I was doing a team-building session for a group of system-types in a large organization. We had claimed our space in the corporate conference center and made it ours for the two days of our session. By the afternoon of the first day, it was a mess. Flipcharts covered the walls, candy wrappers littered the floor, and colored makers were everywhere. Subgroups were taking the challenge of designing and producing a race-winning paper airplane seriously. The groups had decided to put some distance between each other to avoid industrial espionage and left the room to work outside in the warm spring sunshine. I was alone in the meeting room.

The door opened and a three-piece-suit type stuck his head in the room, looked the space over and said, with a touch of disapproval, “What’s going on in here?”

“A session on team building,” I calmly replied. “Oh,” he said as he backed out of the room, “You’re not doing real work then.”

I no longer react to such ignorance; I just feel pity. All those people who haven’t figured out that learning can be fun, work can be fun, and fun can be work, just don’t get it. Organizations thrive when people have fun as they work together. Leaders are the ones that make having fun at work a legitimate behavior.

Fun. Ah, you remember fun, don’t you? What do you do just for fun? Think about the last time you grinned from ear to ear, giggled, or laughed out loud. That was a hint, you were having fun. Hopefully it’s not taking you too long to think of an example. The more confusing, demanding, and complicated our lives become, the more we need fun as a counterbalance. On really stressful days in our office, we’ve been known to go outside to make snow angels, have a Koosh ball battle, or dissolve into fits of tear-producing laughter over really stupid jokes. What happens during stressful times in your office?

How do you feel about fun? Is it an integral part of your work and personal life? Do you believe it has a place in your off-duty life, but not in the workplace? Is fun a word that’s lost its place in your vocabulary? Think about it. You never know when someone might ask!