Bucket of Lego to Tell Your Story
There’s something about Lego. If I leave some next to you, there’s a good chance that you’ll start building something from it. Can we encourage this innate urge of creating something from Legos to have creative and effective conversations in our teams?
Team
We work with our teammates and colleagues day to day, but seldom do we know each other very well. There may be times when our point of view gets drowned or we lack means and ways to build a shared understanding. Can we use some tools that can support in creating an environment where everyone is heard?
Serious Play
I recently attended a workshop on Lego Serious Play (LSP), and above are some of the challenges that it attempted to address. With LSP the goal is for the participants to use Lego to build models that represent their thinking on a particular subject. Ours was to build what “Happiness at Work” looks like.
Build
Everyone got their own Lego, their own time to create something based on their individual thinking. That helped the group to prevent some biases like the “Groupthink and the Bandwagon Effect” and “Anchoring Bias”. We were then further led into the topic, to change the models through a series of more questions.
Share
Post our individual creations, we shared with the rest of the group what our models were meant to denote. That helped everyone to understand each other’s point of view. Later on it also gave us the opportunity to merge our ideas, or to build on top of someone else’s creation.
Reflect
It was time to share our creation with the others in the group. And then capture:
- What did we see and hear?
- What is our feeling?
- What is our most important insight?
- And what will be our action based on that insight?
The workshop took place in the following 4 stages and each of the stages went through the “Build → Share → Reflect” cycle.
Stage 1: “Build a model that represents you at work, with you in it”
Stage 2: “Change your model to one that represents a specific and really happy working experience”.
This led the models to be incremented with what a happy working experience meant to all. Some included their pets in the workplace, others wanted to make their workstations colorful and collaborative while some preferred more order and structure.
Stage 3: “Build a model that reflects the value you bring to work, something you add to your team”
Stage 4: “At your table, connect your models and make a shared story about what happiness at work is”
Connecting our models meant we could create a “happy working experience” for our group. An ecosystem that provided inclusiveness and a great positive experience for everyone working there.
Outcome
Not only did we all have a lot of fun, but we got to know a lot more about each other. The values and the culture that is important for everyone at work. And what happy working experience meant to all. It helped to build empathy and better understanding for one another. Especially how people interpret or respond to the same question differently.
The facilitators shared some other examples and questions where Lego Serious Play can be used to brainstorm ideas:
“How do we strengthen our team?”
“What is our purpose? What are our values?”
“How can we raise happiness in our team?”
I would like thank the facilitators of the workshop for such an insightful experience, all the learning through this creative format and a memorable time spent with many new faces! Thank you Maartje Wolff and Fennande van der Meulen from Happy Office, Netherlands.
