Portia Tung
The Play Alchemist
Edition
ACE! 2025
Topic: Playful Leadership: Harnessing Your Leadership Through the Power of Play
Does creating change seem like a constant uphill struggle? Are you blocked by relentless resistance? Do you feel lost and alone in your efforts to create positive change?
It turns out change need not be full of pain and suffering. What’s more, the pain can be managed and the suffering is purely optional. According to child development experts, play is the most effective and efficient way of enabling children to learn, lead, collaborate and be at their best. It turns out this also holds true for adults, especially when it comes to organisational change, based on Portia’s 20+ years of working and playing with adults in organisations large and small.
In this highly interactive talk, you will experience the catalysing power of play and gain an understanding of how play can convert seemingly relentless resistance to change into joyful anticipation of growth instead. You will learn and experience the benefits of play firsthand and, by being re-acquainted with the knowledge of play, explore what being a playful leader means to you.
Workshop: Play Genius: Emotional Mastery Through Our Play Circuitry
On this play adventure we’ll be learning ways to make better friends with our own emotions even in the toughest of situations as leaders in our personal and professional lives. This diamond sense-making learning experience transforms our typical emotional rollercoaster ride into a personal pilgrimage of our inner life.
There will be different ways of navigating this journey, be it on your own or in accompaniment – as you wish. Many participants of this training will learn to laugh in the face of fear by repeatedly practising the courage of Lion, the brains of Scarecrow, the heart of Tinman, the cleverness of the Wizard and honing in on Dorothy’s longing for ‘home’.
TAKEAWAYS
* Play Genius – Nurturing our embodied intelligence
* Mapping and navigating our emotional circuits reliably and with ease
* Power and practice of prosody when communicating with ourselves and others
Biography:
By combining her skills with her desire to bring about positive and enduring change, Portia has stumbled upon a wholesome way of leading she calls Playful Leadership through harnessing the power of Play Alchemy. It’s a way of enabling transformational change that is fun, effective and efficient – at work, at home and anywhere you go.
Portia is the author of The Dream Team Nightmare: Boost Team Productivity Using Agile Techniques, the first ever Agile novel where your decisions determine the outcome of the story.
Portia is well-known for her fun, practical and thought-provoking talks and workshops at Agile conferences, and is also the creator of creative concepts such as Agile Fairytales and TEDxMiltonKeynes concept of Enterprise Gardening. Find out more about Portia’s musings through her The School of Play blog and Agile Coaching blog.