In today’s episode, Taylor and guest Kelsey Kates delve into the importance of playfulness in the workplace. Kelsey shares her own experiences of using props and creativity to engage her team, while Taylor emphasizes the positive impact of playfulness on team dynamics and productivity. They discuss how incorporating playfulness can enhance psychological safety, foster collaboration, and create a more enjoyable work environment. It's a lighthearted conversation that challenges the notion that being serious is the only way to be professional.
Meet Today's Guest:
As the Global Head of Learning Experiences at Google, Kelsey Kates looks after the activation and delivery of 15+ facilitated programs within the Global Business Org for more than 20,000 Googlers, all marketing and communication and the enablement and management of their 150+ facilitators. Kelsey's been awarded multiple Brandon Hall Awards for the design of marquee Google programs - Facilitation Academy, Deliver Like a Boss, and her team's delivery of Google Way of Coaching and Google Sales School. In 2018 she won the Rising Star Award for Analytical Academy, a new multi-course program at Google to train and develop the finest analytical thinkers.
Kelsey has her B.S from the University of Denver and her Masters from Northwestern. She's a marketer turned analyst and now in the corporate learning and development space with a ton of passion for re-imagining great learning and education. She's not afraid to challenge the status quo and believes deeply in changing the world through more impactful and delightful learning experiences that transform how we show up. As a lifelong learner, she's currently pursuing an Executive Certificate from MIT in Neuroscience. Today, Kelsey lives in Dublin with her husband, son and dog.
Taylor Morrison
You're listening to Inner Warmup. I'm your host Taylor Elyse Morrison, founder and author of Inner Workout, ICF certified coach and fellow journeyer. In 2017, I set out to build a life that didn't burn me out. And I found my life's work in the process. On Inner Warmup, we talk about how self care and inner work show up in your relationships, your career, your schedule, in the conversations you have with yourself. We get practical, we get nuanced. And we're not afraid to challenge wellness as usual. So take a deep breath, and get curious. This is where your inner work begins.
Today's guest is Kelsey Kates. As the global head of learning experiences at Google. Kelsey looks after the activation and delivery of over 15 facilitated programs within the global business organization for more than 20,000 Googlers. She also looks over all marketing and communication of their 150 Plus facilitators. Kelsey is a marketer turned to analyst and now she's in the corporate learning and development space with a ton, and you'll hear this on the show, a ton of passion for reimagining great learning and education. She's not afraid to challenge the status quo, just like me, and believes deeply in changing the world through more impactful and delightful learning experiences that transform how we show up. In this episode, we talk about why play belongs in the workplace, the five types of play, and practical tips for creating a culture of play, no matter what your role or level is. There's something in this episode for everyone. So keep listening.
Kelsey, thank you so much for joining us on the show today.
Kelsey Kates
Oh Taylor, I'm literally having flashbacks to when we were facilitating and flexing your ask muscle together, which was such a joy.
Taylor Morrison
It's always fun to get to facilitate with you. And that's kind of a perfect segue into why we're here together. But for you, we're actually kind of flipping the episode format on its head. So for most of the other people I interviewed this season, we would just like talk a little bit about their work. So people had a sense of who they were. And then we dive into how they play and the lessons that that's taught them. But we're actually doing the opposite for you. So before we get into the way that you infuse playfulness into work, and how we've gotten to do a little bit of that together, let's start by hearing what play looks like outside of work for you. So Kelsey, how do you play?
Kelsey Kates
I had to think about this one, actually, because I know I play outside of work. But I was like, What do I actually do, right? Especially when like that idea of play or playfulness is so broad. But for me, I love any excuse to get in a costume. So whether that's seasonal, like right now with Halloween, which I totally do and have done for years, or it's a murder mystery birthday party or anything else. Definitely costume. They call it fancy dress here in Ireland. Something else that I really love doing is baking, but baking for fun. So I just recently made like peanut butter cup spider cookies with like the googly eyes with my son. I could say that's just because of my son. But I actually got a flashback from Google Photos about 10 years ago where I was making squirrel and acorn shaped biscuits for my dog. So it's something that I just love to do. And the last thing I'm pretty bad at this one, but it's dancing. So I've taken lessons, I still can't dance to a beat. But you can find me when I'm really in a state of play, dancing in the kitchen or with my son and family or friends.
