The high value of the LEGO Serious Play methodology!

This is a fabulous post from Robert Rasmussen, one of the top facilitators worldwide of the LEGO Serious Play methodology:

Why invest in training if anyone can buy bricks and claim they are using the LEGO Serious Play method? 

 

Now that LEGO SERIOUS PLAY is open source, any Maria, Carlos, Kim or Peter can order LEGO SERIOUS PLAY kits and invent ways to use the kits.

And naively, people who have not yet benefitted from LEGO SERIOUS PLAY facilitator training may believe they are experiencing the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY methodology. After all, they purchased and are using the special LEGO SERIOUS PLAY kits.

This would be like buying test tubes and thinking you know how to conduct scientific experiments or buying paints and attempting to create museum quality art.

How to playfully coax, coddle and cajole reluctant participants to build, even when they don't know what to build or why it's going to help their understanding, is also an acquired art that one can begin to acquire by learning from the best.

As trained facilitators know, the science and art of the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY methodology are embedded in the theoretical foundations of the methodology and the accumulated experiential learning of facilitators who have completed training and are actively engaged in designing and

facilitating workshops and learning from doing.

The workshop flow and how to engage trust and build confidence that allow the insights and stories participants share to go deeper and deeper has to be experienced, and is close to impossible to explain. And how to question components or elements of the models others build

in a non-threatening and productive manner is best demonstrated in real time.

How to design open and inspiring challenges, with enough structure to address the goal of the workshop while still leaving room for new, unanticipated and surprising constructions and stories, could be the topic of a Ph.D. dissertation.The days of training are barely enough to provide some parameters and context to create challenges that get to the essence of complex issues and deeply held beliefs.

A Toolkit of Actions that Work!

One of the most powerful aspects of the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY process is when teams create a landscape where individual models relate to each other in specific ways or a shared model. Both processes require the facilitator to empower the confidence of individual participants while protecting the group from the dominance of one or two members. And when the group is completely stalled, there are emergency actions that move the group forward that a skilled trainer will share.

The lasting value of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY workshop comes through the documentation. Trained facilitators are exposed to a variety of templates and options for ensuring lasting value of the workshops they design and deliver.