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Hands-on-thinking with Lego® SeriousPlay®

We know much more than we think we know . Tapping into the minds and hearts of participants, using the power of Storytelling and metaphors and ensuring 100% engagement.

Hands-on-thinking with Lego® SeriousPlay®

What is it for?

Think of People and Team development, Innovation and Strategy, Coaching and Counseling.

Lego® Serious Play® is a radical, innovative, experiential method for strategic decision-making and problem-solving in complex environments designed to enhance team development, personal transformation and business performance. Its goal is fostering creative thinking by building experiential metaphors of personal/group identities, aspirations and experiences using Lego® bricks as a catalyst.


Why is it so powerful?

Lego® Serious Play® is a lean forward, hands on technique, where everyone plays and enables 100% participation and 100% buy-in, through visual and physical co-creation. It is based on a set of basic principles:

> Everyone has a voice: everyone within a group or an organisation can contribute to the discussion and help generate solutions.
> Think with your hands: bypass the biased thinking by “doing” first trusting your hands-brain connection, then reflecting & sharing, in order to enhance understanding and creativity.
> The answer is in the system: leverage complexity through an eco-systemic approach, since no one in the group has the answer to the challenge (neither the facilitator nor the group’s leader).
> There is no ONE right answer: diverge, without boundaries, through different views and perceptions, and then converge to shared values and guiding principles.


Key theories & concepts

The Lego® Serious Play® method is underpinned by some key theories and
concepts that make it remarkably powerful:

> The concept of play, Storytelling and the use of metaphors, which are both key components of play.
> Constructivism (Piaget, 1936) and its extended version developed by Papert (1986), constructionism. These theories state that learning is more effective when people construct something tangible in the real world.
> The interconnection between the brain and the hands.
> The flow model (Csíkszentmihályi, 1975) shows how the mental state of a person engaged in a specific activity can change depending on the challenge level and skill level. During a LSP workshop participants often reach the optimal level of engagement when they are in a ‘hands on’ process: this is what Csikszentmihalyi calls ‘flow’.


How it works

A Lego® Serious Play® workshop is a structured process where participants are asked to use Lego® bricks to build models representing their thoughts, reflections and ideas.

Normally a Lego® Serious Play® workshop is at the same time closely regulated and tailor-made. Trust in the process should always coexist with a strong value and purpose driven facilitation.
That’s why the workshop should be led by a certified and experienced facilitator always, who has the task to design the best possible experience together with the sponsor, and then to guide participants through the activities.


The core process

The CORE PROCESS consists of 4 fundamental steps:

> POSING A QUESTION: The facilitator gives a specific challenge to all participants.
> BUILD METAPHORICAL MODELS: Participants build their answer to the challenge using Lego® bricks. While building their models, participants assign a meaning to them and develop a story covering the meaning.
> SHARING: Participants share their stories with the other participants and listen to the others’ stories.
> REFLECTION: The facilitator encourages participants to reflect on what they have heard and seen in the models.

If you came all this way, connect with Helene (certified LSP facilitator) to brainstorm about a possible Workshop solution for you and your team.

Best wishes ✨

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