Taylor Morrison
Oh, I love all of those. And it's funny that you felt like you had to think about it. Immediately, actually, so Jennie helps produce this podcast. And when I was telling her a little bit about you in preparation for the episode, I was like, Yeah, Kelsey is great at play. I remember one time meeting Kelsey, and she told me how, this is me talking to Jennie but since you're here, I'll say it directly to you that I remember you telling me that you just had like a group of other women and you would go jump in the ocean or the sea, which I don't think that's particularly fun to me. But you seemed like you were having fun with it.
Kelsey Kates
Oh Taylor. So can I just say that I love that you brought that up? Any chance I have to brag about that I go cold water swimming, I do. But I'm trying to like tone it back a little bit. So heck yes, a sense of play to me is cold water swimming, but it's also like, good for my mental being and all of those things but for play absolutely, thank you.
Taylor Morrison
And it's all connected, but it's also interesting to hear what we do and do not define as play or like what other people see that looks playful to them from the outside versus what we it's, like you said, you said this earlier, play is so broad, and part of what's been fun about this season is seeing how different people define it in their lives.
Kelsey Kates
I couldn't agree more. And actually, if you don't mind, let's double click into that, particularly as I know, we're gonna take a work lens on that, when I've been, I've been talking about play a lot, both within Google and without, and I get a lot of people that say, Yeah, what do you mean by play? What do you mean by playful? And people automatically, you find that even if it's not a term they use, or know, they have an association for what they do. And I know Joanna Fortune talked to you about this as well. But I know some people when I say play are playful in a work environment. They're like, Oh, gamification, right, everything gets gamified. Or some people think of it just as humor, or they think about it as sports. And when I say play and playful, I think if it really as like a light heartedness, right, not needing to be so serious about the outcome of what you're doing. And actually, there's, this is not Kelsey saying this, but just in my research, there's actually five dimensions of play. So there's play that is humor, right, we know that side of play, there's play that is joy. So really just what warms you up and feels good, and is nice and happy. That's one side of play. Physical, so that's a side like, that's the music or the dancing or perhaps sports. There's cognitive play. So that's more like the fantasy or the imagination of things that you're doing. And then there's social play, right. So those are jokes or interactions with others or things in that lens. And so, as we think of play, and playfulness, there's lots of dimensions to that. So if you're someone that's like in your mind and holds us space, my encouragement to you will be think of it as that just about not being so serious.
Taylor Morrison
That is a reminder, I know so many people in the Inner Workout community need, myself included. I often talk about the people who seem to be drawn to the work of Inner Workout as people who are self aware overachievers, we tend to know a lot about ourselves, we find a lot of joy in getting to know ourselves and developing and wanting to achieve whether that's at work and in our personal lives. And the danger of that is getting really caught up in perfectionism, getting really caught up and doing things always as a means to an end, but never really reaching the end, always moving the goalposts and so that reminder to just be like, not everything has to be so serious, is a reminder that I have to give myself often and I hope to the people listening, that you just, even if you have to pause here and internalize like, yes, it does not have to all be so serious. Life is supposed to be fun.
Kelsey Kates
Yes, totally. And just for the record, this is part of the reason I love this subject and why I'm studying that, like, I need more of this in my life. And as I found that I get, like any good teacher, right? Like the more if you love something, and you teach it like it's a learning for you, too. Part of the reason I love this so much is because I need it.
Taylor Morrison
I say that all the time with self care, like people assume that I talk about it, because I've got it down pat. And it's like, no, no, no, it's actually the opposite. And to tie this in even further, we've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes at Inner Workout as we prepare to launch our app and have just been really I mean, we're four years in so really refining, like, what exactly is our point of view. And we came up with this new mission statement, we make wellbeing easier. And I think similar to you, when we get excited about stuff we research, so I was like what is well being. And the definition from the research that I resonated with most is like the state of being where you feel good, you feel fulfilled, and you're functioning well. And so often what I see people do, again, myself included, I'm always speaking to myself first, is get so caught up in doing the self care things to check a box, doing the inner work to like, say that you are doing the inner work, and forgetting that the goal is to be in a state of well being where you're feeling good and feeling fulfilled. Like it's so easy to disconnect those things. And that's why we need the season on play. That's why I need the season on play.
