From Playground to Boardroom

The boardroom wisdom we need most may be hiding in our childhood memories, not our MBA textbooks.

65% of employees report feeling disengaged at work and 71% of organisations struggle with leadership effectiveness. I think something fundamental is missing from our approach to developing leaders. Despite billions spent annually on leadership development, companies continue facing a critical shortage of truly transformative leaders.
The problem? We've overvalued technical expertise and formal credentials while systematically stripping away the natural leadership instincts most of us possessed as children.
Have you ever watched children at play and noticed leadership dynamics forming effortlessly? The natural organizer creating a game, the mediator resolving disputes with remarkable fairness, the innovator suggesting creative rules that make everyone want to play?
What if these aren't just cute childhood behaviors, but critical leadership capabilities we've been trained to suppress in professional environments?
As I've observed through two decades of executive coaching, our most pressing leadership challenges often stem not from what leaders don't know, but from what they've forgotten – capacities that came naturally on the playground but got buried under layers of professional conditioning.

The Leadership Crisis We're Not Addressing

Today's business environment demands unprecedented adaptability, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Yet our leadership development approaches remain stubbornly focused on knowledge transfer and technical skill-building.
The result? Leaders who can analyze spreadsheets but struggle to inspire teams. Executives who understand market dynamics but can't navigate complex human relationships. Managers who meet targets but burn through organizational trust.
What if the missing elements aren't found in another leadership bestseller or executive program, but in reconnecting with capabilities we once possessed naturally?

1. Creative Imagination: The Endangered Leadership Resource

Then: You transformed cardboard boxes into spaceships and sticks into magic wands, seeing infinite possibilities where adults saw only limitations.
Now: You're expected to drive innovation while facing quarterly pressures, risk-averse stakeholders, and analysis paralysis.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Albert Einstein
This capacity for unbounded thinking isn't just nice to have – it's becoming an economic imperative. McKinsey research indicates that CEOs who lead with a clear, imaginative vision create 58% more shareholder returns than those focused primarily on operational efficiency.
The emotional cost of imagination suppression is equally significant. A senior banking executive I coached recently confessed: "I feel like I've spent twenty years shrinking my thinking to fit into spreadsheets. Now my team needs breakthrough ideas, and I don't know how to access that part of myself anymore."
Reclamation strategy: Schedule regular "possibility sessions" with your team, where conventional constraints are temporarily suspended. Create space for the childlike imagination that catalyzes breakthrough thinking. One pharmaceutical executive discovered her team's most innovative product line emerged from a playful "what if" session modeled on children's brainstorming techniques.

2. Playground Diplomacy: The Forgotten Art of Human-Centered Conflict Resolution

Then: You negotiated who got the next turn on the swing and resolved complex disagreements about game rules with remarkable fairness and emotional intelligence.
Now: You navigate power struggles, competing departmental priorities, and personality conflicts in high-pressure environments while stakeholders expect immediate resolution.

The human cost is staggering. Employees spend an average of 2.8 hours per week dealing with conflict, costing U.S. employers approximately $359 billion in paid hours annually. Beyond financial impact, unresolved conflicts create toxic cultures where innovation suffocates.
"My technical expertise got me promoted to leadership," admitted one technology director, "but no one taught me how to handle the interpersonal dynamics that now consume most of my energy. I'm embarrassed to admit I handled conflicts more effectively as a ten-year-old than I do now."
Reclamation strategy: When conflicts arise, resist the urge to impose solutions. Instead, channel your inner playground mediator: listen fully to all perspectives, look for underlying needs, and facilitate collaborative resolution. One CEO transformed her executive team by implementing "circle time" – a structured dialogue practice directly inspired by kindergarten conflict resolution methods.

3. Rule Flexibility: The Competitive Advantage We've Systematized Away

Then: You and your friends modified game rules on the fly when you discovered a better way to play, understanding intuitively that rules should enhance the experience, not constrain it unnecessarily.
Now: You operate in organisations where processes often become sacrosanct, where "we've always done it this way" trumps effectiveness, and where questioning established procedures feels risky.

