From A People Perspective

Martin Hauck (01:37)
Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of from a people perspective. I'm your host, Martin Hawk. And today we've got Laura Khalil here, founder of once upon a brawl.com. Welcome Laura.

Laura Khalil (01:48)
Hi, Martin. Hi, everyone. It's so great to be here. I am so excited for our topic today.

Martin Hauck (01:55)
I, as am I, backstory to how this all came to be somehow through the magic of the internet, your post and profile showed up on my feed in LinkedIn. And it was talking about Dungeons and Dragons and tabletop role playing. And so obviously that's, that's bait for Martin for sure. And I clicked in and messaged you. I'm like, I love everything that I see. I would love to learn more.

Do you want to do a podcast? And you were like, sure, why not?

Laura Khalil (02:27)
Let's end here we are. Okay. So Martin, I have to ask you a question. I know I'm going to flip the tables on you immediately, but for those who don't know, there are several different types of players you can play in D and D. We call them classes. And I always think they say a little bit about you, what your favorite one is. So what is your favorite class of D and D character?

Martin Hauck (02:29)
Here we are.

Yeah. Love it.

I in video games and when I play and usually I'm the DM so I don't have the the delight of it. I'm typically leaning towards ⁓ some sort of like spell caster. I'll bounce between I'll bounce between like a warlock or a rogue typically. So I don't. Yeah, I like being sneaky. I don't like the upfront.

conflict I like to or I've not done a bard but I feel like bard is the next place I would like I want to go high on charisma stats and see what that what kind of trouble I can get into with that

Laura Khalil (03:32)
A is my favorite character to play, ⁓ and I will frequently multiclass a bard with a rogue. Hopefully we haven't lost absolutely everybody who's listening who's like, what the hell are they talking about? But yeah, I love mixing those characters together. I think they're a cool combo.

Martin Hauck (03:41)
Yeah.

⁓ let's start off with, I mean, I think it would be good to like do a semi brief, deep dive on not like a semi, like this is what it means. And this is D and D or this is tabletop role playing for the folks. I'm sure you're familiar with that experience before we do that. I want to just start off with some high level icebreakers and to keep with today's theme, which is, ⁓ I've got my own little D 20 and I've created a

Laura Khalil (04:05)
Yeah.

Sure.

Nice.

Martin Hauck (04:21)
a nice little ⁓ chart.

So I'm going to roll three or four times and that's going to indicate the icebreaker questions that we're going to use today. So, ⁓ and you actually stole one of not stole, but you, you, said one of the icebreaker questions, which is great. So, ⁓ that was a five five is what board game or tabletop game do you think secretly teaches the best life lessons?

Laura Khalil (04:37)
It's my icebreaker question. Okay, what's a five?

my gosh. ⁓

What board game or tabletop? I'm gonna, let me start with a board. Let me just do a board game. Cause I think for the audience, that'll probably be easier to wrap our heads around first before we get into this tabletop stuff. ⁓ There is a wonderful game out right now called Wingspan. Wingspan ⁓ for anyone who's curious or who likes aviary.

Martin Hauck (04:55)
EW!

Laura Khalil (05:16)
type things who enjoys birds, who likes learning about birds. It's a wonderful, wonderful game to play, very family friendly. ⁓ There's some strategy involved, easy to pick up. This is really a game about managing resources. How do we feed our birds? How do we ⁓ lay eggs with our birds? ⁓ It's very like, if you've ever heard of like cozy games, it's like a very cozy game.

Martin Hauck (05:41)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Laura Khalil (05:43)
However, it is infinitely replayable. It is one of the most popular games in the world right now for good reason. I think it teaches a lot about, one, how we learn to interact with birds and animals. could actually, the cards are so beautifully designed that just looking at the game is beautiful. And how we manage resources, how we manage our time. ⁓

Martin Hauck (06:04)
Mm.

Laura Khalil (06:10)
where we decide to put our energy and effort are all themes within that game. And I would encourage anyone who is curious to pick up Wingspan. I do not think you'll be disappointed.

Martin Hauck (06:25)
I've heard of that one. I'm not sure if I've played it, but I remember like reading about it. I'm like, okay, this is one I've got to check out. So that's added to the list formally now. Awesome.

Laura Khalil (06:34)
It is phenomenal. It is phenomenal

and the expansions are amazing. I just totally recommend it.

Martin Hauck (06:42)
You can become a birder afterwards. is it like this kicks off like a serious birding habit and you're buying binoculars and sue it.

Laura Khalil (06:44)
Yes.

You're legally

required to become a birder after you play it. At least you'll have an appreciation for birds, and you'll learn a little bit about them too.

