Intersecting Roles of Play and Safety: Part 2 of 3

In my last blog post, I began discussing the impact play has on our learning and growth.

So yay Play right? Why don’t we all do more of it? Turns out play collides with our sense of safety.

Safety. I was reminded recently how closely Play and Safety are linked when thinking about how we raise our children. Whether in a playground, in people’s homes, at birthday party gatherings, or elsewhere we implicitly or explicitly make sure the landscape and environment is safe for children before letting them play. There is a boundary of safety that delineates the playing field.

Its the same for us, though that boundary of safety is way more entrenched for adults. We tend to navigate the worlds we know, choosing the familiar over the unfamiliar to such an extent that we develop fears about letting go of what we know. Imagine the fear that comes up in navigating a new social situation or a changing work situation. There are many reasons but, for one, we like getting things right. And, for another, we like knowing how to behave in sanctioned ways.

This is why leaders like Cathy Sahlit talk about the pivotal role of discomfort in learning and growing (and offer experiential workshops just on this topic). This is why as a professional coach, I recognize a client’s discomfort is part of their growth. Taking a chance—the very thing play is about—becomes fraught with risk, exceeding our comfort zones. Coaches support clients in taking risks, so they can experience stretching beyond where they are now.

At a personal level, the last year and a half has led me to experience the discomfort involved in making big life changes and navigating the unknown …but its also meant I can vouch for putting in the work it takes to face my boundaries and make what was unsafe safe. My entire sabbatical consisted of many experiences of discomfort: from feeling self-conscious with vocal improvisation, being in a group of strangers where the group norms felt highly uncomfortable, to re-arranging my relationship with money, to finding out how much time my introvert needs to recharge her batteries in group settings. Growth becomes about acknowledging and transforming the safety. This is the edge at which individual and group transformation begins. With enough practice, we find that if we play enough, we will always encounter the next edge of what is uncomfortable. Its not that the discomfort becomes comfortable—it may not. Nor is it just that the discomfort became more familiar. Its also that a part of me began realizing there might be something lingering for me in the process. I learned to allow myself to ask questions, to stay curious and explore what might be in this unknown for me. So in multiple moments of discomfort, as recently as this summer, I learned to make choices in the discomfort which ultimately culminated in making the choice to stay. (I wrote about one of these experiences in the anthology: Innovative Voices, True Stories about Women Awakening a New World .)

So the real question becomes, both in organizations and in our individual lives: How can you expand the “playing field” for yourself and others? At work? Individually? What might these mechanisms look like? Continue to 3rd part of series here.