Kelsey Kates
I am right there with you. And I just as an aside, you maybe want to edit this out. But you and I actually connected right as you were launching your business. So I love seeing that it's like, going to your site and even just reviewing the past podcasts and seeing your app coming through and stuff like it's, to see your journey and where you're at and just the role of play and what well being is and that yeah you're a practitioner, right. You're someone who needs this. So how can you create it more is awesome to see.
Taylor Morrison
Thank you. I'm receiving that. So how we got to know each other Kelsey, and you alluded to this a little bit that you talk a lot about play at work. I've had the pleasure of working with you through Google. I think I've mentioned this sometimes on the podcast. But in case folks didn't know outside of Inner Workout, I also do a lot of facilitation and coaching. And Google is one of the organizations I get to do it with. And Kelsey, sometimes I'd say, at this point, maybe once or twice a year, I get to facilitate with you. And whenever I see that you're going to be my co facilitator, I always know that I'm going to be challenged in the best way possible to tap into the most playful version of myself. So before we dive into exploring the role of play at work, can you just tell us a little bit more about what your role is?
Kelsey Kates
So as Taylor said, yes, I work at Google. I've actually had a lot of roles within Google the last seven years. But all in the context of learning and development. Taylor, you don't actually know this, but I actually moved into a slightly different role a couple of months ago. So I wear two very distinct hats. My first hat that I wear is I look after all of the facilitators and facilitation for Google's business org. So this is the side of Google that is the revenue driving inside. And so for any Googlers that partake in any training, right, they're new to Google or they're a manager, or their senior seller, or they work in an analytics field. Those facilitators who train them sit under me and my team. And so part of what we do through that is actually get to really nerd out and teach my facilitators about the neuroscience of playfulness. And why do we do this? And how do we show up this way, because it is fundamental to how I believe good learning happens is through a sense of playfulness, which I know we'll double click in in a minute. My other very different hats that I wear, but equally love, is I look after all of the marketing for our learning. I know that's maybe a weird foreign concept. But yes, learning internally at a company also needs marketing. I don't know about you, or if you work, if you're someone who works at a corporate company, but you might get emails that say, Hey, this is due in two weeks, please complete it, or this is past due, or this training starts tomorrow. And oh, my goodness, it can be so dry and so boring. And like, yes, the training or workshop itself, but also just the communications around that. And then just to bring the idea of playfulness into life, something we did recently, I can't take credit for this, I can only take credit for empowering my team to do this is we rewrote the lyrics to Justin Timberlake, take sexy back and we said bring practice back to Google. And we actually had our senior vice president dance to it. And that's how we rolled it out. And so really trying to show up in all different types of ways when we think about learning in a more playful, real human aspect to feel like people are a part of something that they want to be a part of
Taylor Morrison
That is so valuable, because like you said, it can just be you get this copy paste thing that's like this is do blah, blah, blah, blah, there's no conversation about why it matters. You're not excited to show up or do the thing because it sounds boring. And so man, how cool is that to have leadership display, being playful? And I'm sure that was something that was memorable that people are going to talk about, because where else are you gonna see someone.
Kelsey Kates
It's a game changer. It really, really is right, to talk about learning in a way that is fun and exciting and silly, but equally is like, don't be fooled for anyone that's on here that's like, Oh, I'm gonna tune out. Playfulness is not serious. It's quite the opposite. Actually, I think. If you care about having great meaningful results, you should care about playfulness. It's only going to help that work that you're doing like in learning and in a work culture and environment.
Taylor Morrison
And so you've already spoken to this a little bit. You mentioned at the beginning that most people have an association with play, we say play and they think something, but very few people, probably with the exception of you and a few other people in the workplace, most people are thinking of play's the thing that happens when I shut my laptop at the end of the day. It's not really the thing that happens at work. So you mentioned just now that you think it's important to bring playfulness into work to make things memorable, to make the learning really stick. Are there any other reasons why it's important to infuse playfulness into the workplace?