Martin Hauck (06:54)
Amazing. Yeah.

Cool. All right. We're going to roll a couple more times here. Let's see what we've got in store and eight not rolling well in DND terms today. The part the table would not be happy with me. ⁓ If the team at work had a party composition, what roles do you think every team needs?

Laura Khalil (07:03)
Okay.

Right.

⁓ I think the first thing coming to mind is every team needs a Paladin. I'm to write these down as we go. I remember a Paladin is the character who has a really strong sense of justice. ⁓ they are really on a mission and a Paladin, you know, can not always, but often be really a force for pursuing their mission and goals in the world. And I think that in terms of a company, we need someone who has.

that kind of drive ⁓ to get things done. ⁓ Sort of a complimentary to that, I think a rogue is important. A rogue, typically in D &D, a rogue is a little sneaky, seen as a thief, ⁓ but a rogue is really good at persuading. A rogue is really good at finding innovative ways to get things done. And I think those qualities of the rogue

are really important for a team to have. We need to have somebody who is, ⁓ you know, innovative in how they try to think about things. Both the Paladin and the Rogue are more of what we would call in the D &D world, frontline characters. They are people who are at, when we're having a battle in D &D, they're more upfront facing the monsters. ⁓ But there are characters who are also very important, who are more, ⁓ let's say,

behind the scenes. ⁓ would put, I'm obviously preferential to a bard. So there's going to be a bard in any group that I'm a part of because I will be the bard. And the bard is, ⁓ can bring some levity, some joy. They, ⁓ when things get really serious, the bard can come in and lighten the mood. And that's really important, right? Like if things are like super heavy. ⁓

The Bard also, while they are somebody who fights more from a distance because they're what we call a spellcaster in D &D, they cast spells and when you cast spells you do them from afar, they are still really powerful even if they're not on the front line. They're really powerful. And Martin, I don't know, so we have a Paladin, a Rogue, a Bard, I'm curious if there were a fourth member. What do you think it would be?

Martin Hauck (09:49)
mean, we've got in theory, we've got a spell caster. I am I'm gonna go full you, you almost always need sort of the wizard and not from like the spell casting perspective, but from the perspective of like, typically known as the person that does the research and like, is academic and is the subject matter expert.

Laura Khalil (10:15)
Yes.

Martin Hauck (10:18)
And you kind of need to have that very technically oriented person to just know all the stuff about what's going on so that you can refer to them when it comes to like, we're in the, we're in a bit of a pickle. And like, you've got somebody on your team that's like, I was here 10 years ago and this is the problem we encountered and this is how we solved it. And they're kind of there guiding them to like, so

I mean, a wizard on a team might be just somebody that's been with the organization for a long time, has a lot of institutional knowledge that just might not get documented or put down and shared.

Laura Khalil (10:56)
love that. I was almost going to say a cleric. A cleric is more of a healer. I hate to swap out the bard. I'm so partial to the bard, but I could see the cleric taking the role of the bard, healing things, repairing rifts, ⁓ bringing people together. I think the bard can accomplish those functions as well. yeah, love a wizard. What an amazing ⁓ addition. You need that subject matter expert. Absolutely.

Martin Hauck (11:26)
Okay, final one and then then then we'll get into the meat and potatoes of why this conversation is even happening and it'll all make sense. I promise listeners. All right, one more. Let's see if we can't get a 19. I'll take it finally out of three roles. Almost

Laura Khalil (11:29)
Okay.

It will.

Almost, almost. I can't remember what

feet would make that a crit in D &D, but there's one where a 19 would be as good as rolling a 20.

Martin Hauck (11:47)
Hahaha

⁓ yeah. Don't know it off the top to be honest with you. But ⁓ if work meetings used game mechanics, what rule would you add immediately?

Laura Khalil (12:05)
⁓ well, I'd actually add something that comes at the end of all the games that I run. ⁓ D and D or any role playing game, we're really facilitating an experience between people. It is a form of meeting. And one of the most important things that I think happens in any game is how we end the game. So we use something that is called stars and wishes.

⁓ stars are star moments that you remembered, things that were amazing, things that you want to like highlight and call out. ⁓ in, in business language, we sometimes call that like, what's your key takeaway from today? ⁓ but I like, when I do stars, what I like to do, especially when we're strengthening team dynamics is I like to say everybody at this table has one star to give out.

who do you wanna give your star to at this table and why? So as a way of saying like, who here do we wanna like give a high five to? Do we wanna like acknowledge for their work ⁓ or for some contribution they made either during the meeting or during your work week or even during the month that you're like, hey, that really helped me, thank you so much. helping people feel seen and appreciated.

is something that we rarely make time to do within our business life. And I recommend giving out stars to people. Wishes are the, when we call it stars and wishes, wishes are the things I'd love to see next. Wishes are the things that I wish we would do this next. And I think we can also incorporate that in our meetings. What would you love for how we move forward? What would help you make your life easier or your work easier? Asking people,

Martin Hauck (13:39)
Hmm.

