Unpacking emotions is often difficult in high-pressure professional environments, where vulnerability can feel out of place. Yet emotional suppression is linked to reduced well-being and increased burnout (Lieberman et al., 2017; Maslach & Leiter, 2016). With global burnout rates nearing 48% (Boston Consulting Group, 2024), there is a pressing need to reimagine upskilling to include emotional literacy and empathy. This interactive and experiential workshop introduces the Emotional Baggage Board Game (Ng et al., 2024), a serious game designed to facilitate emotional awareness, perspective-taking, and self-reflection in a workplace context. Inspired by Klassens Tid—a Scandinavian classroom practice that creates weekly space for emotional check-ins, conflict resolution, collaborative problem-solving and social learning—this session explores how similar reflective practices might be embedded into professional development through a gamified workshop. Participants will play in groups of 5–6, navigating emotionally charged workplace scenarios while balancing progress (aka. milestones) with managing emotional “baggage”. The winner is the player with the most milestones and the least emotional baggage, sparking reflection on what it truly means to “win.” Facilitated discussion during and after gameplay supports the development of emotional vocabulary, empathy, deep listening, and collaborative problem-solving. By gamifying emotional experiences in a psychologically safe setting, this workshop provides an experiential model for emotional upskilling for up to 20 participants in a 50-minutes session. Participants leave with deeper insight into their emotional well-being and renewed ideas for integrating emotional learning into organizational culture.

AI Disclosure: Grammarly were used solely to improve the language and readability of this abstract.

Authors:
Angela Shueh Ng, University of Reading, United Kingdom

About the Presenter(s)
Angela Ng is currently an Assistant Professor/Senior Lecturer with Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore

Connect on Linkedin
https://sg.linkedin.com/in/angela-sc-ng-7a15422

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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