Think of a LEGO® brick. It’s two dots wide by four dots long and it can be any colour you like.
It’s a fairly standard LEGO® brick. My kids’ toy box is full of them. They get put together into house walls, sculpted into dinosaurs and occasionally shot across the room like missiles.
If you had six of these bricks, these two by fours, how many different ways could you think of to put them together?
Ten or 20? Maybe 100? Maybe you could even push yourself to a few hundred different combinations before needing to stop to sleep or answer an email.
It may surprise you to discover that six two by four LEGO® bricks have nearly a billion possible combinations – 915,103,765 different ways they can be put together. I can’t imagine any individual person has actually sat down and plotted out 915 million different options, but the mathematical truth remains.
LEGO® is infinitely buildable. I’ve watched bricks become animals, buildings, cars, trains, mountains and rivers, roads and trees – given enough imagination anything is possible.
LEGO® Serious Play® is a method to bring that creative possibility into problem solving, idea generation and learning. In interactive workshops groups of six to eight people gather around a bag of over 2000 LEGO® bricks and find much more than 915 million possible combinations – they can identify blockers, dig into problems and even brainstorm possible solutions.
It turns out using your hands to build something, rather than pens or keyboards to write or type, can help you tap into a different part of your brain.
But what does this mean for L&D?
In LEGO® Serious Play® the creative power isn’t in the brick, but in the imagination behind it. If a participant says a particular combination of bricks is a house or a table or a blocker, that is what it is. It can spark contemplation and conversation. It’s a way of seeing beyond the surface of a problem or challenge.
I’ve also used LEGO® in agile training – it’s a great as a way of explaining and demonstrating the fundamentals of scrum and sprints.
Within a prescribed scenario, participants must create user stories for items they wish to build, assign story points and decide how many structures can be built in this sprint or that sprint (a time box measured in minutes rather than the usual two-week cycle).
It’s always a bit of a free for all in sprint one; participants scrambling for bricks for walls or wheels for vehicles. It takes a few sprints for the team to start working together, passing each other the materials they need and supporting each other’s work rather than just their own.
Just like in a standard agile or scrum sprint.
Except with LEGO® you can learn some of those lessons early and help set the squad on the path to better cohesion and collaboration.
I’ve also heard of groups using LEGO® for Diversity, Equality and Inclusion training. Participants have access to that big bag of bricks and are given both group and individual instructions.
The group instructions might be something like, “build a house.” The same task given to all participants.
But the challenge is, everyone also has individual instructions which they are not allowed to share with each other. Some people might have rules they have to follow such as “all walls must be the same colour” or “every brick must be 4 dots long”. Instructions which add a hidden layer of complexity to their personal build, while others can build their houses however they like.
This is a great demonstration of the challenges that Neurodiverse people may face – extra rules they must follow which are hidden or invisible to Neurotypical people. It can also be a salient lesson about hidden disabilities or mental health challenges. We are not all working from the same set of instructions.
And so, with one bag of bricks you can effectively demonstrate agile ways of working, teach a lesson about DEI perception or dig into the challenges faced by a team or project.
Those are just three ways we could use LEGO® for learning – I wonder if we can come up with 915 million more?
About the Author
Hari Patience-Davies is a storytelling coach and LEGO® Serious Play ® facilitator. You can find her on the speaker list for World of Learning in Birmingham or learn more at www.patiencedavies.com