How LEGO® Serious Play® Enhances Leadership Development
Effective leadership is critical for success in any organisation. In fact, according to Forbes, 7 out of 10 employees say they would quit their jobs over a bad leader.
This post will explore how LSP enhances leadership development, making it an effective tool for coaches, facilitators, and organisations seeking to build stronger and more effective leaders.
And if you’re a coach, facilitator or L&D pro wanting to add LSP to your toolkit, check out our LSP x Coaching training here.
Leadership today isn’t really that easy. Today, leaders are expected to navigate complex challenges, inspire teams, show vulnerability, be human, and make strategic decisions that drive growth and resilience in their business and in their teams. While traditional leadership development programs often focus on knowledge and skills, they sometimes overlook the importance of creativity, emotional intelligence, and collaboration.
LEGO ® Serious Play ® (LSP) offers a unique, hands-on approach that addresses these areas in a way that feels fresh, engaging, and impactful.
LEGO ® Serious Play ® helps leaders visualise their ideas, explore different perspectives, and connect with their teams on a deeper level. It helps them create a level playing field where teams feel safe expressing their thoughts and challenging “the way we’ve always done things”.
Let’s dive in.
What is LEGO ® Serious Play ®?
LEGO ® Serious Play ® is a facilitation method developed by LEGO ® in the 1990s to promote creative thinking and collaboration. During an LSP session, participants use LEGO ® bricks to build models representing their thoughts, emotions, or challenges. These models become a physical representation of abstract concepts, helping participants articulate ideas that may be difficult to express verbally.
In leadership development, LSP is used to help leaders explore their values, identify strengths and blind spots, and develop a clear vision. It encourages leaders to engage with their thoughts and emotions in a tangible way, often leading to insights that aren’t uncovered through traditional methods.
Why Use LEGO ® Serious Play ® in Leadership Development?
Traditional leadership development often focuses on theory, but leadership is a skill best honed through self-reflection, interaction, and practice. LEGO ® Serious Play ® brings a creative, experiential component to leadership development by encouraging leaders to “build” their thinking. Here’s why LSP is so effective in leadership training:
Visualising Complex Ideas: Leaders often have to deal with complex issues, from strategic planning to team dynamics. LSP allows them to break down these complexities by building models that represent each element, making it easier to see the connections and underlying issues.
Promoting Self-Awareness and Reflection: Through LSP, leaders can externalise their thoughts and feelings, which promotes greater self-awareness. The process of building models often reveals insights about their personal values, fears, and motivations.
Encouraging Emotional Intelligence: Leadership requires empathy, self-regulation, and understanding of others’ perspectives. LSP helps leaders develop these skills by encouraging them to “see” situations from different angles.
Fostering Collaboration and Openness: LSP sessions are collaborative and encourage open dialogue. Leaders practice listening to others’ perspectives and sharing their own, which strengthens communication skills and helps build trust within teams.
Encouraging a Growth Mindset: LSP creates a safe environment where leaders can experiment, take risks, and learn from the outcomes. This growth-oriented mindset is essential for effective leadership in today’s fast-changing business landscape.
Key Areas Where LEGO ® Serious Play ® Enhances Leadership Development
Let’s dive deeper into some of the specific ways LSP can enhance key areas of leadership development.
1. Building a Strong Vision
A clear vision is a hallmark of effective leadership. Leaders must be able to articulate where they want to take their team or organisation and why it matters. However, envisioning the future can be challenging when it feels abstract. In an LSP session, leaders are asked to physically build a model of their vision, making it real and tangible.
This hands-on activity helps leaders get a clear picture of their goals and the values behind them. Building a physical model of their vision allows leaders to see potential gaps or obstacles and think critically about how they might address them. This exercise doesn’t just help leaders clarify their own vision—it also allows them to communicate it more effectively to their teams.
2. Enhancing Self-Awareness
Great leaders are self-aware; they know their strengths, weaknesses, and the impact they have on others. In a LEGO ® Serious Play ® session, leaders can build models that represent different facets of themselves—perhaps one model for their strengths, another for their weaknesses, and another for their aspirations.
Through this process, leaders often gain insights into patterns in their behavior and values that drive their decisions. For example, a leader might realise that they’re heavily focused on results (symbolised by a tall, sturdy tower) but neglect the relational aspects of leadership (a smaller, less emphasised component in their model). This awareness helps leaders identify areas for growth and consider how they might adjust their approach to create a more balanced leadership style.
