Advanced Systemic Intelligence for Complex and Chaotic Systems
Have you ever wondered why certain businesses flourish while others flounder in spite of being faced with similar challenges?
The secret to long-term systemic flourishing is what Portia Tung ~ The Play Alchemist calls Advanced Systemic Intelligence (ASQ), the fundamental intelligence which informs, sustains and enables complex adaptive systems to thrive in spite of their inherent challenges.
Advanced Systemic Intelligence (ASQ) is the vital capacity to perceive deep, often invisible, interconnections and dynamic patterns that shape a system or the elements of that system. It is a highly developed ability to work with a system’s inherent complexity and dynamics to bring about sustainable outcomes for the entire system rather than optimising only individual parts in isolation.
And the key to tapping and developing this intelligence in human beings? By cultivating our Play Intelligence (PQ), of course!
Through 25+ years of experimenting with cutting edge organisational change and leadership development tools and techniques, Portia has developed Playful Leadership, an innovative leadership approach that nurtures Play Intelligence to enable leaders and their organisation to continuously learn and improve through joy at work.
By combining play science with psychology, neuroscience and systemic coaching, we create the necessary conditions for true and lasting transformation to happen we call Play Alchemy. Probably the most effective, efficient and enjoyable way to enable individual and collective flow and flourishing you’ll ever experience – for yourself and those you lead and love.
To find out if the Playful Leadership programme is a good for you and your team, let’s find out together.
A Kaleidoscope of Leadership Training
The Playful Leadership Online Programme consists of Essentials Parts 1, 2 and 3. Each course can be taken as standalone or as part of the 3–module Playful Leadership programme. For optimal online experiential learning, each 1-day course takes place over two consecutive days.
For the most effective learning experience, we recommend choosing the courses in the order that best suit your current leadership curiosity, needs and aspirations. After all, we each have our own unique leadership journey to weave.
Essentials Part 1
PLAY INTELLIGENCE
Reconnecting You with Your Greatest Superpower – 11-12 June 2026
This Essentials Part 1 training offers a multitude of ways to experience the practical application of core Play theories and models in personal and group transformation. After completing this 1-day experiential training, participants will have developed a foundational understanding of the function, practice and benefits of lifelong play in human development and will be well-equipped to apply them in their daily interactions across a variety of contexts.
The curriculum includes:
- Play Intelligence – Developing a practical appreciation of the different kinds of intelligences play offers
- Function and benefits of play in human development as well as consequences of play deficiency
- A personalised Play Profile and introduction to the Play Quotient Index (PQI)
- Exercises to surface and resolve our individual blocks to play
- Ways of tapping into the gifts past and present play offer us now as adults
This learning experience is a mashup of fun exercises, playful teaching and mind-body experiences as evolution intended play to be. There are plenty of opportunities to cultivate personal Play Intelligence before sharing it with teams or groups.
Many participants describe this mix of Play theory teaching and facilitated experiential training as instantly transformative in terms of long-lasting personal and professional developmental change.
“Developing leadership potential beyond imagination” – Ania Kierczynska, Customer Success Manager
Essentials Part 2
PLAY GENIUS
Emotional Mastery Through Our Play Circuitry – 30-31 July 2026
This Essentials Part 2 training focuses on making friends with our own emotions even in the toughest of situations. Drawing on the latest research from the fields of affective neuroscience, and epigenetics, we will explore the phenomenological nature of leadership. After completing this 1-day experiential training, participants will leave feeling more courageous and competent in caring for their own feelings, themselves and others.
The curriculum includes:
- Play Genius – Nurturing our embodied intelligence
- Mapping and navigating our emotional circuits reliably and with ease
- Tools such as The Magic Compass for sailing safely whatever the weather
- Exploration of the 5Rs of Playful Leadership: Resourceful, Responsible, Respectful, Resilient and Real like the Velveteen Rabbit
- Power and practice of prosody when communicating with ourselves and others
This diamond sense-making learning experience transforms our typical emotional rollercoaster ride into a personal pilgrimage of our inner life.
There will be different ways of navigating this journey, be it on your own or in accompaniment – as you wish.
Many participants of this training learn to laugh in the face of fear by repeatedly practising the courage of Lion, the brains of Scarecrow, the heart of Tinman, the cleverness of the Wizard and honing in on Dorothy’s longing for ‘home’.
“The ultimate happiness & productivity booster through emotional enrichment” – Natalia Zarawska, Agile Coach & Mobile Developer
Essentials Part 3
PLAY TECTONICS
Systemic Intervention in Complex & Chaotic Systems – 17-18 September 2026
This Essentials Part 3 training explores ways of enabling organisations to thrive when we understand the relationships and patterns of interaction within a system using a uniquely transformative approach which includes Systemic Constellations. After completing this 1-day experiential training, participants will have a deeper appreciation of what enables systemic flourishing and be able to identify ways to tap into a system’s potential so that it can flow and flourish.
The curriculum includes:
- Play Tectonics – Intuiting where systemic blocks exist and ways to release potential amidst seemingly permanent stuckness
- Function of resistance and its purpose in broader transformational change
- Exploration of your role and place as a Novice Systemic Navigator
- Bobul Mechanics – process of individual & group transformation
- Exercises making visible hidden entanglements and steps towards better
This kaleidoscopic learning experience offers an abundance of unique opportunities for exploring the challenges you face and the wishes you hope for through solo, small group and whole group activities.
Participants who embrace the inherently playful process of transformation delight in the mind-opening and perspective-altering effects when they reconnect with their instincts and intuition. The game-changing insights and subsequent tangible results speak for themselves.
“Harnessing both logic and creativity to enable flow – feels like magic” – Stuart Cocks, Head of Engineering
PLAYFUL LEADERSHIP: THE ORIGIN STORY
Having dedicated over 20 years of her professional career in pursuit of the secrets to enabling transformational change in organisations and with individuals – beginning as a software developer, then an Agile Coach before becoming an Executive Coach and Systemic Constellations Facilitator, Portia shares the secrets to making change and transformation happen in a way that is at once innovative, easeful and fun. For life. And for greater good.
This programme began with the Playful Leadership Foundation course launched in July 2019 based on the fundamentals of Play Science and coaching. It was set in the beautiful play space of Chicheley Hall in Buckinghamshire. The Foundation course ran three times before the COVID pandemic spread to the UK in 2020.
As the world of work and leadership recalibrated to the “new normal” and with no time to lose, Play Alchemist Portia Tung played further afield across time and space in search of ways to enable change and transformation that is more effective and efficient than what was already known. Along the way, Portia rediscovered what she calls Play Alchemy made up of the process, tools and techniques for transmuting the seemingly insurmountable challenges we face into positive outcomes so that we not only thrive but have fun in getting more of what we want done in an VUCA world.
The result was a complete re-imagining of the Playful Leadership programme launched in June 2022 with courses being hosted at beautiful Ashridge House in Bekrhamsted, UK – one of the sources of inspiration for Hogwarts, JK Rowling’s school for young wizards and witches.
To find out if the Playful Leadership programme is a good for you and your team, let’s find out together.
THE SCHOOL OF PLAY 