I’ve been known for many years as a facilitator of experiential outdoor activities and a content trainer. Based on that, I realised it would never be easy to introduce diffe-rent approaches to help my clients achieve great things. Helping fit safety harnesses, tying figure eight knots and spotting for their safety on challenge courses don’t ne-cessarily go hand-in-hand with many people. So, asking a group to sit around a table with bags and boxes of LEGO® bricks took a huge leap of faith.
Within the first 12 months of training as a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) facilitator, I’d heard many shocking quotes, seen far deeper meaning in models than I’d anticipated and persuaded some groups to trust me with the methodology that I thought never would. Let me share some of them here:
Picture a small, windowless meeting room, set in a central London office block, with a layout that had a large, fixed board room style table. Here, I was asked to plan and deliver a session helping a Wellbeing Committee of a large construction firm to establish a clear shared aspiration and set some ways of wor-king that will keep them focussed and connected. I arrived, did what I could to set up the room, and the group started to arrive.
They were a lovely group with the typical mix of ‘prisoners’, ‘pas-sengers’ and ‘holidaymakers’. A deep dive into skills building, and they started to get it. By lunchtime, they were all engaged and already showing their surprise that the insights being shared and gained were far greater than anticipated. Their Managing Director joined the session to support the Wellbeing Team, and to this day, I can remember his aspirational model and the meaning of the many facets of his build. In the moment, it felt like a great and successful session, but afterwards, I thought, ‘Wow’ why do individual models still make an impact on me as a facilitator?
Their Wellbeing managersaid “We found the LSP workshop to be extremely useful in engaging all stakeholders in developing our Health & Wellbeing strategy. The activity of doing rather than talking proved to be really useful in gaining input from all parties. It gave everyone the time to think about where their work fits into the wider picture, the challenges to overcome and gave everyone the opportunity to share their vision. The day was brilliantly led by Martin, who posed questions and tasks to enable to the group to expand their thinking bring their individual visions together. The end result has been used to design our five-year plan and as a committee we continue to refer back to it to ensure we remain focused”
In a quiet, beige corridor in a military training centre, I stood having coffee with a group of volunteers exploring leadership styles and principles for their part of the organisation. In our camouflage uniforms (me included), we discussed the previous sessions and the value of great leadership in our organisation. I was anxious about the next session as I had been afforded two hours to use LSP to identify key behaviours required to lead in our world. At the right time, I opened the door and led them all into the room. At each seat was a Windows Exploration Bag, and at the side of the room was a table displaying a small ‘brick buffet’ to support the session. They had no idea until this point what I would be doing with them. They got stuck in, and the session went really well. I occasionally observed as they were building and was pleasantly surprised to see that I had created an environment where what you could call a group of stereoty-pical grumpy officers leaning in and quietly building answers to my posed questions. After the session, as we approached the dining room, one of the attendees, who was a full-time Army Major, said to me, “When I walked in the room and saw LEGO spread across the tables, I initially thought “do you know who I am?, I don’t play. But I stayed and gave it a go.” I’d heard things like that before, but he went on to say, “Within 30 minutes, I was so surprised at how deep and rich the ideas and conversations were going, and I realised we wouldn’t have got there without the bricks and the process we followed, so thank you and well done!” I don’t need to say much more about this, but I thought how awesome his word were and how much it meant for him to share that with me.
I spend some of my time helping young people develop themsel-ves through experiences in the outdoors, such as rock climbing and hillwalking and one particular area I volunteer in is the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award. Here, they complete a four-day, three-night expedition during which they are self-sufficient and, as a team, work towards a chosen team goal. I was leading one such event in Scotland barely a year after training in the me-thodology and had a crazy idea to try and use LSP somehow in the process. My initial idea was to use it as part of the expedition de-brief process to help the team share their experiences, provide feedback on each other’s contributions and reflect on their behaviours and feelings. I wrote a session that was quite exciting, and as the venture came to a close, I chose a team to meet at the finish point and get the bricks out to use with them. There were two things that I realised fairly quickly:
They gradually got stuck in, and to my surprise, not only did their insights and reflections using the bricks provide me with some great feedback, but I was amazed and wowed a little when two of them openly said it was the best, most fun and engaging de-brief they’d ever had on this type of activity. “Yes!” I thought. It worked. I subsequently introduced this session format and the materials to over 70 other expedition leaders, who, though not LSP-trained facilitators, have taken a paint-by-numbers type approach of my format and used it on their outdoor ventures.
I chose these three examples to share when I think about ‘wow’ moments within LSP sessions and my journey to date. But when writing, I realised they were only classed as such because I tru-sted in the process, use of the core process, materials and un-derpinning knowledge of the whole LSP methodology, some-thing I have decided to call my own WOW moments – ‘Ways Of Working’. The things I do in my sessions that help the group get the best of the situation and achieve what they desire from the time together. These things permeate everything I do and are integral to my book ‘No More Bored Rooms’. In the book, I share my experiences, thinking, ideas and tools to help individuals and organisations get the most out of their time together in meet-ings, workshops and other collaboration events. LEGO SERIOUS PLAY has a little thread running through its entirety.