3. Developing Problem-Solving and Strategic Thinking Skills
Leaders are frequently tasked with solving complex problems and making strategic decisions. LEGO ® Serious Play ® encourages leaders to break down issues, analyse connections, and consider various perspectives—all critical skills in strategic thinking.
During an LSP session, leaders can build models that represent current challenges or scenarios they face, such as team conflicts, resource constraints, or market pressures. By building and interacting with these models, leaders can gain new insights into the root causes of issues and think creatively about potential solutions. This structured process helps leaders practice critical thinking in a hands-on, engaging way.
4. Enhancing Emotional Intelligence
Leadership isn’t just about making decisions; it’s about understanding and managing emotions—both their own and those of others. In LEGO ® Serious Play ®, leaders build models that represent not only their thoughts but also their emotions and reactions. This process helps leaders connect with their feelings, whether it’s excitement, frustration, or uncertainty.
Through LSP, leaders practice putting themselves in others’ shoes by building models that reflect different perspectives within a team. For example, a leader might build a model that represents a challenging conversation with an employee, focusing on what the employee might be feeling or thinking. This exercise helps leaders develop empathy, understand the emotions behind actions, and respond more compassionately and effectively in real-life situations.
5. Strengthening Communication and Collaboration Skills
Leadership often involves fostering collaboration and ensuring team members feel heard and respected. LEGO ® Serious Play ® is a highly inclusive process, where everyone’s “voice” is valued, and each model holds significance. When leaders participate in LSP alongside their teams, they practice active listening and learn to appreciate diverse perspectives.
During a session, each person shares the meaning behind their model, allowing others to gain insight into their viewpoint. Leaders benefit from this by understanding how to make space for others, ask open-ended questions, and communicate in a way that brings the team together. The collaborative environment of LSP reinforces the importance of communication in leadership, helping leaders practice the skills that keep teams cohesive and motivated.
6. Cultivating Innovation and Adaptability
With all the complexity and uncertainty at work these days, leaders need to be adaptable and innovative. LEGO ® Serious Play ® encourages leaders to let go of perfectionism and embrace experimentation. When leaders build models, they’re encouraged to “think with their hands” and create without worrying about making mistakes. This process fosters a growth mindset and helps leaders become more comfortable with uncertainty.
Leaders can also build “future” models, representing how they envision adapting to changing circumstances or challenges. By actively constructing possible futures, leaders practice flexibility and open-mindedness—essential traits for thriving in an unpredictable world.
How to Incorporate LEGO ® Serious Play ® into Your Leadership Development Program
Integrating LEGO ® Serious Play ® into a leadership development program can enhance traditional training methods and create a memorable experience for participants. Here are a few tips on how to get started:
Set Clear Objectives: Before beginning an LSP session, define what you want leaders to achieve. Are you focusing on self-awareness, team cohesion, or strategic thinking? Setting objectives will help guide the session’s questions and activities.
Choose the Right Exercises: Tailor exercises to your objectives. For example, if you’re focused on building a vision, have leaders create models of their ideal future. If you’re focusing on empathy, ask them to build models from the perspective of their team members.
Create a Safe Space: Encourage leaders to let go of perfectionism and embrace a playful, experimental mindset. Remind them that there’s no “right” way to build and that their models are meaningful regardless of how “good” they look.
Facilitate Open Dialogue: As each leader shares their model, facilitate open and respectful discussion. Encourage leaders to ask questions and share reflections, which will deepen their insights and enhance group learning.
Reflect on Insights: After the session, guide leaders in reflecting on their takeaways. How can these insights inform their leadership style? Are there specific actions they’d like to implement? Summarising insights and setting action steps can help leaders transfer their learnings into real-world leadership scenarios.
In short, LEGO ® Serious Play ® is a powerful tool for leadership development, helping leaders tap into their creativity, self-awareness, and emotional intelligence in a hands-on way.
By “building” their thinking, leaders can gain clarity on their values, develop stronger communication skills, and cultivate the adaptability needed to lead effectively in today’s very uncertain world. And by involving their teams in the process, they can 10x their leadership impact by giving them a say in building a way forward together.
Whether you’re a coach, facilitator, or organisational leader, consider integrating LEGO ® Serious Play ® into your leadership development programs. If you’re curious, you should consider joining the next LSP x Coaching training we run - check it out for yourself and join the waitlist for future dates.
This unique approach doesn’t just help leaders build better skills—it helps them build better teams, better connections, and, ultimately, a better path forward for themselves and their organisations.
Embrace the power of play, and watch your leaders transform into confident, collaborative, and resilient drivers of change!