Laura Khalil (14:05)
those types of questions and really closely listening to the responses can make a world of difference in terms of the culture of an organization and the engagement we get from our employees, again, because they feel listened to, they feel heard. so Stars and Wishes is what I would do.

Martin Hauck (14:21)
delicious. No, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Context, everybody. Thank you. It's an ex. Yeah, they are. They are. They love it. So I'll frame this and you don't know this. didn't say this out loud. When I reached out, it was more of just like a hey, do you want to do a podcast? And you're like, Yes, I love it. Context. I don't think it's like me. 10 years ago, I was part of

Laura Khalil (14:29)
If you're still here!

Martin Hauck (14:52)
coworking space called Center for Social Innovation. It's in in Toronto's houses a lot of not for profits and just like socially good companies. And one of those companies was called 21 toys. I don't know if you've heard of them or not. ⁓ but they're of a mindset that teams grow stronger when teams know how to play together. And so they have this workshop and it's for employers. It's for teams. It's for a million different

avenues, but it's all for adults in in in the business world, right? And I went like I went to one of their sort of workshops, I went through it, I even like I played the game with my sister who I grew up with. And it was wild to me just seeing in in like, and as a recruiter, I've been a recruiter for for 20 20 plus years. And as

Laura Khalil (15:24)
I love it.

Martin Hauck (15:50)
As a recruiter, I'm like, I learned so much about my sister in that 15 minutes of playing that game. that I just like saw things and I could draw them back to like having the advantage of knowing her for my whole life. ⁓ I was able to like extract all these like interesting sort of like data points. I'm like, this is what it's like working with her. And these are the frustrating moments. And like there was frustration built into the game on purpose, forcing you to collaborate.

Laura Khalil (15:56)
Hmm.

Martin Hauck (16:18)
all things that you're sort of like nodding your head. I'll get to the, the real point is like from that point onwards. And I tried to bring the toy into the company I was working with and like, we need to bake this into our recruitment process. It was a little avant-garde, I suppose. And that never happened. I got a lot of weird looks, but eventually I got into D and D just around the pandemic. And again, this idea surfaced for me of like,

Laura Khalil (16:31)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (16:46)
We really need to like, this is a way to really find out what a person, what makes a person tick. And like, there's so many great data points that you can get from like a 30 minute, one hour session of just playing a game together with, with people, and especially the teams that you're going to be working on. And so when I saw what you do, and when I just like dove into your website and everything, I'm like, amazing. Like you're truly like advocating and living for that.

Laura Khalil (16:53)
yeah.

Yeah.

Martin Hauck (17:14)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's why I'm excited for today. Like there's a strong belief there. I'd love to just dive into like how you got to where you are and all that fun stuff.

Laura Khalil (17:23)
I'm happy to tell you, and I just want to say there, you can get to know a person to your point better than you ever imagined and see aspects of them you would never normally see by playing a game. In fact, you may see parts of them that are awoken during the game that they haven't even accessed in a while that help bring them to life.

Games feel good to play. ⁓ And I'm not talking about traditional ⁓ board games where it's like you versus me. In particular, in role playing games, one thing to note is we're all playing together. We are telling a shared story. There is no way to quote unquote win D &D. ⁓ There's no one person who can win the game. It is all of us together who are

going on this journey. And so it's very different from traditional board games where it's like, you know, I know the rules better than you, therefore I'm going to have an edge up on you. No, that's not what we're doing at all. And I'll talk more about what a role playing game is, but briefly it is, we're all doing a form of improv together, telling a story that has some rules around it. And the fact is, if anyone here listening is like, I've heard it's really complicated. Some people have described it like calculus.

I want to say to all of you, one, come play a game with me. ⁓ I run tons of public games. You're welcome to join one. Second thing is a good dungeon master, which is the person who runs the game, will always just tell you, ask you, what do you want to do? And they'll tell you how to do it. Don't worry at all about the rules, about this character sheet with all these numbers or things. Don't worry about it. We will help you. How did I get into this? Well,

Martin Hauck (18:54)
You

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Laura Khalil (19:19)
I've been a consultant for the last 13 years, ⁓ primarily in the space of marketing. And I did a lot of work earlier on in my career with Fortune 500 companies ⁓ helping bring products to market. ⁓ I have some very distinctive memories of sitting in the boardrooms of companies

that you and I use the products of today. They are used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. And sitting there thinking, we have the smartest minds in the world in this room. We have very deeply intelligent people, the vetting process to be able to actually work at a Fortune 500 is. As you know, as a recruiter, mean, it's like ruthless. is so, so high. You just have to at a very high degree.

