IAM1366 – HR Influencer Helps Create a Psychologically-Safe Workplace

Jeff Harry combines positive psychology and plays to heal workplaces, help teams build psychological safety, and assist individuals in addressing their biggest challenges by embracing a play-oriented approach to work. Jeff was selected by BambooHR & Engagedly as one of the Top 100 HR Influencers and has been featured in the NY Times, Mashable, Upworthy, Shondaland, & Wired. Jeff has worked with Google, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Adobe, the NFL, Amazon, and Facebook, helping their staff to infuse more play into the day-to-day.

• CEO Story: As a child, inspired by what he saw in the movie The Big. Jeff was desperate to work in the toy industry but was disappointed when he achieved his dream because there was no fun at all. Then he bumped into an organization that teaches engineering with legos.
• Business Service: Workshops on healing workplaces. Addressing hard conversations or addressing toxic masculinity.
• Secret Sauce: Play-oriented built with positive psychology.
• CEO Hack: Help tap into their play values as a kid. And starting your day with play.
• CEO Nugget: We are not as scared when we’re focused on ‘we’ as opposed to me.
• CEO Defined: Sees an issue that they believe they can solve. No matter how long the results or impact may be, you do the work because you care.

Website: https://www.rediscoveryourplay.com/guest

Youtube: jeffharryplays

Instagram: jeffharryplays

Linkedin: jeffharryplays

Medium: @jeffharryplays

Twitter: jeffharryplays

Tiktok: @jeffharryplays

Book: how-can-play-bring-your-team-back-together-in-this-uncertain-world ,

reshape-the-future-of-work-by-dismantling-toxic-masculinity

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Transcription

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00:25 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jeff Harry of Rediscover your play. Jeff, super excited to have you on the show.

01:02 – Jeff Harry

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited.

01:05 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, I'm excited as well too, just to kind of talk about all the awesome things you're doing. Love your name, by the way, and of course, all the work that you do. So before, of course, we jump in, I want to read a little bit more about Jeff so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Jeff combines positive psychology and plays to heal workspaces to help teams build psychological safety and assist individuals in addressing their biggest challenges by embracing a play-oriented approach to work.

Jeff was selected by Bamboo HR and Engage Lee as one of the top HR influencers and has been featured in the New York Times, Mashable, Upworthy, Shondaland, and Wired. Jeff has worked with Google, Microsoft, Southwest Airlines, Adobe, the NFL, Amazon, and Facebook helping their staff to infuse more play into the day-to-day. Jeff is excited again to have you on the show. Who doesn't love play? Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:55 – Jeff Harry

Let's get into it.

01:56 – Gresham Harkless

All right, let's make it happen. We'll we'll jump into the sandbox now. So what I wanted to do to just kind of kick everything off was rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:06 – Jeff Harry

Yeah, my Batman origin story. The quick version is I saw the movie Big when I was a kid with Tom Hanks and he got a job playing with toys for a living after dancing on a piano. So I went to F.E.O. Schwartz dancing a piano. No 1 offered me a job. So then I started writing toy companies in third grade. And I didn't stop until I got into the toy industry, like I think 15, yeah, 15 years later. And I don't know if you've ever gotten exactly what you've always wanted and then been so disappointed when you get there, but it was like, no, no fun, no high fives, no kids, no toys, just cubicle walls for like days, right? You're like, what am I doing here? I was in New York, so I left my dream job, even though, because it was a toxic workplace, and I can get into that more later.

And I came to the San Francisco Bay Area and I bumped into an organization on Craigslist that was paying $150 a week to teach kids engineering with Lego. And I was like, man, I'm down to do that. I can do this and I can figure this out. So I started just messing around. There were only 7 people at the time, but then we fully committed and we grew it into 400 staff and it became the largest Lego-inspired STEM organization in the US. And I don't want to skip all of it, you know, but basically, we've played to figure this out. We had no idea what we were doing. We failed miserably a lot. We hired a lot of people that we had to let go of.

We just made so many mistakes, but the whole time we were playing and hiring people that we liked and we were picking cities we thought were fun and just following our curiosity. And I found that method to actually be successful in us growing so large. And that's when we got the attention of Google, Facebook, Adobe, and all those organizations you mentioned. And they were like, Hey, do you do team building events? Hey, do you do special events? We're like, of course, we do. No, we didn't. We just said yes to whatever. Right. And we just figured it out.

But then I ended up doing all these team-building events for the next decade for all these top tech companies. But I realized doing all this, that at the same time, they talked about innovation and creativity and taking risks. In many ways, they had not created psychologically safe workspaces to play to actually be as innovative. And these are the best companies in the world. So I created Rediscover Your Play about 222 and a half years ago to start to address that. How do we dismantle toxic masculinity in the workplace? How do we address, you know, a-holes in the workplace? How do we have hard conversations all using a positive psychology and play mindset?

04:57 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I absolutely love that. And yeah, You know, I definitely have, you know, gotten to the destination and we thought that destination was going to be perfect. And it is it ends up being exactly what it is.

05:07 – Jeff Harry

Yeah. And I think you make a really good point because it's messy. I don't think we talk enough about how messy it is. It's like being an entrepreneur or running your own business. It's all the emotions. It's sad and happy and mad and frustrated. And I think too much of what CEOs represent is the Instagram version of it, of like, you know, I was struggling and now I'm super successful. So by my course. And it's like, come on, man, like, just don't don't act like you know what you're doing. Just protect. Just admit that we're all making it up as we go along.

If there was anything I learned during the pandemic, Even the most amazing thought leaders Brene Brown Simon Sinek, and Gary V were figuring it out just like us. They were doing their interviews or whatever in closets just like us, you know, and we have to recognize that we are our own experts in many ways, and we simply need to play enough in order to figure out that we are.

06:08 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about how you serve clients. I know you touched on a little bit and all the great companies you've been able to work with. Could you take us through a little bit more on what you're doing, and how you're helping people to discover their play?

06:18 – Jeff Harry

Yeah, so I run a lot of workshops around healing workplaces, and I emphasize healing workplaces because there was a lot of distrust that happened during the pandemic that has not been addressed. People, you know, CEOs or a lot of leaders are just gaslighting the fact that we just went through a pandemic, right? And now we're trying to bring people back into the workforce or back into the office and they don't know how to have hard conversations. So That's one of the things I talk about. They don't know how to address office politics. There was a lot of BS in office politics.

Most of my work is about trying to have people not only talk about the issues but embody a lot of the experiences they're going to have to do in order to handle those situations. So whether that's having a hard conversation with that toxic person, whether that is addressing toxic masculinity directly like this is this is how much it's costing our company right now, whether that's dealing with like your inner critic because I do a lot of work around like playing with your inner critic.

So if you are not bringing a new version of work for them, that is innovative and supportive and built off of shared humanity, compassion, and empathy, they're out, they're out. You know, this is not them just going on vacation and then you're gonna make fun. They're gonna go on vacation and then realize, I don't wanna be at this company anymore. So you gotta address that.

07:45 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, and that's so huge. Do you feel like, and I usually ask about your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of sets you apart, it makes you unique? Do you think your ability to look at it and maybe approach it with a new, I guess, tool to the conflict, to all these things that are going on in the workplace? Do you think that kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

08:06 – Jeff Harry

Yeah, I think what is unique about my approach is it's play-oriented, right? But built off of a positive psychology background, right? So there's like justification from a science background like this is why we're doing it. But frankly, if you think about it, we're always playing anyway when we go to work. We're just playing a role that we may not wanna play. So I'm just simply saying, hey, you know, in the consciousness of just like trying random new things out, if you even think about your life, none of it was linear as you go back.

Right. So why are we constantly trying to plan and constantly worrying and constantly having so much anxiety trying to control everything when frankly, the whole idea of embracing play and finding your flow, that's when you're 500% more productive, 5 times more productive when you're in a state of flow, You do more work because you enjoy your work. So why wouldn't we be helping our staff to do that more? And I even do this a lot with CEOs and a lot of executives where I ask them, let's go back to why you started this company in the first place.

09:16 – Jeff Harry

What happened? Are you still representing your mission and values? Like, are you still having the fun that you used to have? And if not, why? Like, what happened? Let's tap back into that because that is what made you successful at the beginning. And the reason why you are now away from that is because you are not connected to your play values anymore. You are not playing anymore. It's just way too serious for you. You're too results-oriented. So we have to understand how we actually tap back into the process and enjoy the play in the process again.

09:49 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely. And that's so huge. And I was actually gonna ask you for what I like to call a CEO hack, which is a little bit more of an app book or habit, something that makes you more effective and efficient. But I almost wonder if that question that you said, asking the CEOs, asking the founders, like why they started, do you think that that's a good hack that can help people to, you know, redirect and make sure that they are in line with that vision of why they even started?

