This week I spent a wonderful hour with a group of leaders who value play not as something frivolous or superficial, but as a foundational aspect of learning.
Not play as entertainment.
Not play as a break from seriousness.
But play as a way human beings make meaning together.
There are many current definitions of play, and they matter. Researchers, practitioners and policymakers have worked hard to articulate its features, its benefits and its place in learning. But definitions alone are only part of the story. They risk containing play safely at the edges of learning, rather than recognising it as one of the conditions through which learning itself becomes possible.
This is because learning is so often misunderstood.
Learning is more than remembering information in our heads. It is lasting understanding, brought about by insightful experience. It is the discovery of something new that challenges our assumptions and reshapes our perceptions. It is lived in every fibre of our being, not just stored in our memory. Learning is cognitive, emotional, relational and embodied.
This is where play becomes purposeful.
If we are serious about 21st-century learning, we must move beyond the idea that learning is a solitary, internal act. Valerie Hannon and others have long argued that learning is inherently social, shaped by relationships, culture and shared endeavour. Emotional intelligence research reinforces this: we do not learn well when we feel threatened, silenced or judged. Polyvagal theory helps us understand why. When our nervous systems do not feel safe, we default to protection, compliance or control. When we feel safe, we become curious, open and willing to explore.
At its best, play is not a distraction from learning.
It is a signal of safety.
Throughout my career, in classrooms, leadership teams, rehearsal rooms and coaching spaces, I have seen this repeatedly in practice and research: playing with ideas, exploring possibilities, and getting things wrong without fear leads to deeper learning insights. These are not soft options. They are disciplined forms of inquiry.
This is not just for early years children.
It is for life.
In the rehearsal room, we understand something that many organisations forget. Rehearsal is not inefficiency. It is how quality is built. We try things out before they are fixed. We listen, adjust and refine. No one expects perfection at the first attempt, because learning happens through the doing. Leadership deserves the same permission.
This is why LEGO® Serious Play® is such a powerful methodology for leadership learning. When leaders build together, thinking becomes visible. Hierarchy softens. Complexity can be explored without defensiveness. Assumptions are surfaced, not hidden. We quite literally place our thinking on the table, where it can be examined, questioned and reshaped together.
Often, in doing so, we discover that some of the solutions are simpler than we imagined. At other times, we realise that we need to strip away surface-level fixes and reactive complexity, rather than adding more. Play reveals what matters.
And this is where leadership comes in.
In schools and organisations, play does not begin with children or staff.
It begins with leadership.
With leaders willing to ask:
What isn’t working?
What are we defending that no longer serves us?
What might become possible if we explored alternatives together rather than clinging to control?
Purposeful play is not about abandoning responsibility or authority. It is about using power differently. It requires leaders to create conditions of psychological safety, to invite diverse voices into the conversation, and to resist the urge to prematurely close down uncertainty. It asks leaders to model curiosity, humility and courage, rather than certainty.
In schools, this means playing with ideas alongside staff and students, listening seriously to parents and communities, and treating improvement as a shared endeavour rather than a top-down mandate. It means seeing leadership not as performance, but as rehearsal: an ongoing, relational practice of learning together.
If we began to play together, what might we create?
If we built the world we want to inhabit, rather than replicating old paradigms of power and compliance, what new possibilities might emerge?
Play does not trivialise leadership.
It humanises it.
And in a complex, uncertain world, that may be exactly what learning needs now.