Kelsey Kates
Yes and this is my absolute favorite topic because it is so important. One of the things you said which I think is really astute, but I want to build on that is that we as adults think play happens after we get home. But I would argue we as adults are not and this goes to your season of podcast, we're not as naturally playful. There's something that happens with us when we age and we get older that we think we have to be serious, right? The adulting or growing up. When you talk about what that means its obligation and responsibility and seriousness, right? You don't associate adulting and being grown up as still being playful. I have a 11 year old dog, her name is Dylan. I love her dearly. And I take her for a walk every afternoon, and she still loves to play fetch, even though she has some bum knees and can't work out very well. She doesn't look at me and say, Hey, Mom, did you know I'm an old lady now? Like, can we please just go clean the dishes or do some more work, right, like she still wags her tail and wants to play. Adult humans are one of the only mammals on Earth where as we get older, we stop playing. Like that's actually not in our mammalian nature to do that. We send lots of signals, right, whether you're a polar bear, or a dog or some other mammalian creature that we want to continue to play. It's actually, so playfulness is linked to the evolution of our neuro system mechanics, that actually helps us move from fight or flight, pardon me into that state of being calm and socially engaged. And so the same translates at work, right? To give an example, to bring this home. And you're like, Oh, she works at Google, and she's talking to you about playfulness, you must have really fun job and play all the time. No, I have to do super serious things. And I was sitting in a meeting around our technology, our learning and development technology. And if I'm honest, I would say that that team thinks or thought I was one of their difficult stakeholders. And they're trying to move forward some really big initiatives across Google, which is really huge, with competing interests and different things that they need to manage. And I was sitting there, and I was like, just so we're clear, I think the timeline, you should have made way much more effort here, we don't have conflicting viewpoints of stakeholders doing this cross functionally and a huge organization that's matrix is like really simple. Like you have nothing else to do on your priority list. Like, of course, you have done more work than that. And this is an example where I'm like, obviously, and gently sarcastic to just change the tone of the conversation, right, where I'm trying to make them feel safe. That's like, yeah, of course, this isn't done like this is complex and hard. And there's tensions here. And that immediately changed the vibe in the room of like, ugh Kelsey's our difficult stakeholder who's probably frustrated that this isn't done yet to like, Oh, she gets us. Okay, great. We can keep moving on and we don't need to be as defensive. Right? And so, yes, when you hear people talk about play, or playfulness at work, a lot of connotations go to creativity, which I fully am on board with, and I believe in. But there's also just a base layer that if you can create and have that level of playfulness there, it will continue to enhance the psychological safety, which allows people to show up more authentically, and less in a space of like defensiveness, right? I don't know about you, I still have to write emails that are scary for me to write or where I have to give bad news or someone that I know, doesn't want to hear what I have to say, and it takes me forever, right. But if I have good rapport with that person, I can be playful, that happens so much faster. There is a careful line. And Joanna Fortune talked a bit about this in her episode with associating play too much with productivity, which I think is a good caution, right, you shouldn't play just to be productive. But I do want to stress like there is a side of it, that when you are in that state of play, and in that state of safety, you can move more quickly. Because you don't have that same fear of rejection or judgment or needing to say everything right. That collaboration just happens naturally and more quickly. And that is so beautiful, and often productive.
Taylor Morrison
Yeah, it's a yes and there, where we don't want it to just be a means to an end. And there are some amazing benefits that we can get from it. So something that I'm wondering then, that was a great example of, yeah, I can use this in this meeting where I know people are probably not excited to meet with me. I'm wondering what are some other ways like let's really get into the how, of how we can infuse play into work, because I think that's a great example. We've all been in meetings where everyone is a little less than enthused to be there. And I can see how having a little playfulness could switch things up.