So we have all these really smart people sitting around a table trying to decide the future of a product. And I'm thinking in my head, well, surely we put all these great minds together. We're going to figure this out. And in fact, what we saw was very different from that. ⁓ We saw a lot of division. We saw a lot of what I would call, ⁓ sometimes they call them silos.

In my head, I actually would have described it more as fiefdoms because it wasn't just I'm in my department and you're in your department. There were moments where a department was trying to figure out how to one up another department, how to cut them down. That is deeply dysfunctional behavior. And it always stayed with me.

Martin Hauck (21:05)
Hmm.

Laura Khalil (21:15)
I couldn't figure out why this was happening. And I thought, gosh, shouldn't we be smart enough to know not to act this way and to like, we're all on the same team? So that stayed with me for many years through my work. I began playing D &D very much like you during the pandemic. I immediately fell in love with it. I also, especially as a woman, I was like D &D, ooh gross.

I don't want to play with a dungeon in a dragon or in a d- in a dungeon with a dragon like, ew, like I don't want to do any of that. That sounded repellent to me. And, and one of the greatest ⁓ challenges that D &D has is frankly its name. ⁓ It is very, it can be very repelling to people. You know, if you grew up in the eighties, you may think of the satanic panic ⁓ and all of the characterizations of D &D from that era.

Martin Hauck (21:49)
Yeah.

Laura Khalil (22:13)
If you grew up ⁓ in the nineties, you may think of kids getting stuffed in lockers because they play D &D, right? It was very uncool to play D &D until really about 13, 14 years ago. And in particular with the rise of Stranger Things. So there's so much misunderstanding of what this game is. And really all it is is a shared story. So ⁓ there's no board necessarily. We can play just by talking.

And the storyteller or dungeon master is telling the story. So I started to play more during the pandemic and I started to just naturally see, wow, there's some incredible benefits to the group. I'm getting to know the people that were complete strangers to me in advance. I'm getting to know them in ways I never thought I would know them. And I thought to myself, why aren't we doing more of this out in the world? So I began to look into the research.

Martin Hauck (23:03)
Hmm.

Laura Khalil (23:08)
⁓ and understand what is going on with teams. What's the research behind Dungeons and Dragons from a therapeutic standpoint, from a team building standpoint. And there is research and quite a bit of it that bears out the therapeutic benefits of D &D. In fact, there are many therapists today ⁓ who use D &D with their ⁓ patients in a clinical setting.

They do group therapy with D &D and is used very widely in schools as an educational tool. And the one frontier that has not yet been fully conquered is the corporate space. And that is the space I know really well. the benefits of when we're playing in a game, ⁓ we can be practicing at or playing at being ⁓

different types of ways. We can learn new skills. ⁓ And those skills, we know from the research, bleed into our lives. So if I am trying to work at being more confident, or I'm trying to practice speaking up, or I'm even trying to learn how to build consensus with a group, we can practice those things within D &D. Now, here's the difference. You would not, for example, let me make a little pivot. ⁓

Martin Hauck (24:10)
Hmm.

Laura Khalil (24:36)
Imagine, Martin, I said to you, OK, we have a football team that's going to be going to the Super Bowl. And I suggested that we prepare that team by having them watch a PowerPoint.

Martin Hauck (24:55)
Yep. Yeah.

Laura Khalil (24:55)
You'd be like, you're crazy. Like, what

are you doing? They're never going to prepare unless they get on the field. They practice some drills. They run through plays. We, in the corporate world, in learning and development, we look at many options for helping our employees grow and helping them come together. And a lot of those options involve or can involve, hey, read this book. Watch this PowerPoint.

Martin Hauck (25:01)
Now they gotta practice.

Laura Khalil (25:22)
But where is the experiential aspect of that to actually help them practice in a low stakes environment? You can't practice these types of skills when you're sitting at the table with your boss and the VP and you're worried that if you say the wrong thing, you're going to get fired. That is a really difficult space to practice any skills. So we can practice these skills within the games. We can practice collaboration within the games.

One of my clients, ⁓ we did a company-wide game day for them. We actually shut down the whole company for a day and we played games. And after that event, he said to me, the problem they were trying to solve is they had a warehouse and then they had the people in the office and neither the two shall meet. it literally, the office, right? And so they had this whole issue of these people don't know one another. There's a little bit of

Martin Hauck (26:12)
Literally the office.

