Being Human

From Workplace to Playspace in High-Pressure Organizations

Pamela Meyer

How do we create playspace in very serious, high-pressure, high-stakes environments? I have written about some notable examples of playspace in banking describing the high-engagement experience that Umpqua Bank co-creates each day in From Workplace to Playspace. But what about other high-stakes environments? What about in health care?

How do we make room for engagement, fresh ideas, and open communication when the stakes are literally life and death and there are never enough hours in the day?

Recently, an old friend from high school contacted me to let me know that he was in town for a medical conference. Before reaching out, my friend Dr. John Lanaghan, had poked around my website and without being asked, offered a beautiful answer to this question via email:

“I got to watch one of your recent interviews. Interesting. But I thought that wouldn’t work in a medical workplace–no time for play. Then I kept reflecting on it and realized (long story) how I noticed that it did. I had been at one office for 5 yrs and made an effort to enjoy my time with my co-workers by chatting, celebrating birthdays, kid activities, and playing when possible. Then 5 months ago I started splitting my time between two sites. Suddenly my old site was a bummer and the new location was a pleasure. After your video I realized that I had stopped doing the fun things with the old group, while the new job involved hospital rounds where there was lots of walking and talking and joking. Now I have made an effort to make it to lunch at the same time as my coworkers at the old place and some of the enjoyment of the job is returning.”

When we met for dinner the next night, John shared more about his work. He has spent much of his career in family medicine at the V.A. Medical Center in Iowa City, and had recently begun splitting his time providing palliative care, also in the V.A. system. He acknowledged the challenge of negotiating around large egos and the medical system itself. These were not insurmountable, however, as his own experience and efforts attest. John’s reflections show a deep and intuitive understanding of the ways we can create the space for the play of new ideas and connections in our everyday conversations and interactions. Playspace is not always (or even often) about our traditional conception of play—it is about the space that enables us to engage as whole human beings.

Thank you, John Lanaghan, M.D., for sharing your reflections and to all who co-create playspace doing extra-ordinary work in often challenging circumstances each day!

Outing Other People’s Humanity

Pamela Meyer

At this year’s Academy of Management conference in Montreal, artist and scholar, Nancy Adler shared that she sees her role as “outing other people’s humanity” while speaking at one of several events in her honor. As she reflected on a few colleagues who were closet musicians, visual artists, and/or participated in their community in other generative ways, she challenged us by asking us why we, in business and scholarship, haven’t begun to think about the beautiful?

Adler followed this with three more provocative questions about beauty and leadership.

1. Can we reclaim our ability to see the beauty that’s there?
2. Can we reclaim our ability to imagine what’s beautiful?
3. Can we reclaim our role as leaders and human beings to make the world a more beautiful place?

If we truly take up Adler’s challenge and surrender to living these particular questions, I believe we cannot help but out our own and each others’ humanity. For as we reclaim our ability to see, imagine and create the beautiful, the artificial barriers that separate our playful self from our serious work self will fall away, as will barriers separating our goal-oriented self, from our process self; our indoor self from our outdoor self, our artist self from our management self, and all of our other dualistic selves.

As a gay person, I have long held the position that to “out someone” is a violation that could potentially put the outed person in serious harm’s way—emotionally, socially, and even physically—depending on the context. In this case, outing should, except in cases of extreme hypocrisy (a vocally anti-gay public figure) be the sole business of the individual.

Adler has gotten me thinking, though. Just as more people take the risk of coming out about their sexual orientation makes the climate safer and more accepting for all (research shows that people who have a close acquaintance or family member who is gay are far more likely to be accepting), should we not be encouraging others to come out around other aspects of their humanity? Will this not make it safer and more acceptable to be human—to bring our whole selves to work, and into all aspects of our lives?

What, then, is our role as leaders, facilitators, and participants in co-creating the space in which it is safe enough to come out?

What beauty might we discover and co-create together when we reclaim this responsibility?

Do We Make a Difference?

Pamela Meyer

When I am struggling in the in-between spaces of my work, between client projects, speaking engagements and in the necessarily self-propelled spaces of my fragmented life as a writer, speaker, educator and consultant, I seem to return to the same question as many: “Do I make a difference?”

In this most recent round of reflection, the memory of my mother’s oncology nurse, Phyllis floated up. Phyllis had worked on the unit for nine years during which time she had shepherded countless families through their journey with cancer—some to happy endings, many through the painful final days. Phyllis also had a deeply personal relationship to cancer, having lost her own husband to the disease only a year before.

