Playful Leaders Foster the Most Valuable Skill in Today’s Workplace

In times of disruption, unlearning is key - and playfulness creates the conditions for it to thrive.

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, September 19, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The world around us is highly disruptive. Industries transform overnight and yesterday’s best practices become tomorrow’s liabilities. But in this environment one skill is emerging as more valuable than any other: unlearning.

Unlearning - the ability to release outdated habits, beliefs, or strategies - is what enables people and teams to adapt to complexity, rather than resist it. But while the need for unlearning is increasingly recognised, the conditions that allow it to happen are often overlooked.

According to behavioural scientist Chris Marshall, founder of The Playfulness Lab, “Unlearning isn’t just an intellectual task - it’s an emotional and relational one. And the mindset that enables it most reliably is playfulness.”

Playfulness is not about being silly, childish, or unserious. As Marshall’s research shows, it’s a state of curiosity, creativity, and connection - one that enables flexibility, safe experimentation, and divergent thinking. All of which are crucial for letting go of old assumptions and imagining new ways forward.

“Most people know what needs to change,” says Marshall. “What they lack is a state that lets them challenge the rules they've always followed - without triggering fear, shame, or over-defensiveness.”

In this way, playfulness doesn’t make unlearning easy - it makes it possible.

Modern workplaces often reward certainty, control, and perfectionism - precisely the qualities that inhibit learning in fast-changing environments. Under pressure, people tend to revert to what’s safe and known. Neuroscience confirms that chronic stress narrows perception and reinforces habitual thinking, making true change almost neurologically impossible.

Playfulness does the opposite. It shifts teams into what psychologist Barbara Fredrickson calls the broaden-and-build state - a mental posture that widens our view, increases openness to alternatives, and strengthens social bonds.

When leaders cultivate playful environments, they enable teams to:

Challenge outdated processes without fear of judgment

Reframe mistakes as data, not failure

Explore new options with lightness and curiosity

Connect across roles and silos to co-create change

To help leaders understand the current climate in their teams, The Playfulness Lab has released the Team Climate Pulse - a free online assessment that measures how playful (or rigid) a team environment is. The tool gives immediate feedback across the Three Pillars of Playfulness: Curiosity, Creativity, and Connection.

“If unlearning isn’t happening, that’s not failure - that’s data,” says Marshall. “The Pulse helps leaders tune into team dynamics that might be blocking adaptability.”

Much of the current discourse on workplace wellbeing focuses on resilience, grit, and recovery. But Marshall argues that these concepts, while valuable, are incomplete:

“Resilience helps us bounce back. Playfulness helps us bounce forward.”

Through The Playfulness Lab and the Playful Leader Certification, Marshall and his team have worked with clients across finance, healthcare, education, and the creative industries - helping leaders integrate playfulness not as a gimmick, but as a strategic capability for human systems navigating change.

The result? Cultures that are psychologically safe, emotionally intelligent, and more open to transformation - not just in theory, but in everyday moments of decision-making, feedback, collaboration, and conflict.

The invitation is clear: If the old reflexes aren’t working - if control, pressure, and rigidity are producing diminishing returns - it’s time to explore a different stance.

Playful leadership isn’t about being funny or loud. It’s about knowing how to hold ambiguity with grace. It’s about creating space for others to question, explore, and grow. And it’s about recognising that thriving teams don’t need tighter rules - they need freer minds.

As Marshall puts it, “In an era of complexity, the leader who can unlearn - and help others do the same - holds the real competitive advantage.”

About The Playfulness Lab

Founded in 2024 by behavioural scientist, applied psychologist, and former athlete Chris Marshall, The Playfulness Lab exists to help leaders build teams that don’t just survive disruption - but thrive in it.

At the Lab, playfulness isn’t treated as personality or perk, but as a science-backed leadership state. One that unlocks energy, creativity, and trust when the pressure is on. Through its tiered learning pathway - from the Foundation Course (a practical introduction for leaders looking to re-energise teams and shift culture) to the Practitioner Programme (an intensive six-month journey to embed playful leadership under real-world pressure) - the Lab equips managers, coaches, and executives with the tools to transform how they lead.

Emma London
The Playfulness Lab
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