Laura Khalil (26:21)
antagonism between the groups. in particular, they were dealing with the challenge of, our office people, some of them want to work from home. And we're trying to hire some of the best talent in the sales department. And the best talent is requiring a hybrid schedule. Well, the warehouse can't work from home. They have to be in the office. And so there was a lot of contention around this. And it's not fair. It's not right. ⁓

Why are there double standards? So we came in to play games with them, spend a day with them. At the end of that, the president said to me, Laura, if just 30 people made two new connections within the company to people they don't know and saw them more three dimensionally, that is 60 stitches in the fabric of our company.

And that is a big deal.

Martin Hauck (27:23)
Hmm. ⁓

Laura Khalil (27:25)
So there are many benefits and use cases to playing D &D. Whether we need to develop more empathy for the individual in front of us and see them in a more three-dimensional way. Whether we need to build trust. Whether we want to work on certain things as a team where we are experiencing dysfunction and we want to address them. It's a great way to get started.

Martin Hauck (27:50)
Yeah, no, fully. I mean, it's always been just like a simple hypothesis banging around my head and wouldn't this be fun if kind of deal and you're you're living it and and seeing the results of it from from your clients and customers. And I guess ⁓ did was there like an aha moment for you when you're like, OK, this is this is what I'm doing or did it just slowly grow over time? How did this all come about?

Laura Khalil (28:19)
I had this moment where I experienced so much joy playing games and running games and activating that part of my brain that I said to myself,

Martin Hauck (28:34)
Hmm.

Laura Khalil (28:40)
How could I bring this to other people? How can I make this happen? ⁓ And how can I bring this to companies that need it desperately? And that was kind of the seed of like, could I even? And I started by doing a lot of interviews with people and talking to people in HR and in leadership and asking them, what do you do for team building activities? What do you do for professional development?

And how is that working for you? And one of the interesting statistics that I've seen is that we will bring in someone to go speak on an important topic. Maybe we're talking about ⁓ personality styles or conflict management or whatever it may be. And they'll do a talk. Maybe they'll give you a worksheet. You'll do a little bit of chat and go on with your day. Well, we know from the research.

that 90 % of that information is lost within two weeks because it's not integrated. There's no way to practice at it, to play at it. It's theoretical. I look at all the information we're inundated with just on our phones every day. So D &D or role playing games more broadly provide a way for us to really immerse ourselves in an experience.

Martin Hauck (29:44)
That's right.

Laura Khalil (30:08)
where you will not forget it. I guarantee you, you'll be talking about it years later. You will have developed inside jokes with ⁓ those who you've played with for years to come. You'll see people in a different light that you will not forget. And we can actually play at the things you need in a low stakes environment that you can use when the stakes are much higher. So to me, that just became self-evident that I needed to bring this into the world.

You know, being in business for a long time, I don't know if I'm like a little bit nuts or something, but I'm like, I have this like sense of to heck with it. I'm going to go do it. Like if I think it needs to be out there, I'm going to go do it because I know how to build businesses. So I'm going to go build this one.

Martin Hauck (30:57)
I mean, jealous and awesome to hear, hear and see. ⁓ I guess. I mean, you've you've touched a bit about it on on the science side of things. I'm curious to like double click on on that a bit. When what would you say is the main thing that stands out from you know, like there's

there's anecdotal reasons to do this, right? Everybody at some point, every organization says, we need to figure out a way to sort out this whole team building thing. And like, you can think of the cliches of like, Trust Falls and stuff like that at work and, whatnot. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wild. ⁓ And so in those, and like,

Laura Khalil (31:44)
we're going to spare you a trust fall. Can you imagine?

Martin Hauck (31:53)
you've you've also seen the evolution, especially in the startup SMB space where it's like, teams are now, you know, they're not just going to a pub after after work. And that's the only way they socialize and get to know each other on a on a different level. But like, there is this moment that executives and founders have where it's like, okay, the company has grown to a point where we're not so close together anymore. I'm out of touch.

Laura Khalil (32:03)
Right.

Martin Hauck (32:20)
But I want people to feel connected to your point, the 60 stitches in the fabric of the organization. And there's just no way to do it because organically at 10, 20, 30 people, these things just happen easily. Once you hit a certain number, I'd love to know from your perspective, are there specific numbers that you hit as an organization where it just kind of goes out the window? What you've seen? Where do you want to take this?

Laura Khalil (32:35)
yeah.