Kelsey Kates
So you're listening. Maybe you're already playful, awesome. Love it. Please keep doing it and maybe share in the comments with Taylor things you're doing that we haven't talked about. If you're like, Okay, I'm on board, I see how work could be more enjoyable. I see that there's benefit and purpose for being playful, but you're like, where do I start? There's a couple places that I encourage my teams to start with and when I give more keynotes or other things on this that we play with. The first one of them is really actually supporting both safety and playfulness. And it might seem foundational or silly. But it has to do with your body language and your voice. Vocal prosody, that your intonation, the level of curiosity, the pauses that you take, if you notice, like when I talk to you like that, or when I'm really engaged and I accentuate my words, it feels different than if I were to talk to you like this and accent not really accentuate my words, but pretend that I'm accentuating my words, right? So where can you just play with your vocal prosody? And what you're doing? Where can you play with your eye contact and smiling? You're not seeing my hands here now, because you're just listening to our voices. But Taylor can attest that my hands are all over the place. Maybe not over all the place, but I'm using them. So where can you just use your voice and your body language to show more emotion and diversity in how you're showing up? So that's the first one. The second one. And this can be trickier depending on your level of safety, or what environments you're at work. But where can you take yourself not so seriously? This is beautiful, because you're not only when you're doing this, are you showing safety and playfulness but you're also role modeling that it's a safe place for them to do that. So right now, I just made a silly face on screen that's like, kind of like I had apple cider vinegar. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm so glad that this is just audio, where can I laugh at myself and do that in a public setting that creates that level of playfulness that invites others
Taylor Morrison
I think about that one a lot when I am facilitating whether it's Google or elsewhere, and one of the things that I do facilitate outside of Google is unconscious bias. And I know that people are coming into that environment, particularly. And I've taught it for all different kinds of organizations. And there's a lot of people who are coming in are like, this black woman is going to tell me that I'm evil, and everything I'm doing is wrong. And they just come in so defensive. And so I think a lot about my intro, and those first, I was gonna say first 30 minutes, yes, but even those first 10 minutes or so and where can I like, get some jokes in, where can I be a little self deprecating, even so people feel comfortable enough to open up. And that's one of the feedbacks I love getting when I read the different reviews, is I thought that I was going to hate this. And I ended up feeling really safe. And like I could learn a lot. And it's because I wouldn't have defined it as bringing in playfulness. But really what I was doing is exactly what you just talked about.
Kelsey Kates
Thank you for bringing in that story. One, I think it can, I hear sometimes conflicting evidence on that, particularly as a facilitator or as an expert, or someone who's coming in that, like, you need credibility, and you need to establish your person like you're the authority. Yes and. For me to have authority to talk to you here today, like, I don't need to talk about my all my credentials, or my neuroscience certificate or things like that, like I need to role model what I'm talking to you about. And that's what you're talking about whether it's unconscious bias, or playfulness, or what you're doing is like where can you show up as human? And being able to have authority and credibility and expertise does not mean you're infallible, and no longer human, right? We're not robots. And so I think those two tensions can 100% coexist, and people want to see that and want to know that you're human and, and be able to play with that. And yes, I get that a lot too. That's like, I wouldn't have characterized that as playfulness. Playfulness isn't just self deprecation, or just humor or just music or just right, like I want, if you're listening to all this and trying to guess this, come back to the idea that it's that light heartedness. That's, you don't have to be so serious about things. On that note, I brought my little friend for you, Taylor, as we're thinking about playful examples, listeners, you cannot see this, but I have a little puppet. His name is Larry the Space Cowboy. And I use him in what we're doing. So as a leader, I was asked to present to our wider team a little bit about our team, but to do it as if I was presenting to five year olds. There's one way where I could do that, and it would feel so placating and undermining to people. Or I could do it in a way where I forget that that's the prompt. And I use all kinds of jargon and acronyms that people don't understand. What did I do? I brought in my husband who pretended to be this little pirate and I just had a conversation with the puppet about why you make learning fun. Why do you make learning fun? Is that important to do? "Why yes Kelsey of course, it's really important to do because if you don't enjoy it, you don't pay attention." And it just like, perhaps you're listening, you're like, Oh, that's too far for me. Great. Don't do it if it's too far, but my invitation to you is there's loads of things so that you can do to play, where maybe it's just a story or it's a prop or an analogy, and you're not yet at the puppet phase. But there are places to change what you're doing that feel way more comfortable and authentic to you that you should just test out. It's not about having big things that you do all the time. It's about making little baby steps. And perhaps that's just changing the font or the font color in the email that you sent.
