online?

Portia:

It was a mix because of the different organizations I work in, and they range in terms of trust. I would do some of my work online, remotely, but also face-to-face — though predominantly face-to-face.

Alexis:

You needed to switch nearly all of a sudden to full online — or are you back to do some face-to-face now?

Portia:

Oh, still all online. And Alexis, like I said, it's been a gift. It's been a real challenge of how to share my passion and energy and knowledge and experience through this online medium, which people have been so critical and possibly weary or afraid of. In my experience, when you are able to bring your true, authentic self to work and to your family and to those around you, the medium isn't so important.

Alexis:

We need to go deeper into that. But speaking of gifts, you offered me a gift a few years back — you don't know that. The gift was a book: The Dream Team Nightmare. For me, it was a fantastic book. There's one thing I still have with me all the time: the way the heroine is meeting with people one-on-one, your way of doing one-on-ones to discover someone else. Since then, I'm sharing that with a lot of people around me. I'm doing it, I'm showing it, and I love it. Can you tell us how it works, how the idea came to you and how it really works?

Portia:

Sure. It works as both an icebreaker between people who've never met before, but also as a warmup exercise for people who already know a bit about each other but maybe not as well as they assume. So it's a game of table tennis, the way I call it — but without the table and without the ball. The idea is: you come in a pair, and each person gets to ask one another three questions.

They take turns, swapping around. The first person asks one question, then the second person asks their first question, and so it goes — a bit like ping pong, table tennis. There is only one rule to this game that I suggest: we each reserve the right to ask for a different question. Then I invite them to start: 'who would like to start?' They might say, oh you go first, or they might choose to go first. It's a lot of fun, what gets revealed about the relationship and about each other as we play with this introduction.

Alexis:

I was always surprised with the questions people are asking. The easy thing is, if I ask you the question — what would be your dream job that you would do, or your dream activity, if you were not doing what you are doing right now?

Portia:

That's what I'm doing now, Alexis.

Alexis:

This is a beautiful answer.

Portia:

I think it's really interesting, the importance of setting intention. My latest intention — I'll circle back to the question — is to live my dream. For dreams to come true, you have to live them. By living them, they become real. And the secret is that you have to remember to be present, because you can't live your dream if you're not in the present.

And Alexis, I love French cinema and I'm sure there's some kind of film in that — but I will answer your question. What I would be doing if I could do my dream job is what I'm doing now: spending time meeting remarkable, playful leaders who are trying to make the workplace, and indeed the world, a better place through their passion and through nurturing people. That's what I do in organizations, working mostly with senior leadership now and their teams, but also occasionally with agile teams as well, working on delivery.

Alexis:

Excellent. With the way of doing it in the ping pong way, I always assumed at the beginning that when I start by asking a question, the person in front of me will just return the same question — and in reality it nearly never happens that way. They always have a different question, which I find so enriching and so surprising. What would be your question?

Portia:

To you? What is your favorite place to be on this planet?

Alexis:

Oh, I don't know. I never thought of it this way. There are a lot of places that are so beautiful, a lot of places I would like to visit, but I feel that I'm very well where I am now. I think it's more the people I am with. I would love to meet more people and to travel a little bit — that's probably being in the same place for more than one year now. I think I love where I am now.

Portia:

You love where you are now. That's an incredible answer, Alexis. If I understand correctly, then that means you are exactly where you're supposed to be.

Alexis:

Yeah. And at the same time, when I say that, I'm thinking, there are so many options, and probably I should explore — I should ask myself the question. I had that idea at some point of wanting to live on a farm, do permaculture, eat what the farm produces and so on. But first of all, I know nothing about all that. There are a few obstacles in the way, but it's always something that is for the future. So I think that's a good question to ask yourself regularly: am I at the right place right now? With those two questions and our answers, the people that are listening can understand how powerful it can be to just try to answer openly to a question that you don't know in advance. That's the power of that ping pong interview that you propose. It's really a gift.

Portia:

Alexis, I think a key reason why you seem to enjoy the exercise so much, and the people you play it with seem to find it so enriching, is because you help create a safe environment. That magic rule of we each reserve the right to ask for a different question really frees people up — from the questioner's point of view but also from the answerer's point of view. That helps create that so-called psychological safety and trust between two possible strangers.