In the months my mom was in and out of the oncology unit at Baptist East Hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, Phyllis became a touchstone. She seemed to be the one on duty when we received both promising news, and major setbacks. Through it all, she was present, compassionate, and encouraging. She treated me and my brother, and our partners, with kindness and as people with whole lives, which until only recently had nothing to do with cancer, hospitals, surgeons and doctors.

For four months I remained fiercely hopeful for my mother’s recovery. In the fifth month, in a tearful consult with her oncologist and surgeon it was clear that there was no more to be done, nothing more to do but be present and lovingly care-full to my mom during her final days. I spent most of those days quietly sitting by her bedside, listening to the click click click of the machines, watching the drip drip drip of the IV and starring at my mothers face, hands and feet studying every freckle and vein—trying to memorize her so I would never forget even a strand of hair in her all-too-soon absence.

On one of these days, as I sat starring, studying and listening in the dim room Phyllis walked into the room to change my mother’s IV bag. I looked up and was struck by her consistent grace. For a moment, I set my grief aside and asked her how she did it. How did she, with all she had seen, day in and day out, the pain, the loss, the loss of her own husband, and the too few and far between miracles—how did she do it? How did she show up, day after day and still maintain her presence and good cheer?

Phyllis responded to me with a simple wisdom, that I call up to this day–in times of frustration, and in the completely non-life-threatening in-between spaces of my life. She stopped, in mid-hanging of the IV bag and said, “You know, honey, I think all of us here would tell you the same thing. And we don’t even have to talk about it—we all know that we can’t control this disease, or necessarily impact the final outcome, but each and every one of us on the floor knows that we make a difference.” And with that, she finished hanging the IV bag and slipped out.

A few days later, an hour before Mother’s Day, my mom slipped away. With me, my partner, my brother and his wife all by her side. And while this was not the outcome any of us hoped, prayed, and pleaded for—while her death sent us tumbling into our grief—to this day, each and every one of us knows that we, too, made a difference. We made a difference to my mom and each other by our presence, love and care. We couldn’t save her from the disease, and we still made a difference.

This is the lesson I learn and re-learn in the spaces in-between, when I can be prone to morbid self-reflection: that there are very few things we have ultimate control over: whether clients follow through on our guidance, or their commitments, whether people buy (and, then actually read) our books, whether the new leadership builds on the progress of their predecessors, or a thousand other uncontrollable twists and turns of the human and natural systems in which we work. AND, each of us, if we show up with presence, integrity, and care, living and working at the top of our capacity, can rest assured that, just as Phyllis does, each day we, too, make a difference.

What if your work was fun?

Pamela Meyer

This 2 minute video is a great example of what a difference a little fun makes in our desire to do things, even things we know we “should” do (like exercise) and things we intend to do (like learn a new skill).

Inserting a little fun helps create playspace which entices us to engage in activities we might otherwise avoid/put off, and it energizes us and leaves us more open to new ideas, perspectives, and generally more connected to our fellow humans.

What if we spent a little more time thinking about ways to make key aspects of organizational life more fun?

What was the best thing about . . . ?

Pamela Meyer

Today is the day after Thanksgiving. Despite the blare of television commercials and media reports from area shopping malls, we are choosing a quiet day of puttering around the house with vague plans for an afternoon movie. I am enjoying this calm and thinking about our dinner last night with friends.

At some point in our feast, between our non-traditional Thanksgiving Ceasar salad and Rita’s amazing stuffing, my partner asked “so what was the best thing about this year for everyone?” As we went around the table, each sharing a bit of gratitude and anticipation for the year ahead, I was reminded of the power of simple appreciation. The things we named—weathering a relationship rough patch and feeling hopeful; happy for abundant client work and interesting projects; excitement about creative energy in a new collaboration, and simply being able to create the space to share a decadent meal in the midst of it all—became a bit brighter in the claiming.

It is so simple, and perhaps a bit new-agey, yet has played out again and again in my experience: what we focus on becomes our reality. As we drove home, completely satiated and a bit over-indulged, I felt the opportunities and generative core each of us tapped guiding us. How nice that we take at least one day a year to slow down enough to notice this. And even nicer that we can choose to do it whenever we feel our vision of possibilities flagging.