Workshops
How to Have More Fun
“The beneficial effects of getting just a little true play can spread through our lives, actually making us more productive and happier in everything we do.” — PLAY, by Stuart Brown, MD
We all want to have fun, and lots of it.
And we really miss it when it’s gone. Fun often goes on a Roman holiday during tough times: recessions, job shifts, personal turmoil, loss, existential funks … Tough times can often get our defenses up and we’re so stressed and insecure and uncomfortable, fun — or a sense of positive engagement with life and work – comes to a screeching halt.
Here’s something I notice about fun. We all want more of it, but I suspect when we make proclamations like, “Let’s have more fun” or “I’m not having enough fun” we’re waiting for the big fun ball to drop from the sky. And of course it doesn’t. The trick about fun is it take a combination of understanding, effort and nurturing. But do we know how to do this?
Why fun matters
When we’re having fun in life and at work we’re more productive, engaged, happy, fulfilled; our minds think more creatively and collaboratively, relationships are more harmonious and teamwork improves; we’re open to new opportunities and feel relaxed and improvisational enough to play with new and unusual ideas until they develop into something magificent. Hallways and dinner tables burst with belly laughs. For companies this means job retention, high morale, and the kind of productivity that supports bottom lines and customer attraction. For individuals this means waking up in the morning with a sliver of excitement to get at it. Grrr… slobber slobber.
The Fun At Work Workshops
How to Have More Fun at Work
Maximize employee engagement, creative thinking and team building.
Is there any better job compliment than: “That was the most fun job ever!” That’s the power — and value — of what we call Fun. Fun is a catalyst to creativity, invention, innovative collaboration and all sorts of kick-ass workplace windfalls.
There are experts, books and research out these days that say a sense of fun (aka positive engagement) make employees more creative thinkers, more fruitful collaborators, more productive and committed in their jobs. It always helps to be into what you’re doing. Getting there and sustaining it can get tricky. And so, we have:
Fun @ Work Workshops:
What Is Fun and How Do You Bring It to Work?
- Identify why fun matters, and what it manifests.
- Define and identify fun and its various components, starting with the individual.
- Define and identify supporting structures of fun—daily life efforts that make fun possible.
- Identify ways to bring fun to your work and to the group. Collaborative fun.
- How to keep the fun authentic (real fun vs. forced fun).
- Exercises and some playing around.
- Outcome/benefits: This workshop focuses on how the individual identifies, accesses and takes responsibility for their fun and then what they need to focus on to bring more fun and playful engagement to their work and the team.
Participants come away with more clarity and understanding of what fun is for them (looks like, feels like, sounds like). Learn how to access and nurture components of fun on a daily basis and as a catalyst for play, engagement, creative thought and collaborative teamwork. Participants will leave with one-to-three areas to focus on with strategies and action items to increase their fun quotient and ability to manifest fun and bring it to work and the team.
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The Team at Play: How to Have Fun as a Group
- Identify the team’s fun values and habits.
- Identify how different personalities have fun, looking at four character temperaments.
- Understand how your team best plays togehter: Identify behaviors, attitudes, conversations, situations, project initiatives that increase fun and productivity (and the ones that decrease it).
- Identify what each participant can bring to the team, based on natural strengths, personality and fun style.
- End the culture of complaint! How to become a unified solution-focused team to support having fun and sustain a positive, creative, problem-solving environment.
- Exercises and playing around.
- Outcome/benefits: Understand how different personalities have fun at work and how to navigate the unfun moments. Strategize how to bring more fun and engagement into the team that is natural to the group dynamic and individual strengths. Learn how to end the culture of complaint at work and how to replace it with positive conversations, thoughts, actions and engagements. Participants come away with a sense of how they uniquely bring fun to the team and how to keep fun in play—individually and collaboratively. Make a group contract around increasing fun at work.
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How to Keep Fun in Play During Transitions and Hard Times
- Identify and brainstorm realistic ways to keep fun, positive engagement and creativity alive during hard times and transitions.
- Fun and fear: how to move past it to be more productive and prosperous — and collaborative.
- How to get that old fun feeling back—this is about tapping into a level of engagement that produces better work, uses the imagination and keeps sails up and catching some wind, even when you want to take it all down.
- How to keep motivation going when morale and motivation are low.
- Exercises and playing around.
- Outcome/benefits: Strategies, tools and tricks to keeping fun, morale and motivation up during hard times and transitional phases. Individual and group strategies. Action items for each individual and the group.
COST & DETAILS
Workshops start at $500 for two hours.
Includes:
- Pre-workshop questionaire and preparation
- Materials and hand outs
- Follow-up document that contains a review of the session’s key points, team values, action items and agreed-upon team Fun manifesto.
- Four weeks worth of email support
- One one-hour lunchtime in-person or conference call follow-up session—to be held within the first month