Washington, DC
Dr. Carol Hoare of George Washington University spoke to our doctoral cohort today about the exceptional work of the late psychologist Erik Erikson. Carol's 2002 book Erikson on Development in Adulthood drew from her considerable research into the Eriksons' papers at Harvard.
I'm nearing completion of Walter Isaacson's massive biography Einstein: His Life and Universe, with its many insights into Einstein's playfulness. What a joy it was to read Erikson's views on play, ideation and creativity. He once told the Kennedy School's Godkin Lecture that "the opposite of play is death."
My favorite people intellectually are those whose confidence, vitality and individuality encourage them to play with words and concepts and question business as usual. Hoare echoes Erikson in writing that, "self-renewing adults somehow keep their internal youthfulness alive, contributing their energies to work; yet in the play and leeway of genuine work, they resist becoming a work's, an institution's or a superior's marionette." (p.132)
This is a point that many organizations continue to miss, even today. Playing with the unusual juxtapositioning of ideas is great exercise for the mind and an incubator for extraordinary original thinking, even when it occasionally feels subversive to the organization. Great leaders know how and when to encourage conditions for playful thinking and to reward its considerable harvest.
Dr. Carol Hoare of George Washington University spoke to our doctoral cohort today about the exceptional work of the late psychologist Erik Erikson. Carol's 2002 book Erikson on Development in Adulthood drew from her considerable research into the Eriksons' papers at Harvard.
I'm nearing completion of Walter Isaacson's massive biography Einstein: His Life and Universe, with its many insights into Einstein's playfulness. What a joy it was to read Erikson's views on play, ideation and creativity. He once told the Kennedy School's Godkin Lecture that "the opposite of play is death."
My favorite people intellectually are those whose confidence, vitality and individuality encourage them to play with words and concepts and question business as usual. Hoare echoes Erikson in writing that, "self-renewing adults somehow keep their internal youthfulness alive, contributing their energies to work; yet in the play and leeway of genuine work, they resist becoming a work's, an institution's or a superior's marionette." (p.132)
This is a point that many organizations continue to miss, even today. Playing with the unusual juxtapositioning of ideas is great exercise for the mind and an incubator for extraordinary original thinking, even when it occasionally feels subversive to the organization. Great leaders know how and when to encourage conditions for playful thinking and to reward its considerable harvest.