Well,

specifically with D &D, and I also want to say, we're talking a lot about D &D. D &D, for those who don't know, is really an umbrella term for role-playing games, of which there are literally probably tens of thousands. There are games where you can play grannies solving a murder mystery in a murder-she-wrote-style game. That's one of my favorites. There's a game I run where you get to play in a Latin telenovela. You get to play a soap opera star.

Martin Hauck (32:56)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Khalil (33:17)
⁓ There are many, many, many versions of these games. So just for everyone listening, ⁓ if you don't want to play in a dungeon with a dragon, you certainly don't have to. And we don't always play D &D in companies either. Sometimes that's too complicated. We'll play something that has fewer, less rules or is a little bit easier to enter into depending on the group. So D &D is really good in a few circumstances and there are other circumstances where we'll turn to other games.

Martin Hauck (33:25)
Yeah.

Laura Khalil (33:46)
So for example, leadership retreats, leadership off sites, ⁓ where we have a group of people, ⁓ usually we want to have under eight people, ⁓ ideally six or less, who are playing with us ⁓ to confront a challenge in a really different way. ⁓ We can take small teams through that as well. If we're going to play D &D with

let's say 100 people, that's possible. It requires multiple DMs because D &D really needs to be played at a table. It's not like a game that can be played with thousands of people all at once or hundreds of people all at once, but we break the room up into tables that have a DM at each table who is taking them through a shared adventure. So the whole group comes together, but it's primarily a good activity.

when you have small teams that want to become more tightly knit. When I have a group of 20, 50, or 500 people, we have to turn, typically we will turn to other games, depending on what the goals are for the company. So ⁓ I did a game day recently where we were trying to teach an organization how two departments could work.

better together. So with that in mind, we had over 30 people to work with. We don't play D &D in that case. What we did is we played an airplane game. It's like a board game. And in that game, ⁓ you only have two people playing each game. You have a pilot and you have a co-pilot. And together,

They have different functions of what they're able to do in the game, but their goal is united. Their goal is to land the plane. And so with that game, we try to teach, hey, you're both needed, even though you're both in different departments and you do different things, but this doesn't work without either of you. So the answer is, we can play games at any size company, at any organization.

It just depends what the company wants to do. One thing I do want to say about this is that I frequently hear, especially from HR folks, I don't know if our leader is going to want to look silly. Because if they play a game, aren't they going to look silly? And the only thing I want to say to that is that, yeah, they might be.

Martin Hauck (36:15)
Mm.

Yeah.

Laura Khalil (36:39)
And that's the entire point. We have to be willing to take some of the corporate armor off and show people a different side of ourselves if we expect other people to show up at work as their full selves. Otherwise, people are scared to be themselves, right? And so whenever we play games, we encourage leadership. I want you to be the goofiest.

I want you to be the silliest. I want you to be the most outlandish because I want you to model for everybody else that it is okay to play because they're looking to you for cues. So we really encourage that rather than try to like pretend that ⁓ our leadership isn't going to be silly. We want them to be silly. We want them to show people.

Martin Hauck (37:28)
Yeah. This is you have such an interesting vantage point and like in terms of not necessarily the hard sell, but the thing that you just addressed it, which is sort of this like the barrier to the barrier to doing this in the first place is like, is everyone doing it right because leadership training to a certain extent and team building exercises, whatever that might be just falls into this catch all

bucket. And it's like, we went axe throwing once. And, that's a thing. And don't get me wrong, you get those moments of team building and bonding, and you learn more about each other through that kind of game. And just through any sort of like, okay, we're not at work, we're not in front of a screen, we're not writing emails, we're not talking about the deadlines and the KPIs and the metrics. And so you do get that chance to like,

Laura Khalil (38:10)
Sure.

Martin Hauck (38:26)
form bonds, the one thing that kind of stands out to me, and I'm sure this is what you saw as well, you've kind of talked about it. But is this you just learn so much about a person's personality, when you're all focused on something together, like axe throwing, for example, is just an individual doing good at a thing together and rinse repeat who can be the best acts at ax throw, right? No, nothing against that as an activity. But you kind of have to be put into this like, team in

Laura Khalil (38:38)
Yeah.

That's it.

Martin Hauck (38:55)
environment and the thing that kind of became what's interesting is like I run a campaign. I'm running three campaigns right now, all of the same module, I've been running the same module just so I don't have to memorize lost mind of fan Delver the the starter pack. So I just I don't need to learn other like I could just pick up and go and it's not it's not a hard thing. ⁓ And I have the luxury of knowing

Laura Khalil (39:08)
What is it? Okay, cool.

And go, yep.