This loss of adaptive flexibility creates existential business risk. A Deloitte study found that 94% of executives consider agility critical for success, yet only 6% believe their organizations are highly agile today.
"I realized we'd created a culture where people were more committed to following our processes than achieving our mission," reflected one operations executive. "The moment I recognized this was when a junior employee apologized for finding a more efficient solution because it didn't follow our standard procedure."
Reclamation strategy: Regularly audit your team's processes with the question: "If we were creating this from scratch today, would we design it this way?" One technology leader's most successful product pivot came when he encouraged his team to "play with the rules" rather than just follow established development protocols.

4. Collaborative Construction: Building Teams That Actually Work Together

Then: You built elaborate forts with friends, each contributing different skills and ideas to create something no single child could have built alone.
Now: You manage teams structured by organizational charts, hampered by silos, and evaluated by individual rather than collective performance measures.

This disconnection from natural collaboration patterns creates measurable business impact. According to Gallup, teams with high engagement rates are 21% more productive and 22% more profitable than those with low engagement. Yet only 34% of U.S. workers report feeling engaged at work.
"We hire brilliant individuals but struggle to create truly collaborative teams," confessed a consulting firm partner. "Sometimes I watch my five-year-old daughter play with her friends, and I'm struck by how much more naturally they collaborate than my highly-paid consultants."
Reclamation strategy: Approach team formation with childlike openness to possibility. One financial services leader created a "skill swap" program where team members teach each other their unique abilities – mimicking how children naturally share knowledge during collaborative play.

5. Fearless Curiosity: The Leadership Quality That Education Often Punishes

Then: You asked endless questions, approached new experiences with wonder rather than judgment, and viewed not knowing as an exciting opportunity.
Now: You operate in environments where expertise is rewarded, uncertainty is considered a weakness, and asking fundamental questions can be viewed as incompetence.

Harvard Business Review research found that cultivating curiosity improves decision-making, reduces confirmation bias, and leads to more innovative solutions. Yet our educational and professional systems systematically train curiosity out of us. Studies show that curiosity peaks at age five and steadily declines throughout formal education.
"I realized I'd stopped asking questions because I thought leaders were supposed to have answers," shared one executive. "This assumption was limiting our entire organization's ability to innovate."
Reclamation strategy: Make "I don't know, let's find out" one of your most used phrases as a leader. One executive instituted "curiosity walks" – where team members explore questions without needing immediate answers – which revolutionized their approach to patient care innovation.

The Integration Imperative: Childhood Wisdom Meets Adult Capability
The most pressing leadership challenges we face don't require choosing between professional expertise and childhood wisdom. They demand the integration of both.
This integration represents the evolutionary edge of leadership development – harmonizing analytical adult capabilities with creative childhood sensibilities. Understanding that effective leadership draws not just on professional training, but on the full spectrum of our developmental journey, including those formative playground years.
The stakes couldn't be higher. As organizations face unprecedented complexity, the leaders who thrive won't just be the ones with impressive credentials, but those who've maintained core capabilities most of us possessed naturally as children.

Try this integration practice: The next time you face a leadership challenge, ask yourself two questions:

1. "How would my 8-year-old self approach this?"
2. "How would my most experienced professional self approach this?"

The breakthrough solution often emerges from the creative dialogue between these perspectives.
The Path Forward
Which of these childhood capabilities have you maintained in your leadership journey? Which have you lost touch with? What would your team, organization, or industry look like if you reclaimed these natural talents you once possessed?
The most innovative leaders I've worked with aren't just technically proficient – they've maintained that spark of childhood creativity, curiosity, and collaborative spirit while developing their adult professional capabilities.
In a world desperately seeking more effective leadership, perhaps it's time we looked not just forward to the next leadership trend, but backward to the wisdom we each already possessed on the playground.