By: Barbara Bowes

January has always been a time of personal reflection, a time to review career and life challenges and successes, and reset goals for the upcoming year.

Yet, how many of you have ever thought as far back as the absolutely fabulous fun you had in your childhood? What did it teach you? Take a moment and recall all of the good times you experienced.

As children, most people spent endless hours playing, simply making up things to do as they went along. Do you remember playing with friends, family members and classmates, dancing on the lawn with homemade paper costumes?

If you try hard, I'm sure you can recall your first attempt at building a wooden tree fort -- everyone has tried to build one at one time or another. Or, you can relish the success of that long-ago cardboard playhouse that surprisingly didn't collapse.

How many of you can smile at the thought of sitting in front of your little lemonade stand wondering why customers were so few? Still others, particularly young women, will recall the great time had playing with your dolls and staging an elaborate "theatre" for all to see.

I don't think there is a reader out there who hasn't participated in the many hours of fun and friendship through sports such as ice skating, street hockey, kick-the-can, broomball and hide 'n' seek. And who can't remember a day at the beach? A fresh breeze, blue, blue water, a picnic basket and a whole company of friends to swim, waterski or simply float around on those old rubber tubes.

For some children, there is still nothing that can match a two week stay at grandma's cottage. Oh, what a great, carefree and fun-filled life!

At the same time, we don't ever think about how our youthful frivolous and unstructured play was actually developing many of the skills we would use in our adult work life.

I'm sure it'll surprise you to learn there are a lot more benefits from play than realized. For instance, many of our youthful activities required us to take risks and apply courage as we tried time and again to master a skill. Other activities required us to role-play, explore, innovate, problem solve, share and take turns with our friends. Kevin Carroll, author of the Red Rubber Ball at Work, took it upon himself to find out how play had influenced highly successful people. He interviewed dozens of thought leaders to learn about their play history and how this affected their work and success today. Here is an overview of some of his findings.

Scenario planning - Board games can play a key role in developing several business skills at the same time, such as taking a world view, making deals, forming alliances and anticipating multiple scenarios to envision an unknown future in business.

Exploring and innovation - Riding bikes and continually tinkering with and fixing them, taught skills in the importance of having multiple ideas for exploring and innovation.

Improvisation and imagination - Making up games on the spot that lasted hours and hours allowed the development of personal flexibility, a non-judgmental attitude that encouraged risk and problem solving on the fly.

Creativity and problem solving - Playing with Lego blocks, building things and putting all the pieces together teaches creativity and problem solving as well as the resourceful skill of being able to repurpose various items.

Visualization - Dreaming, visualizing and re-inventing uses for items in the home environment led to the key skill of working around obstacles skill and the ability to literally "stage" creative experiences.

Teamwork - Developing diverse friendships through games, creating rules on the fly, strategizing the next move, learning to share the ball or the puck and treating everyone with respect for their specific contributions helps individuals develop the skills needed to work in a team environment that is so popular at work today.

Improvisation - Experimenting, trying new things, substituting and repurposing develops individual creativity and risk taking that is important to business today.

Coaching - Taking on sports coaching roles or lifeguarding duties helps to recognize and develop the skills needed to direct, supervise, motivate, train and influence others.

Perseverance - Trying different play pursuits until you find the one that is just right, requires perseverance and the courage to keep going to find a role for yourself that gives you joy. The same applies at work.

As you can easily see, unstructured, spontaneous games and frivolous play in general have had a powerful influence on our lives. They helped us to learn about the world, how to cope with life and its challenges, how to socialize and be team players, to respect others' contributions, to deal with our fears and to take risks.

Many adults and perhaps you as well, have lost this sense of play. If there is any residue of play at all, it's probably relegated to weekends and vacation time. On the other hand, some adults no longer know how to have fun and no longer value fun. Their belief is that fun has no place in the adult world; instead, their motto is "get to work!"

If we recall the wise words of psychologists, we'll find there's a lot of connection between fun and work and that we can indeed use this connection in our workplace. Much is accomplished by applying structured learning activities in our training programs and much is accomplished by engaging in team activities that build camaraderie and synergy in an organization.

So, if you are someone who doesn't believe that play and work can coexist in the workplace, take time to reflect on the joy experienced in your childhood play activities.

Then look at ways in which you can recapture these moments of happiness both at home and at work. After all, as Kevin Carroll has shown us through his interviews, play is not just frivolous fun, it teaches us the skills for serious business!

Source: The red rubber Ball at work, Kevin Carroll, McGraw Hill, 2009

Barbara J. Bowes, FCHRP, CMC, is president of Legacy Bowes Group and vice-president of Legacy Executive Search Manitoba. She can be reached at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .