Courage to Try

Humans need connection. Our personal intelligence is connected to others — we extend our thinking into the world. Our minds are extended by books, journals, tools and technology and the communities where we belong. We are connected and inter-connected. But connections can become weak and likewise they can be stronger. We need high definition connection. Moving Puzzles believes that connection takes COURAGE TO TRY.

Courage is NOT 

❌ accepting quick fixes
❌ maintaining status quo
❌ fixing problems with rigid rules 
❌ working ourselves to exhaustion

We value:

✅ memorable experiences
✅ closer connections in teams
✅ options and variations to connect
✅ energetic minds via moving bodies
✅ principles to be creative in change

To build trust in ourselves and with others, we need to connect with Courage, which means having the tools and techniques to take action without fear of failure. Knowing we have COUAGE TO TRY new connections, dropping those that no longer give us energy.

Trust between bodies

Teams depend on trust. In his Leadership Fable, Five Disfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni talks about how teams that lack vulnerability are full of fear, which prevents building trust and closes the door to positive interpersonal conflict on key issues.

Daniel Coyle goes further in his In his book The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. His research is clear: collisions — personal encounters of the serendipitous kind, in close proximity, are key to successful organisations.

So vulnerability and proximity build trust.

How do we get close enough to trust?

In her book, The Body is the Brain, Amanda Blake talks about human touch receptors sparking our emotions.

No wonder we do fist bumps, high fives, hand shakes and all kinds of formal moments of trust. We need playful moments of trust!

We need to CONNECT with COURAGE.

Our sense of connection is fundamentally a question of psychological safety. Psychological safety appears in our bodies as emotions; warmth of happiness, lightness of joy, expansiveness of pride. Notice how these connections live in our bodies.

Psychological safety = physiological safety.

Emotional Connection = Trust.

Trust is BETWEEN BODIES.

Ways of PLAYFUL  for CONNECTION

1. As a quality of attention, playfulness engages our minds and bodies.
2. As a tool for imagination, playing is the ability to embody roles beyond yourself.
3. As a method of goal-seeking, play allows for multiple alternative solutions.
4. As a partner dialogue, play breaks free of habitual ways of relating.
5. As a tool for problem solving, playing with constraints and limits fosters creativity.
6. As a style of learning, play is exploratory and open-minded.
7. As a regulator of emotions, play reduces stress by lowering the stakes.
8. As a technique of mindfulness, play engages bodies to touch the world.
9. As a builder of courage, play exposes fears gradually and safely.

Practice Pieces

• Playfulness - the role of mimicry, sensitivity and surprise in problem solving. Internal and external mindfulness during partner games‍
• Cooperation - task-based work in partnering towards shared outcomes‍
• Role-based situations - study of interaction dynamics such as contact, leading, following, pursuit and avoidance
• Adaptive Competitions - competing in a non zero-sum way that is adaptive regardless of partner capabilities. Asymmetric competition - different goals, power and constraints for different agents inside conflicting and uncertain situations ‍
• Shared attention - cooperative play and goals for groups and teams, developing flexible team dynamics in motion‍
• Communication using objects - emotion, meaning and storytelling conveyed with help of object compositions such as Lego Serious Play, developing more creative and inclusive team communication

Creative team communication

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