Play Styles for Teams
Unlock your team's human edge.
Unlock your team's innovation, resilience, connection, productivity, and human edge, using one of the most primitive, innate human instincts: play.
A psychometrically validated assessment grounded in four decades of play science from the National Institute for Play. Designed to help teams thrive, it is not a clinical tool and does not give health advice. Read the research →
Low engagement cost the world economy about $10 trillion in lost productivity last year.
Only 1 in 5 employees worldwide feel engaged at work.
Only 6% of executives are satisfied with their company's innovation performance.
Sources: Gallup, State of the Global Workplace 2026; McKinsey & Company
Why it pays off
higher profitability in the most engaged teams
less absenteeism in the most engaged teams
less turnover in the most engaged teams
Source: Gallup Q12 Meta-Analysis, comparing top- and bottom-quartile engaged teams.
Research in the Journal of Organizational Behavior suggests group play may help diverse teams build psychological safety together. Research on workplace play has also linked it with reduced burnout and stress.
What's inside
Insight, tools, and expert guidance to help your team play, learn, and grow together.
People don't thrive because they understand their strengths alone. They thrive when they understand what energizes them, connects them to others, and helps them do their best work.
Team Play Pulse
A clear picture of how your team plays, connects, and thrives. Individual results are anonymized and aggregated.
- Team play health and core scores: engagement, playfulness, wellbeing, play frequency, and connection
- Early signs of burnout, including how many people may be running low
- Your team's Play Style and subtype mix, including the styles no one leads with
- Team strengths, room to grow, and where work tends to get stuck
- How your team leans, communicates, and works across opposite styles
- How your team's style mix tends to approach change, new tools, and AI adoption
- Ideas to play together at work, from 5 minutes to 3 hours
- Clear next steps for leaders
Admin Dashboard
One place to launch, track, and manage your rollout.
- Invite team members and track completion
- Organize people by team or department
- View and share Team Play Pulse results
- Manage seats as your organization grows
Resource Hub
Practical tools that help leaders turn insight into action.
- Facilitation guides and discussion prompts
- Team activities matched to your Play Style mix
- Play science articles and research summaries
- Follow-up activities to use after your workshop
Facilitated Workshops
Our facilitators help your team interpret its results and build play into how you work, solve problems, and adapt to change.
- 15-minute core. Fits a staff meeting or huddle. Name your styles and commit to one play.
- 60-minute standard. Explore your team's mix, meet your opposite style, and choose one team practice. Most teams start here.
- 3-hour deep dive. Go further with play history and shadow sides, then design play into real work.
- Available in person or remote.
Every team member also receives their own personal Play Styles profile.
Why it matters
The way we work is changing. Our people need more than a new process.
In a world where organizations are being asked to innovate, adapt, and transform at unprecedented speed, understanding how people work is no longer enough. Play Styles Team helps leaders understand what energizes people, how teams connect, and what creates the conditions for trust, creativity, wellbeing, and sustainable performance. Because thriving teams don't just work together, they play, learn, and grow together.
AI is reshaping how work gets done. Teams that stay curious, solve problems creatively, and welcome new ways of working may be best placed to thrive. Play is one of the most natural ways people build those capacities.
The difference
A new lens on the human side of performance.
Most assessments tell you who your people are. Play Styles Team reveals what helps them thrive together. By measuring the connection between play, engagement, wellbeing, communication, and team dynamics, leaders gain actionable insights that strengthen culture, accelerate change adoption, reduce burnout risk, and unlock sustainable team performance.
Understanding your team's Play Styles can also show how each person naturally approaches new ideas, new tools, and change, so leaders can help everyone lean in.
Outcomes
The return on play.
When people feel energized and connected, the benefits can show up across the whole organization.
Engagement.
Help people feel energized by and invested in the work they do.
Retention.
Build a culture people want to stay in and recommend to others.
Wellbeing.
Help people recharge and catch early signs of burnout.
Resilience.
Help teams bounce back from setbacks and stay steady under pressure.
Connection and trust.
Build the psychological safety that helps people speak up and rely on each other.
Innovation.
Spark creative problem-solving by drawing on every Play Style on the team.
Agility and AI adoption.
Help teams embrace new tools, new roles, and change with less resistance.
Productivity.
Smooth out handoffs and friction points so work keeps moving.
How it works
From first conversation to a more connected team.
