Ideas that are difficult to put into words become visible and discussable with LEGO® Serious Play®.
Meetings within teams that consume energy. Workshops in which there is a lot of talk but little change. It’s recognizable to anyone working together on projects, innovation or change. Time to do it differently.
With LEGO Serious Play, team meetings and work sessions take on a completely different dynamic. Conversations become tangible, ideas visible and decisions concrete by building together instead of just talking.
Yes, it is done with LEGO® bricks and No, it is anything but child’s play!
From talking to building
Instead of endless discussions, you build what you think and feel. By working with your hands, you not only use your head, but also your subconscious. That yields insights you often don’t reach with words alone. As Sander Kuin, trainer at PLNT, puts it:
“You think with your body. By working with your hands, you talk in a different way.”
Why does this work so well?
In many meetings, a fixed dynamic develops automatically. People who feel confident or are used to speaking up do so again. Others hold back, even though they often have valuable insights. The result is that not all knowledge and perspectives are brought to the table.
LEGO® Serious Play® breaks that dynamic by actively involving everyone. Each participant builds their own model and gets the space to explain what it means. Not in discussion, but from experience. This creates an equal conversation without hierarchy, in which nothing can be wrong.
As Sander van Kuin sums it up:
“You literally use 100 percent of the knowledge at the table.”
This ensures greater understanding, better cooperation and decisions that are widely supported.
A real-life example
A team gets stuck in collaboration and communication. Previous sessions yielded little. During a LEGO® Serious Play® workshop, participants build their perspective on innovation and collaboration.
Sander explains:
“Then you put all those models together on the table,” he said. “What you see is literally what everyone thinks is important.”
No discussion about opinions, but a conversation about what is there. Solutions arise from within the group itself and are therefore truly supported.
Who is LEGO® Serious Play® for?
LEGO® Serious Play is for anyone who works with people.
From startups to multinationals and from education to government.
The method is used for such things as:
- vision and strategy
- team development
- innovation and creativity
- change and culture
- problem solving and decision making
Whether you work with teams, projects or organizations: LEGO® Serious Play® helps you get to the point faster.
Why our trainers are so excited about LEGO® Serious Play®
For Sander van Kuin, the power of LEGO® Serious Play® is not in the bricks themselves, but in what they make possible. The method gets people out of their heads and gets them moving. By building, participants think not only rationally, but with their whole body. This creates different conversations, different insights and more involvement.
What especially appeals to Sander is that with this, learning does not remain a theoretical exercise. People experience directly what a topic means to them, within their own context. Not talking about innovation, collaboration or entrepreneurship, but getting to know yourself in that context.
“You don’t learn about the subject. You learn to experience yourself in the subject.”
That way of working fits seamlessly with PLNT. Here it is all about activation, experimentation and giving space to different perspectives. LEGO® Serious Play® is not an end in itself, but a means that helps people contribute equally and opens up new ways of thinking.
Building thus becomes more than a form of work. It becomes a way of thinking.