Alexis:

It's true. The simple fact that you can pass or ask a different question — it's a better way of phrasing it — nearly never happens. Usually you are ready to answer any question. There was probably once where I was really uncomfortable to share something, and I was about to say no, ask me something else — and I finally answered anyway.

Portia:

Oh, that's lovely. What did you discover? Did you discover something useful as a result of answering?

Alexis:

It was how people would perceive me. That was something that I did not realize, that I would send that message and they would see me in a certain way. I was a little bit surprised, but I guess that was connected with the circumstances and the particular place we were in.

Portia:

Alexis, I'd like to add as well: the power of this seemingly simple icebreaker / warmup exercise is that it takes real courage to actually offer it in the first place. That's the way I work ever since deepening my play research, because true play is safe play, fair play, and being a good sport. With play, you need to show up as yourself. There's no pretending — because if you put a mask on and you're a different kind of Alexis or a different kind of Portia when you're at work, and it's not really you, people won't play. They'll say, oh no, that's not for me, let's just move on to why we're having this meeting. The fact that when you offer it and people receive it is a clear sign of your presence and your courage and, of course, your playfulness. That's such a great superpower to have.

Alexis:

Absolutely. You mentioned that you are working with teams and leaders. You said you want to help them achieve their goals. How do you work with them?

Portia:

For me, play is a mindset and a set of behaviors, and I don't think they're really opposites with work — but it might be because of bad marketing or misconception of what play is. This dates back right to the Middle Ages: at best, play was perceived as a distraction; at worst, it was considered something evil brought on by the devil. Children would be smacked for playing when they should have been sweeping chimneys. Play has had a lot of bad press for a long time, until we really looked at child development — and human development — and the necessity of play. Play leads to creativity and innovation, as we can see in creative companies like Apple and Google. But work isn't the opposite of play.

Work is what gives us a sense of purpose and allows us to improve our competence. These are observations made by Dr. Stuart Brown, a play expert who wrote a book on play called Play. It's really important to recognize that actually play and work are not opposites — they're very complementary. Without one you couldn't really be a whole person; you need to do both together, kind of like yin and yang.

Alexis:

So a sense of purpose and a way to be together that will unleash the creativity to serve that purpose — that's a little bit how you want to frame it?

Portia:

Yeah. When I work with teams and leaders, most will have looked me up, so they'll know that play is my bag. People who come to me, like yourself, have already accepted an invitation and openness to be playful, so it's not that difficult. People who might not know my play reputation simply perceive me as someone who's quite resourceful, respectful, responsible, resilient, and real. Those are the five Rs — I call them the five Rs of playful people. I stumbled across them because, when I started playing more in organizations and taking riskier decisions in terms of how far we could go with a transformation, I noticed that the people around me — the true change agents, who didn't need to have titles or 'leader' in their title — would be very responsible, resourceful, respectful, resilient, and real.

When I discovered these five Rs — these key characteristics of playful leaders — that enabled me to go into my treasure trove of tools and techniques and offer them, much like the icebreaker exercise. It's about finding the right fit with the person you're meeting and playing with.

Alexis:

I guess in teams, even if someone hires you because of your playfulness, some people will not see that play is part of what needs to be done. They will want to be serious, to the point. How does it work with them?

Portia:

I rarely offer play upfront. So I will say something like, 'You've invited me to give you some agile training, so we'll be doing a simulation.' I don't use the word 'game' because it might scare some people. It's not that I'm trying to hide it — it's just a simulation. We have clear goals and acceptance criteria for why we're doing the simulation. My favorite one is the XP Game, invented by Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and Vera Peeters. That's a fantastic way of seeing how a team will behave and perform during an actual sprint or iteration.

I rarely call it a game. I don't necessarily have to mention play. It's funny, Alexis — if we'd talked 10 years ago, I'd have been much more flamboyant and said, 'Oh, let's do play, get out your bags and Lego and have lots of colorful things in the room' — right upfront in the first instance with a new group. It can be quite intimidating. Looking back, it can be disrespectful if people don't realize that it's an option. True play, as Dr. Stuart Brown describes it, is safe play, fair play, and being a good sport. So I now make sure to say: whatever we do in the next 90 minutes during the simulation, it's an option. It's an invitation. You decide how much you take part in and how much you sit out — but rest assured, how much you get out depends on how much you put in. This ability to treat people with respect and as adults is really important in play and in relationships.