Talk to Sales.
Tell us about your team, your goals, and your timeline. We'll build a plan that fits.
Invite your people.
Each team member takes the Premium Play Styles assessment in about 15 minutes.
Get your Team Play Pulse.
See your team's collective play patterns, including how your team tends to approach change and new tools.
Put it into play.
Book a facilitated workshop to interpret your results together, then use the Resource Hub to keep the momentum going.
Privacy and trust
Built for trust from the start.
Team Play Pulse shows patterns across the group. Individual answers stay private to each person.
Read the Play Styles Team privacy policy →Aggregated insights.
Leaders see team-level patterns only, from groups of 5 or more.
Private by design.
Each person decides whether to share their own profile.
GDPR-ready.
A Data Processing Agreement is available for your organization.
Nonprofit mission.
Anonymized, aggregated data may be used to advance play science research.
Be bold. Be nimble.
Do something your competitors won't even think of. Embrace AI transformation and humanity.
Every Play Styles Team purchase helps fuel our nonprofit mission to reach 10 million people with the power of play by 2030.
FAQs
Play Styles Team, answered.
Play Styles Team helps organizations understand what energizes their people and how their teams connect. Each person takes the Play Styles assessment. Leaders then receive a Team Play Pulse showing the team's collective play patterns, alongside insights on engagement, wellbeing, communication, and team dynamics.
Those tools can describe behavior, strengths, or how people feel about work. Play Styles Team looks at what energizes people and helps them thrive together. It pairs well with tools your team already uses.
AI adoption is as much a human challenge as a technical one. Play builds curiosity, creative problem-solving, and comfort with the unknown. Your Team Play Pulse shows how your team's style mix tends to approach change, so leaders can tailor rollouts and give people room to experiment with new tools.
HR and People leaders, L&D teams, executives leading change, and managers who want stronger, more connected teams. Consultants and coaches can also use it with their clients.
By taking the play personality quiz, each team member gets a report that illuminates their unique play spark to help unlock creativity, connection, resilience, and the fullest human potential. It lives one layer deeper than traditional personality assessments.
The report breaks down a person's distinctive style and subtypes, gives personalized ideas for adding more play into life, outlines strengths, communication preferences, and opposite styles, provides a well-being snapshot, and more.
Leaders see aggregated, team-level patterns. Individual answers stay private, and results only appear for groups of 5 or more.
The assessment takes about 15 minutes per person. Most teams can complete it within a week or two.
Play Styles Team works best with groups of 5 or more. It can scale from a single team to a whole organization.
Pricing depends on the number of people and the support you choose. Talk to Sales for a quote. Nonprofit and education pricing is also available.
Yes. Our facilitators lead workshops that help your team interpret its results and put them into practice. Choose a 15-minute core session, a 60-minute standard session, or a 3-hour deep dive.
Yes. The assessment is fully online and works on any device. It can also be translated into any language.
Yes. Play Styles draws on four decades of play research and a study of 3,469 participants. Read the full Play Styles Rationale Report.
Yes. Responses are stored securely, and a Data Processing Agreement is available. See our Play Styles Team privacy policy.
A nonprofit founded by Dr. Stuart Brown, the psychiatrist and researcher who spent 40+ years championing the science of play. It is now led by his granddaughter, Mia Sundstrom. NIFPlay translates play science into practical resources that help individuals and organizations use play as a pathway to resilience, innovation, and connection.
Still have questions?
Talk to SalesYears of research
Play histories studied
Primary emotional systems
Play Styles
Subtypes
The Science
Four decades of play research, distilled.
Play Styles is grounded in neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp's discovery that play is one of seven primary emotional systems in the subcortex. The framework draws from four decades and thousands of clinical personal play histories collected by Dr. Stuart Brown and the National Institute for Play. The patterns in these play histories reveal our biological design to play in unique ways.
Play is closely tied to curiosity, creativity, connection, and resilience. Chronic play deprivation can make us more susceptible to cognitive rigidity, emotional dysregulation, and social strain. At work, those patterns can show up as burnout, disconnection, and resistance to change and new technology.
Play Styles Team brings this science to the workplace. It helps teams find natural entry points to play, design environments that energize them, and connect more authentically with one another.
We believe in transparency and welcome feedback. To learn about the grounding, history, psychometric validity, and design logic behind Play Styles, read our Play Styles Rationale Report.