10:11 – Jeff Harry

Absolutely. I even run a workshop with my friend, Lauren Yee, around, it's called Your Futures Where Your Fun Is, where we actually help them tap back into their play values. We actually have them reflect on what they loved to do as a kid and what are the values that came out from that. Like I love to combine my board games as a kid and have this epic board game battle or whatever it is. But what I loved about it was the creativity, the connection, building experiences, and making memories. That's the work that I thrive in. So tapping back into, oh, what did I love to do as a kid? Oh, breaking down those play values. That, I think, is really powerful.

I think the other thing that I find that is a really great CEO hack is starting your day with play. What do you consider play? Prime your day with play. Like usually I start my day by making a ridiculous TikTok video because I'm on TikTok. I make that that primes my day. So then our conversation is also play to me. The next conversation I'm having in about 10 minutes is also going to be played to me. And the more you can prime your mind to see the day as play to see the day as an adventure, the more open you are to the possibilities of the more open you are to follow your curiosity.

11:27 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. You might have already touched on this, but this is something you might tell your favorite client. Or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:41 – Jeff Harry

So I'm on this kick. So I'm just trying to figure this out myself. But I've been talking to another friend of mine about putting together a workshop around fear and embracing fear. And we've been trying out our own things, choosing like things that scare us and trying to do them every day or every other day. Right. And we realized something, it was my friend Sarah, Sarani, and me, we realized that we are not as scared when we are focused on us as opposed to me, right? And this idea that your organization, your company is a we, right? How do, so when you think about something that you're really scared of, the reason why you're so scared is you feel like you're doing it all on your own.

This work isn't even about me. And when you're doing that work from that place, where you're going up on stage and being like, I don't really care what they think of me because I'm channeling something bigger than me, you know, and I care about the web instead of me so much more successful, so much more successful because then you're not focused on a narcissistic perspective of yourself. You're focused on the impact that you could possibly have in the short time that you are on this earth.

12:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that's So powerful. And so would you consider that to be what I like to call my absolute favorite question, the definition of what it means to be a CEO? And our goal is to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So kind of like the balance between feminine femininity and masculinity, being able to kind of create and balance between, you know, being able to kind of create the solutions that you wanna have to the organization.

13:18 – Jeff Harry

Yeah, I guess I define a CEO, even if someone hasn't even started running their organization yet, as someone who sees an issue that they believe they can solve, you know, and then are bold enough and slightly crazy enough to actually feel they can actually do it. Because there's a little, just like, you know, some friends that I know that are politicians, you gotta be a little crazy to be like, Oh my goodness, I'm going to start this organization and I'm going to solve this issue, or I'm going to attempt to start to chip away at this issue. Right.

And I speak a lot about this cathedral effect where, You know, you start to build this cathedral, but you may die before this cathedral is ever done. You know, when I saw Toronto Berks speak, the person that runs the Me Too movement, and she was being brought to the Oscars and the Emmys and everyone was like bringing her places.

She was just like, look, I was running campaigns and workshops in basements of recreation centers and in churches, and I'll do this after. I don't really care. So you can take all this fame and fortune away from me. I'm still doing this work because I care about this work. This is why I'm here. This is why I'm alive. Man, when you're a CEO like that, whether you're running an organization right now or thinking about running an organization, ooh, that's the type of leadership I wanna follow.

14:46 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. I, of course, appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get a hold of you, and find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

15:00 – Jeff Harry

Just think about 1 or 2 people that you've had a massive impact on, right? And just spend some time celebrating that and feeling gratitude around that and the ripple effect that that might have on organizations. Because when you're really struggling as a CEO when you're like, I don't know if I can do this anymore. Going back to those memories and connecting to them. That is what drives us. Right. And at the end of the day, the work that I'm doing at Rediscover Your Play is just like, I want people to enjoy their work again.

Why is that so foreign? So if that is something that speaks to you and you want to help your staff, like infuse more play or tap more back into their flow through play, then simply go to rediscoveryourplay.com, click on the Let's Play button, Let's set up a time to talk. And we can start helping our staff to kick more ass and enjoy their work again.

15:53 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. And of course, we'll have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow up with you. Thank you so much for helping people do that, of course. And I appreciate your time and have a great rest of the day.

16:03 – Jeff Harry

Hey, thanks so much for having me. I love

16:06 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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