Taylor Morrison
Yeah, I like it can be as big as having a puppet that you use and as small as thinking about fonts. I love that idea about props. And again, the prop doesn't have to be a puppet. But there is something different. This is something I feel like I grew a lot with, once I started working with Google is thinking, what are the things that I can bring in my environment. So it's not just us staring at slides or things like that. But there's actually something tangible, whether we're in the room together, and everyone's seeing that or I can hold it up to the camera, it makes a difference. And it shakes us up out of what is normal, because unfortunately, what is normal in the workplace is often very boring.
Kelsey Kates
I couldn't agree with you more. I think there's a misconception. Because that's what people want. They want boring, they want serious, they feel like our culture isn't playful, I can't do this. If you feel like that's you my invitation is to please to find a little spot you can play and see if it's well received. Perhaps you're a co worker who's just a couple minutes late to every meeting that you're at, like instead of saying like, hey, Kind regards, Kelsey, or cheers, Kelsey, or thanks, Kelsey, when you're saying goodbye on your email, you could say, your friendly colleague who knows she could be two minutes earlier next time on your one on your meeting, right? Like those are all little playful things and see if it gets a response. One like, do people respond differently to it? Do they acknowledge it? Do you see them showing up differently, there are little places you can play. And what my hypothesis is, is you will be pleasantly surprised on how many people actually love that. And it feels refreshing to them, even senior leaders and leadership.
Taylor Morrison
Speaking of leaders and leadership, I am imagining people listening to this. And some people in the Inner Workout community I know are leaders, have direct reports, etc. And then there's a lot of people who are individual contributors, people who don't have anyone who reports to them or aren't managing anyone. And I can imagine people being a little skeptical and say, well, that's great for you, Kelsey, you work at Google, you've got all these people under you. Of course you can bring play into work. I wonder what play looks like for individual contributors, because when we just look at it at the surface level, it could seem like individual contributors have less influence on play at work. Maybe there's higher stakes for them. So I'm wondering, do you agree that individual contributors have to be more mindful perhaps of how they're playing at work? And if you disagree? What roles do you think individual contributors can have in creating this culture of play and playfulness in their workplace?
Kelsey Kates
Recognizing, we're speaking in generalities here, I don't want to speak too much for an individual or group of people and how they're doing. But I do just want to acknowledge if you're sitting there and you're like, my culture, and my leadership would hate this, and they're not playful, and they're not serious. Yeah, of course, your job is going to be harder. If you don't feel like it's respected or role modeled at the top, your courage and your willingness to see benefit from that is likely going to be lower. So I just want to acknowledge that. And where can you challenge your assumption. To be very honest with you, and I'm actually pretty open about this. But our, I have gotten feedback that's like our VPs like Kelsey, not all meetings need to be fun, like, tone it down on the playfulness. And so like, this isn't a Google thing, right? Like this is something I feel very strongly about. And you can see in different pockets. And my rebuttal to that is like yes, but every meeting also doesn't need to be boring, where people are disengaged and uninvolved. If you are playful, you're often also really inclusive. And so my invitation to you have you're an IC, what other problems can you solve where playfulness can be part of the answer? Are you in meetings where people have their cameras off and not everyone's talking? One, there's a whole bigger issue to solve, which I'd be happy to get into on a different topic, but to something playful, that also helps with that is just a personal prompt, right? It is Halloween season as we're talking here. Could you just open it up with Hey, what's your best costume that you're a part of and have everyone literally share and if you have a big meeting room, maybe they can do this in chat. But that is both, so the science behind that right, keep in mind, my, my day job is facilitation and having people have effective learning experiences, the more people engage and feel heard and that they belong, and there's a reason for them to be in a meeting or training within the first three minutes, the more likely they're going to engage throughout. And that's a way that you can be playful and just encourage conversation. We call this a purposeful primer, right? Can you use that prompt, and then connect it to the activity? And we're like, cool. Here's what we need to talk to around dressing up our new marketing campaign, right? How can you connect that personal prompt to where you're doing within your culture? If you're an IC, and you're like, I work at a law firm, or I work with, you know, in law enforcement, where things feel serious, take playfulness in a way where it doesn't, it doesn't need to be at the sacrifice of the work, right? And that personal prompt is a good example of that. Sometimes we reply, like, can you reply with a gift in an email that represents your sentiments? Can you use more human language I mentioned, I look after the marketing for learning and development, we just sent out a campaign to encourage failure and mistakes and just a culture of learning. And the first thing the email says is, don't worry, this isn't in another email about a course you have to take, you can stop hovering over that trashcan icon, and then we go into it. So my encouragement to you is like think about when you are your best self, when you're with your friends or family and you are your most lighthearted. How do you show up? And how can you translate that into little ways as an IC and just test the water back to what we talked about, because I think you will find that there's general receptivity to it. It's not that people don't want it, it's that they're so unaware of how serious they are. And that we as, as humans have stripped ourselves of that playfulness, but we need it, we crave it.
