Lego Serious Play Workshops
Are you looking for a different, more engaging way to have important conversations within your team or organisation?
Lego® Serious Play® (LSP) workshops are a creative, playful, and engaging approach to improving workplace communication, energising teams, and exploring issues and opportunities.
Valuable for team building and workplace collaboration, the LSP method draws on extensive research and scientific principles from the fields of psychology, learning, neuroscience and business - with the added bonus of your participants having fun!
As an experienced Organisational Psychologist and accredited Lego Serious Play facilitator, I can work with your business to design and deliver a unique Lego® Serious Play® workshop, tailored to your specific needs. Each workshop offers the potential to explore a broad range of interesting and thought-provoking topics, and can be delivered as a stand-alone activity or as part of a broader program of work.
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Do you ever feel like Bob…?!
Or does your team feel this way…?
If so, maybe it’s time to consider Lego Serious Play for your next team session…
Keep reading to learn more or reach out for more info.
I’m always happy to chat and share more information! :-)
What are the benefits of using Lego® Serious Play®?
It’s fun & highly engaging…!
Lego Serious Play breaks the normal dynamic of meetings and workshops. By building with Lego bricks, participants are able to express their ideas and thoughts in a tangible way, which can be more engaging than simply talking or listening.
In this sense, Lego Serious Play is an approach that tends to create ‘lean in’, with everyone being involved in the process right from the outset. A lot of participants are excited to do something different and ‘hands on’.
Indeed, you can often hear the excitement right from the moment that participants walk into the room and start getting their hands into the big bags of Lego on the table!
It creates opportunities for all team members to feel ‘heard’…
It facilitates open & honest communication…
The approach itself tends to create a ‘safe’ space, resulting in participants feeling more confident openly expressing their ideas and opinions.
Rather than just sharing their ideas through talking, individuals attach meaning to the physical, tangible object they’ve created (i.e. the Lego model), and then share their thoughts by ‘telling the story’ of what they’ve built.
In this way, the focus is on what they’ve created, rather than on them - making it feel safer to speak up and contribute.
The use of metaphors and stories also creates a sense of safety for many participants, making it easier to talk about important things.
One of the great things about Lego® Serious Play® is that it creates space for everyone to share their ideas and perspectives.
Each participant builds a response to the question being explored by the group, sharing the unique story of their model while others listen and ask questions.
Where groups work together to create a ‘shared’ model, the ideas behind each participant’s unique contribution are preserved throughout the conversation - helping them to feel genuinely ‘heard’ and listened to.
This helps to avoid that all-too-common scenario of quieter participants having their voices drowned out, creating opportunities for everyone to have a ‘voice’ in a more equitable and considered way.
It supports team building, connection & collaboration…
Lego® Serious Play® can also support collaboration and cross-functional communication, with this helping to break down silos and build connection between and across different groups.
The process itself is collaborative, requiring participants to work together to build & share their ideas. This can help team members to learn from each other, supporting collaboration and teamwork.
As groups engage in shared problem solving, new connections and insights often emerge, often with a renewed sense of energy and optimism.
When should we use Lego® Serious Play®?
Ultimately, the method can be used in any type of business or industry, and at any level within an organisation. Having said this, there are certain types of issues, problems and questions that Lego® Serious Play® is most suited to. Put simply, the method is most useful in the situations where…
You want to explore a complex topic or question to which there is no single ‘right’ answer or solution
You want everyone’s input - not just the loudest voices in the room or the people who always tend to speak up!
You want to create higher levels of engagement and participation by breaking the usual dynamic of meetings and group conversations
Collaboration & co-creation are important for generating the most diverse and creative ideas and solutions
What can I expect from a Lego® Serious Play® workshop?
While the context and topics may vary, Lego® Serious Play® sessions typically follow a set of key principles.
Warm-up
The session starts with a few warm-up activities aimed at teaching the group the basic skills and principles of the approach. This helps to address the concerns of any participants who feel they aren’t ‘good’ at Lego. The group soon realises that the approach is all about using metaphors and stories – no Lego building skills (whatsoever) are required!
Model building
I’ll then guide participants through a series of key steps: Question, Build, Share and Capture. These steps explore the key questions or topics targeted during the session. Depending on the goal and context, a combination of individual and shared (i.e. group) builds are completed.
Importantly, every build includes an opportunity for participants to share the meaning and story of their model with the rest of the team, enabling 100% participation. As the facilitator, my role is to encourage conversation, identify key insights, and ask clarifying questions to strengthen understanding.
Participants
Ideally, a Lego® Serious Play® workshop includes 6-8 participants and one facilitator. While it is possible to run sessions with larger groups, participants will still work in smaller groups of 6-8 people during the session.
Session length
The minimum length for a session is 2 to 2.5 hours. I’ll bring all materials to the session, including some great big bags of Lego designed specifically for Lego® Serious Play® workshops!
Why work with me?
Want to know more about me? Hi! I’m Leisa Molloy, a Lego® Serious Play® facilitator based in Melbourne, Australia.
I’m also a Masters-qualified Organisational Psychologist with almost 20 years of experience working across a broad range of organisations (and the wrinkles to prove it!).
I’ve spent my career delivering a range of initiatives in the areas of leadership development, capability and performance, employee engagement, talent management, strengths, employee engagement, team building, and much more.
Over the last five years alone, I’ve facilitated over 260 workshops or sessions with more than 1750 participants.
And given my insights as both an experienced facilitator and Organisational Psychologist, I’m well positioned to design and deliver Lego® Serious Play® workshops with a strong ‘people’ or ‘team’ focus.