Alexis:

I use the word simulation a few times too. I remember once playing the Red Bead Experiment — Deming's experiment to teach people statistics and bad management practices. I played it with a customer, and one of the workers in the game was in fact the CEO of the company. That worker wanted to do great in front of her team, of course, and the game is rigged against her — the worker cannot be good, that would be pure luck. I was playing the manager, and the manager is harsh in the game. So I was harsh with her, and at some point she told me something like, 'You know what, I will break your face.' I said, 'Maybe we need to pause the game for a second.' But it was really interesting how powerful it was. It changed the relationship in the team and it changed the way she was reacting to surprises in the work we were doing. After that I was maybe a little bit more careful with how I introduced it in other teams.

Portia:

Well, Alexis, risky play is an element of play, right? Because without taking risks, why would you bother? Where would be the fun in something that's 100% safe? That would just be boring. So it's great you took a risk and that this leader, when offered the chance to grow and reflect, took the opportunity. That's a great gift to offer. That's the thing about play — it's a tool that's so powerful that you really need to take care of how you handle it, and what happens when you are under-prepared yourself.

I had a similar incident playing the XP Game where I happened to have a business analyst in one of the teams — she was a real business analyst in real life. During one of the rounds, they hadn't gathered the requirements at all. When I was the product owner and declined and said, 'No, that hasn't passed the acceptance criteria, you're going to have to rework that,' she threw the user story back at me. It was fascinating because she was part of a third party working for the organization that I worked in as a permanent member of staff. It made me realize: oh gosh, if people behave in this way to their client in a game, what is it like in real life?

This is the power of play. When we get into play, we become ourselves. Our minds are curious. Thanks to neuroscience we recognize now that when you are curious, because your mind is open, it cannot be critical at the same time. So you start flowing 100% as yourself. And if you are super competitive, because that's your thing, then that will come out. So it's about really creating a safe environment where people can be their true selves, learn from it, and not feel judged by others.

Alexis:

I feel it's much more powerful. Usually the way we organized our day when we had face-to-face meetings — you are in the meeting room working, looking at presentations, engaged in serious discussions, and then at the end of the day you are going bowling or playing a game, doing something that is pure distraction, then having dinner. People said that part — the distraction part — was really great to build bonds in the team. I was trying to tell them: can we bring a little bit of that into our day? Why not building those bonds during the day? Why not being ourselves in the day? Why do we have to separate both? What can we do to foster that, to create more of that space in the day?

Portia:

That's a great question, Alexis. I think it's important to reflect on the history of humanity and where we've come from — the bigger context. In Western culture, we're so good at dividing things up: school subjects, science and history and math, they're all different apparently, but actually children know they are more intertwined than the adults think.

Likewise with socializing and working: in humanity's bid to optimize where we want to be and who we want to be, we cut out the fun because we think that's extra. But if you look at child development, play is absolutely essential for physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development. If we don't look at people and teams as a whole in this way, the result is that we compartmentalize everything — we will have fun between six and eight o'clock, only in the evenings, only after we've had a glass of wine with our colleagues, and then we can be ourselves.

That always makes me giggle, because it's a bit like you have to hold your breath throughout the day until those two glasses of wine — which is a very unreasonable ask. That's also why children find it so difficult to be amongst unplayful adults: they have to hold their breath and not be themselves. That's not the way for healthy living. So what I tend to do is encourage play through modeling that playful mindset and behaviors. From the moment I meet people, we do the icebreaker exercise you've enjoyed. I write my emails in a playful way. I sign them off as 'wishing you a playful week.' Some people might find that offensive, but that's not my intent — it is a genuinely good wish. People are very quick to then say, 'Oh, I'm glad you said that, because I stayed up all night the other night playing chess and had such a great time.' And I'm like, oh, they're a chess player — that's why they were so tired at the standup, now I understand.

That's really what it is. When we are a playful leader, we bring our full selves to work. We are prepared to take risks. And the biggest risk of all is to look in the mirror and acknowledge what is in front of us.

Alexis:

Absolutely. That brings me to a question about leadership. I strongly believe that leadership is not about title — it could be for people that are people managers, of course, but also for individual contributors. What are your beliefs about leadership? What does being a leader mean to you?

Portia:

I wouldn't call them beliefs — I can share some stories and maybe describe some working assumptions, so they can change. When I reflect back on my relationship with leadership, Alexis, I would say I've been uncomfortable with it for most of my working life — so much so that I would shy away from it. In the first six, eight years of my working life, when I started off as a Java developer and then moved into development management and then agile coaching, I remember thinking: this leadership stuff isn't for me, why are people so bothered about the titles? This is about getting the right things done and doing them right. It's as simple as that.