Martin Hauck (39:24)
these people in different settings. like one, one group is like the people I've worked with, like they're all people that I've worked with at different companies. At some point they all came together and another is like friends from 20 or 30 years ago. And in each of these campaigns, like there's it's strange that like you could pick anything and be anything, but ultimately how they play the game, their strengths and their weaknesses show up exactly as how I've seen them show up in real life as well.

in such a way that I would be like, ⁓ so this is how they're going to react in that circumstance. guess have you had what what aha moments have people come back to you with like, okay, like after playing for an hour, two hours or whatever, this I know so much more as a result of it.

Laura Khalil (40:11)
Well, I'll tell you, I'm going to answer your question in a slightly different way, which is to say, sometimes when we play D &D with people, or we just play games with people, because we also offer games, all tabletop games of different varieties based on the problem we're trying to solve, they can be used in a way of understanding team dynamics and team development.

Martin Hauck (40:16)
No, go for it

Laura Khalil (40:40)
Who are the people who need more support, maybe more coaching and guidance? Who are your high potentials who have natural leadership ⁓ capabilities and they rise to the challenge even though they don't know what's going on? ⁓ Who are the people who may seem confused but don't want to ask questions? Who are the people who are

And this has happened in games, people who are ⁓ openly disparaging of games. In some ways, if you are disparaging of a game, in some manner, there's a psychological safety to feel comfortable enough to say whatever you're going to say and know that it will get back to leadership. On the other hand, ⁓ if you are in a leadership function,

And you're speaking that way. What message are you sending to the team and where could you benefit from learning ⁓ how to communicate ⁓ what's going on differently and when to speak up and when maybe it's a better time to model different behaviors. So there are many cases where we're brought in because a team is trying or because a leader is trying to understand the team dynamics. They're too close to it. They can't see it clearly. And so we come in.

to tell them what's going on with the team, who needs more support, who seems to be doing well, good on their feet, ⁓ and really identify who may be the leaders you want to spend more time with or the emerging leaders you want to spend more time with. It can absolutely ⁓ work in that way.

Martin Hauck (42:27)
Yeah, it's it's interesting because they're to a degree right at the end of the day, it's like you're running a business, you probably have like, folks that are very into like, this is taking a day. I'm small percentage I'm sure but like, I should be doing my job, right? Maybe they're in a high pressure situation. Maybe they're a salesperson. I'm stereotyping right now. But let's just assume that that's the case. And that that individual, let's say they're a leader, right?

Laura Khalil (42:43)
Yeah.

True.

Martin Hauck (42:54)
what's interesting is like if that person feels confident and comfortable enough to say like, this is a waste of time, I don't want to do this, we should like whatever. And they're a leader, right? To your point, right? Like, well, if something comes down the pike, in six months that they don't agree with as a leader in the business, that there's you could it's probably a safe bet that that's also how they're going to react with their team, but not in a public setting, not in a and in and so there's it's like,

Laura Khalil (43:02)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Right.

Martin Hauck (43:23)
good, they have the confidence to speak their mind, right. ⁓ But there's also this element of like, okay, well, there's that interesting, like, when you, I guess, have you had really sort of surprising feedback or insights into an organization as a result of like games and the feedback that you've gotten over the years?

Laura Khalil (43:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, so the first thing I'll say is, I just want to address for people who feel like this might be a waste of time, like any team building activity is taking away from the day-to-day business, ⁓ I want to just first say that play is actually a pretty serious business. It really is, because it's how we learn. ⁓

is how we learn as children when the brain is elastic and we're playing at interacting with people. We're playing house, we're playing cars, we're playing whatever. We're learning skills and socialization through it. And the wonderful thing about the brain is that the brain, we know now the brain does not stop learning. We don't hit adulthood and then we're like locked in. That's what the old thinking used to be. The new thinking is now that, no, the brain continues to grow. ⁓ And so we can continue to use play.

as a learning tool. So I would say to any leader or any individual who thinks, if I'm not doing my job, this is a waste of my time. And I would encourage you to ask yourself, how could this benefit my job?

How could I take something away from this that benefits my job, whether it's getting to know my employees better, it's practicing a skill, ⁓ or multitude of other benefits? So that's just what I would say about that. When we play with a group of people, you talked about the axe throwing, right? If we go to do axe throwing, there's someone who's always like,

Like this is what they do on the weekends, right? Or the same thing with bowling. Like there's somebody who just like knows this really well and they're really good at it and they get to show it off. But that's still Bob from accounting. That's still, you know, your SVP. When we get around a table,

All those roles go away. Like, it doesn't matter that that is, you know, Bob. Suddenly, Bob is transformed into like, ⁓ Alira, the female cleric from Baldur's Gate who is going to help heal the party. And you're like, Bob is gone. Like, totally gone. He's left the building, you know, gone. And that goes, so we're erasing

Martin Hauck (46:11)
Yeah. Yeah.

