Team professional development
A wellbeing team building experience that brings play back into your organisation, and your people back to life.
Why play
The industrial way of running workplaces, and our habit of relentlessly motivating people, is squeezing out creativity and connection. Many leaders say they have more doers than thinkers, yet thriving teams need people who can do both.
Play is how humans connect, learn and recharge. When teams rediscover play with a clear purpose, they move from rule-following and survival mode to engaged, creative and critical thinking, and wellbeing grows along the way.
The experience
Sessions combine conversation with Rod about the big ideas and plenty of group play, so people can take what they learn straight back into their workplace.
Why play matters for adult wellbeing and innovation, drawing on Dr Stuart Brown's work on play, Brené Brown's research on courage and belonging, and Rod's own research.
Purposeful, inclusive play experiences that build connection and stretch thinking. No special skills or fitness needed, just a willingness to join in.
Gratitude and play rituals from the Playing with Gratitude Project that your team can keep using long after the session ends.
Formats
Every session is shaped around your team's size, goals and setting. Common options:
Perfect for leaders, managers, business owners, early learning and school teams, councils and creative organisations.
The evidence
Staff in 25 organisations that practised playful gratitude every day for six months reported:
Playing with Gratitude Project participant data.
More ways to work with Rod
Every session is shaped around your people, your setting and what you're hoping to change. These are a starting point. Rod has designed more than 50 sessions for early learning services, schools, councils and peak bodies across Australia, so if you don't see what you need, just ask. Several sessions pair with Rod's online courses, so the learning keeps going after the day.
Most wellbeing sessions start with your team. This one starts with you.
A full-day strategy session for directors, Nominated Supervisors and owners. Leaders look honestly at what wears them down, build a personal wellbeing strategy, then learn how to notice, support and grow wellbeing across their team.
Four generations in one staffroom is a strength, if you lead it well.
Practical tools for leading diverse and intergenerational teams, recognising leadership bias and building psychological safety. Includes a culture diagnostic and leader workbook.
The part of leadership nobody trains you for.
Five practical skills, starting with the Golden Question, for conversations with families, colleagues and teams. Book it face to face for your team, then give everyone access to the online course so the skills stick.
Courage isn't confrontation. It's early action in the best interests of children.
Helps whole teams raise concerns with colleagues early and kindly, using a simple five-step conversation model and a take-home toolkit.
Small daily habits. Big shifts in wellbeing.
Rod's research project blending play and gratitude. Staff in 25 organisations reported 19% more hope and 49% less anxiety after six months. Rod launches the project face to face with your team and supports you throughout. An online course for participating services is in development.
Values on the wall mean little until they show up in behaviour.
A hands-on day where teams name what they stand for and turn it into behaviours everyone can see, using the simple frame Culture = Values + Behaviour.
The best change comes from your own team's questions.
A guided term or year of inquiry on a focus that matters to your service, from play spaces to child voice. Builds on what educators already do, ending with a showcase of real change.
Are children consulted in your service, or are they partners?
From Malaguzzi and the Mosaic Approach to what consultation looks like on the floor with babies through to school-age children. Presented at the 2026 ECA National Conference.
What is your room teaching when no one is talking?
Based on Rod's title in ECA's Research in Practice series, this session reads your environments with fresh eyes and shows how light, materials and layout invite deeper play.
A shared language for children's wellbeing, across your whole team.
Nine core skills, from gratitude and empathy to persistence and self-regulation, with planning ideas, activity cards and reflection questions for each. Run it as a face-to-face workshop, then give educators the online course to keep building.
“Is this normal?” Answers for parents, without the alarm.
A warm parent session on how young children grow, what neurodiversity can look like, and when to reach out for support.
Look for it. Take it in. Give it back.
A warm, practical evening for families on the science of gratitude and how to weave it into everyday moments, from the drive to school to bedtime rituals. Drawn from the Playing with Gratitude Project and delivered for the City of Greater Geelong.
Is my child ready for school? And am I?
Practical, reassuring guidance for families in the year before school: the everyday skills that matter most, how to handle sticky situations, preparing for the first year, and extra support for children who need it.
What if the most powerful thing we could do for children was slow down?
A keynote on slow pedagogy as a child's right and a teacher's best tool, brought to life with three real stories from early childhood rooms. Delivered at the ACA Queensland National Conference 2026.
Great leaders, like great architects, design with purpose.
Architects capture a vision, plan, prototype and refine until form and function work together. This keynote asks leaders to lead the same way, using design thinking and the science of flourishing to build teams and services on purpose rather than by accident. First delivered for the ACT Directors Network.
What changes when a whole community plays with gratitude every day?
The story and science behind Rod's research project, which has involved more than 3,500 children, families and educators. Practical, joyful and backed by real data on hope, anxiety and loneliness. Delivered at conferences including Catholic Early Years Queensland, ECA's Be You Conference and the City of Greater Geelong.
Courage isn't confrontation. Courage is early action.
Why the conversations we avoid matter most, for children, colleagues and ourselves. Drawing on Brené Brown's work on courage and vulnerability and Rod's own values-based approach, this keynote gives audiences language and confidence to speak up early and well.
The first conversation shapes every one that follows.
How to prepare for, open and hold conversations with families that build trust, draw out the child's story and make difficult topics easier to raise. Presented at ECA's Regional, Rural and Remote Forum 2025.
Every transition is a story about a child's needs, fears and joys.
Practical strategies for the big and small transitions in children's lives, from starting care to starting school, shaped by the realities of each community. Presented at ECA's Regional, Rural and Remote Forum 2025.
Why did you become an educator?
A warm, energising keynote that helps educators reclaim their professional story and purpose, and remember why their work matters, especially in a sector under pressure. Delivered for ACA NSW.
Looking for something else? Rod also offers sessions on leadership EQ, inclusion, feedback, team charters, strategic planning, play theory, kindness, self-regulation and more. Ask for the full PD menu.