Using Lego® Serious Play® at university

The iconic Lego® building bricks not only evoke positive childhood memories but can also form the basis for creative courses, co-creative curriculum development, or transformative university processes. Discover how the toys of childhood can now improve collaboration and communication at work.

Published on 6. May 2024

Originally developed as a management tool, Lego® Serious Play® has evolved into a versatile method that promotes creative thinking, communication, and collaboration. The use of Lego® Serious Play® offers many opportunities for coaches, facilitators, managers, and teachers who act as learning guides to initiate collaborative development processes.

Range of Features

Starting and supporting group processes
Developing common goals and visions
Completing evaluations
Conducting consultations

Uses

Curriculum development
Seminar
Group work
Consultation hours
Team workshops
Teaching Analysis Poll
Exams

The power of images

Working with Lego® is working with images. More precisely, working with the visualization of your own ideas and thoughts. Working with images or metaphors is often used in coaching. Images serve both to reduce complexity and, at the same time, maintain complexity and leave room for interpretation.

Working with images …

helps us to become aware of our own unconscious ideas and to specify them,
allows us to convey feelings,
makes information easier to remember,
and enables a change of perspective.

In a nutshell: Working with images addresses our brain holistically. They not only reach logic but also emotion. Images make unconscious and invisible aspects of your own ideas, for example, about cooperation, visions, values, etc., visible through the design and thus become accessible for communication and negotiation. The idea of working with visualization is not new, but Lego® has something to offer for co-creative settings that other tools cannot provide so easily:

People often have positive experiences with the bricks, which leads to a positive mood at work and, thus, promotes better access to their own resources, which is important for creative processes.
You do not need to visualize anything yourself, as is the case with drawing or kneading, but you can visualize something immediately.
You can put parts together much more easily than with other materials, such as picture cards, plasticine, or drawings, and turn them into something new, in which the individual parts can also change a little if necessary – this makes it particularly useful for co-creative processes in which something new can emerge from individual perspectives and not just be put together based on a division of labor.

What does the use of Lego® Serious Play® make possible?

The use of Lego® figures and bricks enables participants to express their thoughts and ideas in a non-verbal way. This is particularly relevant when it comes to communicating abstract concepts or complex relationships that are not always easy to put into words.

Lego® Serious Play® promotes metaphorical forms of expression in which the built models serve as symbols or metaphors for complex realities. The builders can transform abstract concepts into concrete models.

At first, everyone builds alone, then together, so that all perspectives are represented.

The method promotes collaboration when joint models are created.

The visual nature of the models makes it easier to formulate concrete suggestions for improvement.

Teams can use Lego® Serious Play® to visualize their common goals and visions, which leads to a clearer and more consistent direction of the organization.

The method promotes a structured dialog that improves decision-making. The collaborative creation of models makes it possible to integrate different perspectives and achieve a comprehensive understanding of the situation.

What could a Lego® Serious Play® workshop look like?

If you want to use Lego® Serious Play® to develop a result together as a group, you could structure a workshop as follows:

Warm up: Refresh your Lego® skills by giving a simple work order with a limited number of bricks. The participants then build a tower or a bridge to warm up.
Abstraction: Develop storytelling skills by guiding participants toward a more abstract task. For example, have them build a positive learning experience that they have had as a student or teacher.
Task: Have the participants create the vision for the workshop topic. During or afterwards, everyone explains their artwork, while the other participants can ask questions and have symbols explained to them.
Change of location: Everyone takes their artwork with them and comes together at a large table. The task now is for the participants to create a joint picture from the respective aspects. Things can be left out or added.

The overall context of the workshop should not be neglected. This could be, for example, the participants as a professionally and hierarchically heterogeneous group. At the same time, the location and its design play an important role. Is there enough space to look at and work on something together? Is it possible to work and think while standing? Is movement possible? How is the workshop structured? And last but not least: Is the moderation team with the appropriate backgrounds and special moderation skills a factor in the workshop?