Because of the differences in our understanding of leadership — mine is much more aligned with yours — it really put me off. I would spend so much time reading books from Tom Peters and Warren Bennis and all of this stuff. In the end I stopped reading them, because in the textbooks it says to be a good leader is to eat last, like Simon Sinek, and the leaders around me weren't doing that. They were too preoccupied with what other people saw in their reflection in the mirror than with what actually needed to be done.

It's only really in the last few years, when I got more into the play research, that I said to myself: what am I so afraid about in leadership that I don't want to associate myself with it? I realized it is about people who put their ego first and themselves first rather than the greater good. So I changed the game and came up with this idea of playful leadership. For me, that concept means being your authentic self. When you make a mistake, you're the first one to raise your hand. If you haven't had the presence of mind to spot it in time, then I thank the person who points it out quickly. These sound like simple things, but they're very difficult to do in the environments we find ourselves in.

When I reflect on my golden moment as a leader, it was when I was at school. I was 17, and the head teacher said to me, 'Portia, we'd like to make you an offer.' I said, 'What's the offer?' She said, 'We'd like to make you head girl — the person who would represent the school, because you're in the oldest year.' I said, 'Oh, that'd be great,' ready to embrace it. She said, 'It comes with conditions. You have to promise us that you will not sacrifice your grades in order to take this role too seriously in doing the best for the school. We've talked about it with all the teachers and they feel that's the biggest concern. If you are unable to do that, you cannot have the head girl-ship.' I was like, oh God, they know me so well. I made sure I studied hard enough — but maybe not quite as hard as I could have — and I had such a great time being head girl. When they offered it, it wasn't because of the title I wanted; it was because I thought, phew, I can stop hiding all the good things I want to do and was doing for the school in my spare time. It felt so enriching to be part of a community and helping other people become best versions of themselves.

That's what put me off in the workplace. When I started work, I felt so cheated, Alexis. This is nothing like what school and university said leadership would be. It's not until I really embraced my playful self and started taking risks and said, no, actually I'm not going to be that kind of leader that people seem to model and revere — and it's not just about the money, that cannot be the only measure of a human being's success — that I changed the game and played it my way. That's really the key for me. That's what leadership is. My focus now is on personal leadership: leadership coaching with individual leaders, one-to-one. Because that's how we create change. We don't just wheel in an agile machine that gives off a beautiful floral scent and then everyone goes, oh, we're ready to do agile, everything will be optimized. That's not how change happens. Change happens with one person at a time, and it's them enabling themselves.

Alexis:

Yes, absolutely. One person at a time, and they are enabling themselves. I love what you said about helping others to be the best version of themselves. How do you find that energy for yourself?

Portia:

Oh, you ask such fun questions, Alexis. Well, I have a checklist. When I became a mom eight years ago, my brain was unable to contain a lot of information and make good decisions in real time. So I came up with a checklist. As I observed my work in progress and saw how much I had on my plate as a mom and a working mom, I realized I needed a set of criteria by which I made decisions in my life.

I have different sets of criteria, ranging from personal values to the day-to-day. But the checklist I'd like to share with you is this. Number one: is it good for me? Whenever I make any decision, is it good for me? If it's not good for me, then it's off the list and I'm not doing it. The second item: is it good for my daughter? If it's quite stressful as an engagement, and I'm going to come home a little more negative and grumpy than I would otherwise, is it good for my daughter? If it fails that test, then that goes out the window. Then the third one: is it good for my family — my husband, my daughter, and me — the whole family? If it fails that, then it goes out the door. There's a fourth one, actually, since we became friends: will it make the world a better place? If it passes that test after the first three, then yeah, I'm definitely doing it.

It's become like a shopping list of criteria. When I started looking for clients and ways of creating change, that's how I shop around for the engagements I'm able to take part in. It's so important to have a fair exchange. I want to be the best version of myself when I rock up and work with my clients and teams. That is the balance of exchange. In return, together we maximize the return on investment for their effort and time.

Alexis:

I think it's really a beautiful way to end that conversation for today. I would love to have more conversations with you, and I hope they will make the world a better place, really seriously. Thank you very much, Portia, for that conversation today.

Portia:

Thank you, Alexis. Mille mercis.