This is Stephanie
Let’s begin with Stephanie Wheeler. Stephanie has been involved with the LSP Magazine from Day 1. She has worked with us providing feedback, new ideas, writing articles and exchanging networks. We got together (sadly, yet again virtually) in January after I had invited her to get more involved and share her knowledge and creativity on the topic of coaching and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY in future LSP Magazines. Here’s a bit more of our conversation:.
Why do you want to contribute to the LSP Magazine?
To answer that, I need to go back in time a bit. I wrote an article for Issue 2 of the LSP Magazine about research I was involved in examining the effect of a Real Time Strategy LSP workshop on team psychological safety, collaboration and cohesion. I had been invited to take part in the project while I was in the last year of my MSc in Coaching and Behavioral Change at Henley Business School in 2018 as my research dissertation was on playfulness in coaching. I hadn’t heard of LEGO SERIOUS PLAY before but was intrigued and delighted to be invited. My first involvement was to take part in the interviews of the participants to collect data for the research. I arrived without knowing much about LSP at the start of the interviews (an advantage as it meant I didn’t influence the interview answers) and I was so blown away by the responses that halfway through the day I decided that I was going to train to be a LSP facilitator.
Fastforward to today and working on the LSP Magazine gives me the opportunity to combine practical work with research and writing, all things which I enjoy very much. It also takes me further on my own learning journey, enables me to share knowledge and gives me the opportunity to connect with people all around the world. As I’m coming more from coaching communities, I can now start taking part in and facilitating interesting conversations and collaborations accross LSP and coaching communities.
Any other reasons?
Part of my motiviation for involvement is that it pushes me to reflect, research and consolidate my own learning as well as bringing areas for future development to my awareness; writing articles is challenging and worthwhile! I have a love of learning for myself and sharing learning, connecting with others myself and facilitating others to connect. Involvement with the LSP Magazine creates opportunities for all of these things.
When you start covering the coaching section of the LSP Magazine, what will be your tone?
I imagine that it will change over time, though it will mirror my approach in all of my work. I want it to be grounded in theory, research and be evidence-led where possible, so that readers can trust what they are reading and it adds value to their work. As well as theory, I think it’s important that the coaching section should include practical examples to give ideas of how facilitators and coaches it might apply the concepts to their own work The mix of coaching and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY brings exciting possibilities of of incorporating playfulness and also a bit of fun into in the service of what is most often serious work. Finally, I like to make sure that the articles are an easy read, especially bearing in mind that readers of the LSP Magazine are from all over the world.
How can other people get involved in this Coaching section of the LSP Magazine?
One of the things I myself always try to bring to a coaching session is an invitation to see things from a new perspective. I would be delighted for readers to get involved and actively bring their perspectives and ideas. This could be by writing or contributing to an article, case study, book review, sharing research findings or just tips and ideas for articles which they think would be interesting but don’t wish to write themselves.
Thank you Stephanie. Anything you want you to add?
It would be wonderful to hear from readers about coaching topics, insights or questions which they would like to read about in the LSP Magazine. Coaching is such a rich and varied field, there is so much to share. Ideas could include reflective practice and supervision, coaching/learning cycles, different coaching approaches or team coaching. I‘m curious to know what readers would really like to read about, what would help them in their practise as a facilitator or coach, so that we at the LSP Magazine can spend some time looking at those topics from coaching and LEGO SERIOUS PLAY perspectives.
I’d really like us to create more possibilities for readers to reach out to us, to create a bigger platform for more contributions from and collaboration with readers. We want to know: What is it that you want to read about or get inspired by?
Send us an email with your interest
and ideas: magazine@lspmagazine.com
