Unconventional and Creative Approaches to Support Teams Through Uncertainty

Are you a supervisor or team leader looking for creative ways to support your team through uncertainty? This blog post explores the role of play in the workplace and introduces unconventional, play-based methodologies that research indicates can help strengthen team connection and renew energy during challenging times.

Recognizing Team Changes

Leaders are tasked with supporting their teams through funding uncertainty, staffing changes, and the emotional demands of serving newcomers. They may be first to sense a change, often before they can clearly identify what it is. Meetings may feel strained as teams downsize, merge or adjust to new roles. Colleagues who once contributed regularly may now be quieter as they navigate increased workloads. These changes prompt leaders to begin looking for new ways to re-engage staff and rethink how their teams experience the time they already spend together.

Knowledge sharing, cross-training, and staff care provide a strong foundation for supporting teams through change. But what happens when your usual team-building activities feel insufficient in the face of ongoing uncertainty?

Evidence-Informed, Creative Approaches to Strengthen Teams

When teams are navigating staffing changes or increased workloads, adding another activity can feel counterproductive. However, emerging research (see References, below) suggests that creative approaches, like play-based methodologies, can help teams navigate complexities by fostering connection and new ways of thinking about shared challenges. Play-based methodologies are best understood as intentional approaches that incorporate the qualities of play (such as social connection) into work tasks, team interactions, and organizational processes.

Rather than distracting from work or making light of difficult situations, play-based methodologies help create environments that support autonomy and psychological safety, which research correlates with higher staff engagement. Research also suggests that novelty can encourage creativity by helping people see challenges from new perspectives.

The goal is not to “force fun” or add another obligation to an already full calendar, but to create meaningful opportunities for teams to learn, adapt, and work well together.

Implementing Play-Based Methodologies

There are a few steps you can take to use play-based methodologies effectively in refugee-serving organizations:

• Invite staff to help shape activities and team processes.
• Consider adapting games or other culturally meaningful activities that reflect team members’ backgrounds and experiences.
• Explain the purpose of the activity clearly, using plan language that is accessible across cultures. For example, you might say, “Today I’d like to suggest a new activity to help us think together about a challenge we have been working through. The activity is called ‘Wicked Questions…'”
• Focus on creating meaningful opportunities for connection and learning rather than forcing fun or adding obligations to already full schedules. Schedule the activity as part of a routine meeting rather than as an additional ask.

Leaders do not have to create play-based approaches on their own. Liberating Structures offers more than 40 simple, open-source facilitation methods used globally via an app available in 12 languages. Each methodology includes ready-to-use facilitation guidance rooted in ten guiding principles to support and strengthen the outcomes leaders hope to create.

Two Play-Based Methodologies to Try

The two examples below, drawn from Liberating Structures, illustrate how these approaches can strengthen team participation and support staff through uncertainty.

Wicked Questions: Explores competing priorities.

Teams complete the sentence, “How is it that we are ___ while simultaneously ___?”.

This activity encourages teams to identify two important realities they are currently or want to pursue at the same time rather than asking them to choose between competing priorities.

For example, a URM program with fewer referrals may have available licensed foster families who are not caring for youth. Yet recruitment of new homes remains a priority, as staff know the licensed homes will be essential when referrals increase again. When referral patterns change, programs may need to rethink what motivates prospective foster parents to become licensed. The team’s wicked question might ask, “How is it that we are rethinking how we recruit new foster parents while simultaneously preserving the underutilized foster homes we currently have available?”

Alternately, an M&E team may rely on frontline staff to enter data accurately and on time while recognizing that staffing changes and increased workloads have made timely documentation more difficult. However, complete data remains essential for understanding program impact and informing future decisions. The team might ask, “How is it that we are maintaining high-quality data while simultaneously navigating reduced frontline staff capacity?”

Drawing Together: Reveals feelings and experiences beyond words.

This structure uses simple drawings to help teams express experiences that may be difficult to put into words during periods of uncertainty. Using five simple symbols with shared meanings (e.g., a spiral may represent change or transition), participants create a visual story without needing artistic skill. Because the activity relies less on spoken language, it creates an accessible opportunity for staff with different language backgrounds to participate. Participants then discuss their drawings as a group. The creative process often reveals experiences and patterns that might otherwise remain hidden, giving teams a different way to understand one another and make meaning of shared challenges.

Making These Approaches Part of Your Team’s Routine

While play-based methodologies may first be introduced in response to a specific challenge or observation, teams may find they are useful not only during periods of change and uncertainty, but also for strengthening collaboration. Used when appropriate, creative and playful approaches can help teams explore new perspectives and ways of working together. Over time, they may become a useful tool that teams draw on when needed, rather than something reserved for difficult periods.

Conclusion

Supporting newcomers often means working through uncertainty. For refugee-serving organizations, the challenge requires both responding to the needs of clients and sustaining the teams doing that work.

When thoughtfully designed, play-based methodologies can help create the conditions that enable teams to navigate uncertainty, including stronger relationships, greater psychological safety, opportunities for creativity, and shared sense of connection. These qualities do not eliminate uncertainty, but they can help teams respond to it more effectively.

Sometimes creating that space is enough. The way teams experience working together shapes how they show up for one another, and that experience can extend to the newcomers they support.

Additional Resources

• Blog: Supporting Newcomer Clients and Staff Through Service Disruptions
• Blog: Meeting the Moment: Sustaining Your Team Through Staff Transitions
• Blog: Switchboard Confluence Event: Bridging the Gap between Technology and Resettlement
• Webinar: Organizational Approaches to Staff Care and Retention in Resettlement
• Additional play-based methodology resources: SessionLab or Gamestorming

References

The IRC received competitive funding through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families, Grant #90RB0053. The project is 100% financed by federal funds. The contents of this document are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families.