Taylor Morrison
I love this idea that there, there's always a way to be playful. And we can test again, we don't have to go to the biggest extreme. But there are little things that you can do to bring more playfulness and bring more humanity to a situation. There's so many great gems that you have given us through this conversation. Before we close it out, I want to make sure that we close on a lighthearted note. So I'm really curious to hear what is the most fun that you've had at work recently?
Kelsey Kates
Hmm, this is juicy. I feel very fortunate that I've gotten to do more in person things with the humans that I get to work with. And as I mentioned, I have a new team, we got together all together region in person. And we're normally in a global capacity. So this is pretty rare. Another thing that happens with playfulness is people think like play is like going to happy hour or mini golf or work event, we did those did I have fun? Heck yes. But Taylor, I don't think that's really what you're asking me. So something that happened is as I was meeting with my new team for the first time, and were together, they were like Kelsey, we want your vision. We want to know where you stand, like, tell us where the future is and your opinions on this. Okay. Got it. I could have done that in such a boring way. Instead, what I did is I got an Abe Lincoln hat. I got a tie. I got a wig. I got on the soapbox. By the way I have different generations. I've explained getting on what getting on your soapbox meant. So I got on the soapbox, and I put on my Abe Lincoln hat. And they said four score and seven years ago. And I said no, no, no, that's not right. And then I said, I have a dream. I do. But actually I have a vision. And then I read through my vision like in an animated way. And then from that we went into an exercise as a team, right? And I'm purposely one, this was very fun. But also giving an example where it could easily have not been enjoyable or playful, where we figured out what is our purpose and our values and our norms. And literally we left the room into the bigger team organization chatting norms, norms, norms, norms, norms. Unusual level of excitement around establishing team norms, right? But it's because we set things up in a playful way that like they were so engaged in, like, what our norms were doing. And so one of the things I want to close on that I think rounds out our conversation nicely, Taylor is playfulness is actually contagious. And so if you show up that way, a little bit, humans have what we call perception ensemble. And so if you've ever heard the idea of mirror neurons, right, when you pick up on little things, people take that and they build that further. And so this was just a really fun moment where I was trying to show up in a playful way that was still effective that really got the team contagious where we ended up chanting norms, norms norms.
Taylor Morrison
I love that as an example because yeah, making team norms..
Kelsey Kates
Norms are not fun
Taylor Morrison
Yeah not necessarily the thing that you're like shouting about
Kelsey Kates
No, show up on time to meetings! No, not fun
Taylor Morrison
Yeah, thank you for that example and just for the way that you've talked about play at work and really modeled what it could look like. I am leaving this conversation feeling so much more energized and playful and inspired. So thank you, Kelsey. If people want to hear more about your insights on play and playfulness at work, how can they stay connected with you?
Kelsey Kates
Thank you for asking. And yes, this has been playful and enjoyable. So thank you, right back at you. You can find me, Kelsey Kates at LinkedIn I do post about it regularly is what I would say. I also have a few followers on Instagram I'm trying to be better about that because I do love this topic so much at Kelsey Kates on Instagram. So those are two good ways, LinkedIn and Instagram, where you can hear more.
Taylor Morrison
Lovely. We will link both both in the show notes. Thanks, Kelsey.
Kelsey Kates
Thanks, Taylor.
Taylor Morrison
Inner Warm up is a collaborative effort. It's hosted by me, Taylor Elyse Morrison, produced by Jennie Kerns and edited by Carolina Duque. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend. And if you're looking to continue your inner work, our free Take Care Assessment is a great place to start. On that note, take care.