Laura Khalil (46:17)
titles, we're erasing hierarchy and we're doing that for the few hours that we're playing. That changes things. Even just playing once changes things because I see you not just, there's no being good at D &D. that's not really, being good at D &D, all that means is that you're participating in the game in the best that you know how. That's all that means.

Martin Hauck (46:30)
Hmm.

Laura Khalil (46:46)
If If you choose not to participate, then please don't. But there's no being better at it or being worse at it. It's like, am I engaging with the group? Yes. OK. You're doing it. You're playing. That's it. And so we equalize all of these different things. So people come out of a game after two or three hours, and they'll say many things to us. First,

I can't believe we're already done. Most people, when you play a game for two or three hours, think, you want me to play a game for two or three hours? Are you out of your mind? And then when they play, they're like, I want to go again. I want to play more. I'm not done. So first, the time flies by. Second, they have connected with someone in a new and different way. They've seen someone differently. When we talk about, Google did this study a few years ago.

Martin Hauck (47:14)
Mm.

Yeah.

Laura Khalil (47:40)
around how to engineer a perfect team. And it's super interesting. They studied hundreds of teams. had their data scientists going through trying to figure out ⁓ what is it? Is it just really smart people? Or are they people from these kinds of colleges or this type of background? Nothing correlated. What they found is that the teams that are the highest performing and do the best

Well, what they learned is all teams have a certain set of unwritten rules. Unwritten rules can be things like, hey, we slack one another on the weekend, or the boss uses slack at 10 PM. So there's an unwritten rule that I probably need to be on slack over the weekend or at night. There can be other unwritten rules like, ⁓ if the boss has an idea, we just go along with it.

Because we found that the people that don't go along with it, there can be a little bit of tension in the group. And so we have a number of unwritten rules. And so the most successful teams, what Google found, is the most successful teams are the ones, you can't avoid unwritten rules. They're part of how we operate. But the teams that work best together give everybody an equal voice at the table.

so that every single person feels heard and gets the same amount of air time. And here's the crazy thing about this. You can't mandate that. It's not a mandated, Martin, you get 10 minutes, I get 10 minutes, she gets 10 minutes, they get 10 minutes. That's not what it is. It's an unwritten rule of how they operate. you can't mandate like,

Equanimity at the table. How do you do it? We practice it through play We practice what do you think and what do you think and what are you gonna do now? And how are you gonna approach this monster or the store? Whatever is going on. We practice passing the baton so that when they get into the meetings they can actually use those skills ⁓ To be higher performers. I mean, it's just incredible

Martin Hauck (50:01)
Yeah,

you even I'm just thinking back to the initial part of our discussion where it's like, you, you brought me in within the first five minutes of our conversation, like, what do you think? Like, which which person is missing from the perfect team if we're playing the, the class, or, or sub subtype ⁓ thing. So that's, it's no, that's, that's a cool, to cool stat and

Laura Khalil (50:24)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (50:30)
obviously not the thing that you would recognize as the thing that the universal correlator that that makes up like the best performing teams. And obviously, any company in business wants to have great teams. ⁓ I know we're, we're short on time. So it does feel like a D &D session, we want to know what's happening next. ⁓ But I guess with in terms of, like, where where can folks find you if they want to?

Laura Khalil (50:45)
Yeah.

Martin Hauck (50:58)
talk more want to roll some dice what how should folks reach out to you and any final thoughts.

Laura Khalil (51:01)
Yeah.

Sure, so ⁓ first head on over to OnceUponARole.com. All my contact information is there. I would love to hear from you. Even if you're just curious about D &D or role playing games or any games in general, you can also find me on LinkedIn at my name, Laura Khalil. And ⁓ the final, I guess what would my final thought be? ⁓

I am going to, I'm actually going to, I'm going to practice what I preach, Marden, and I'm going to hand you my star. And I am going to hand you a star for ⁓ giving me the space to really.

Talk about something that is frankly pretty cutting edge in the world of learning and development. It's not everywhere. There's very few people who are doing it. And being such a great, ⁓ being so inquisitive and curious about it and supportive of it, that really means a lot to me. So you're getting my start. That's my final thought. And my wish, my wish is that we get to know one another better and we do fun things. OK.

Martin Hauck (52:13)
Well, thank you.

Done and done, done and

done. Thanks for being a part of the show today, Laura. I really appreciate it.

Laura Khalil (52:25)
Thank you.

Martin Hauck (52:28)
Cool.