New Book Provides Hope in Highly Disruptive World

The Playful Advantage Shows How Playful Leadership Promotes Wellbeing, Supercharges Performance and Helps Teams Thrive

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, March 24, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- A timely and important new book launched today titled "The Playful Advantage: The Secret of High-Performing Teams That Love What They Do and Thrive," reveals the profound connection between workplace playfulness and organisational success, offering a powerful alternative to traditional management approaches that have left millions disengaged and burnt out.

In "The Playful Advantage," behavioural scientist, futurist and founder of The Playfulness Institute, Chris Marshall presents compelling evidence that our workplaces are fundamentally misaligned with how humans naturally function and thrive.

"Recent research shows our workplaces are broken," explains Marshall. "We've built organisations that prize control over creativity and predictability over adaptation, leaving huge numbers of employees worldwide disengaged from their work. The cost isn't just well-being and job satisfaction—it's staggering inefficiency and reduced productivity."

The book reveals that playfulness—when properly understood—serves as one of humanity's evolutionary superpowers and natural adaptability mechanisms. Far from being frivolous, playfulness enables enhanced learning, reduced stress, greater innovation, and deeper human connection. However, as Marshall points out, we commonly overlook, underrate, and undervalue playfulness as something that only children do.

"When we focus on creating environments where humans can be fully human—where they can bring their natural playfulness to work—we don't just improve wellbeing; we transform performance," Marshall states. "Companies with human-centred approaches see higher return on human capital investment, improvement in efficiency, and even growth in profitability."

The timing proves particularly relevant as organisations navigate unprecedented technological disruption. As artificial intelligence transforms industries, uniquely human capabilities like creativity, adaptability and emotional intelligence become increasingly valuable. Marshall shows how playfulness naturally enhances these exact capabilities.

One participant from Marshall's workshops captured this paradox perfectly: "The place where I did my most stressful work was also the place I loved the most—precisely because it was playful. Challenges were things we relished, not feared."

"The Playful Advantage" draws on cutting-edge research from neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and organisational behaviour to offer a practical framework for creating workplaces where humans genuinely thrive. Through compelling case studies and actionable insights, Marshall demonstrates how leaders can nurture environments that simultaneously enhance wellbeing and performance.

The book arrives at a critical moment and offers a credible and timely alternative to traditional management approaches developed during the industrial era that increasingly prove unsuitable for today's complex challenges.

"The Playful Advantage" is available from 24th March in all major bookstores and online retailers.


About the Author

Chris Marshall is a behavioural scientist, futurist and psychologist whose work bridges cutting-edge research and practical application. His journey began researching mental toughness and resilience, but after a decade in this field, he recognised the limitations of these constructs in the workplace—and how they undersold human potential.

Marshall's perspective is distinctive: while resilience focuses on 'bouncing back' to where we were before a setback, playfulness allows us to grow from challenges themselves, transforming and becoming more than we were before being tested. This insight fundamentally shifted his research focus.
Through The Playfulness Institute, a not-for-profit which he founded, Marshall helps organisations better understand and harness playfulness, training the next generation of leaders to create environments where humans truly thrive in times of disruption.

He is also the author of the highly acclaimed book "Decoding Change," where he takes a behavioural science approach to better understanding the changing world around us, and why, in his view, we are entering one of the most disruptive eras of human history.

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