Anıl Erkan - Coaching » LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® for Teams: Making Space for Every Voice

A team can keep talking and still feel stuck. The same people contribute, familiar ideas return, and something important remains unsaid.

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® offers another way into that conversation. People build models in response to a question, explain what their models mean, and explore what they notice together.

The bricks are not the point. They give people something tangible to think with and talk about.

What becomes possible when people do not have to begin with the right words?

1. What Is LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®?

Lego Serious Play Workshops Portugal Lisbon Europe

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® is a facilitated method that uses LEGO bricks, model building, and metaphors to explore questions. Those questions can concern a team’s contributions, its relationships, its direction, or the obstacles it sees ahead.

The method rests on a simple belief. The answers are already in the room. The facilitator’s job is not to steer the group towards a conclusion. It is to help people express what they think, listen to each other, and take each other’s reflections into account.

It is not simply a collection of bricks placed in a meeting room. The facilitator prepares questions around what the group wants to accomplish. The same materials can support different conversations because the question changes the meaning of the build.

A question about someone’s contribution to a team produces a different conversation from a question about what might prevent a project from succeeding.

How a facilitated conversation works

The basic pattern is straightforward:

The facilitator introduces a question or building challenge.
Each person has time to create a model.
Each person explains what their model represents.
The group asks questions and reflects on what has emerged.

This cycle repeats several times in a session. Before the real question, groups usually begin with skills building: simple builds that teach the process, such as a tower, a metaphorical model, and a short story told through bricks.Skipping this stage makes the rest much less effective. We never skip this stage.

Some sessions move from individual models into a shared model. A shared model always follows individual builds, so everyone has something of their own to bring. The aim is not the lowest common denominator. It is a model each person can recognise as part of their shared reality. This takes a skilled facilitator.

This creates another task for the team. It is no longer enough to understand an individual perspective. People have to consider how their perspectives fit together.

In longer sessions, the work can continue with landscapes, connections between models, the forces that influence them, and finally a few simple guiding principles.

How much time does it take?

An introductory workshop can take about three hours. Longer sessions suit strategic work, such as exploring a product launch and the obstacles that could affect it. The purpose of the session shapes the questions and the time required.

2. Why Building Can Help People Find Words

Sometimes a person has something to contribute but does not yet know how to explain it. Building offers a different starting point.

Instead of being asked to produce a polished answer immediately, the person makes something. Then they describe it.

The model becomes a bridge between an idea and a conversation.

Metaphor gives an idea a visible form

In one exercise, participants first build something straightforward; like a tower. They are then asked to explain how that same model might represent another part of their lives, such as their family or school.

The physical model stays the same. Its meaning develops through the explanation.

This is not a test of whether someone has built an accurate miniature. It is an opportunity to connect an object with an experience, a relationship, or a concern.

A detail that seemed incidental during building may become meaningful when the person starts talking about it. For example, participants may recognise ideas in their models that they had not planned to include.

That possibility deserves curiosity, not certainty. A model does not give anyone permission to decide what another person is thinking.

Ask about meaning rather than assigning it

A few agreements keep the process safe. Only the person who built a model knows what it means. Others may ask questions about it, but they do not interpret it or offer opinions. The facilitator asks about the model and its story, not about the person. And there is no right or wrong way to build. If someone says a model represents something, that is what it represents.

Questions can explore particular features of a build. The participant explains whether a piece or arrangement means something to them.

Even the position of a model can open a conversation. Someone on one side of the table may notice figures that someone opposite cannot see. The group has a concrete example of how different perspectives reveal different things.

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3. Creating a Level Playing Field for Every Voice

A meeting can be open to everyone without giving everyone an equal opportunity to contribute.

In LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, everyone builds. Everyone has a turn to explain.

The quieter person has the same space to speak as the person who usually fills the room.

Participation includes leaders and HR

In sessions, leaders do not remain outside the activity. Neither does an HR representative sit apart, taking notes while everyone else builds.

Being in the room means taking part.

That changes the arrangement. A leader has something of their own to explain, rather than only listening to or assessing other people’s contributions.

The facilitator stays neutral. They shape the questions and guard the process, but they do not decide what a model means or whether it is any good. This is why a trained, external facilitator is recommended.

That is also why facilitator training matters, and why the method is taught by experienced trainers in the community. A manager is part of the system being explored, and their questions can carry a hidden agenda. In the room, the leader builds and shares like everyone else.

Equal turns are a beginning, not a guarantee

Equal turns can help people feel more comfortable speaking. Still, willingness to share depends on feeling psychologically safe.

Those two ideas belong together.

A process can make room for a contribution. What happens when that contribution arrives still matters.

In practice, more confident people may still contribute more at first. Because the models are visible, an uneven contribution is easier to notice, but it does not resolve itself automatically.

Understanding someone’s contribution involves more than noticing their visible performance.

This does not mean turning every team conversation into a personal conversation. It means leaving room for context, without assuming that familiarity tells the whole story.

People discover something new even about colleagues they have worked with for years. Time together and understanding each other are not always the same thing.

4. The Tower Exercise and the Rules We Add Ourselves

One of the introductory exercises is deliberately simple. Participants are asked to construct a tower.

In the standard skills-building sequence, the tower shows that everyone can build and introduces the habit of sharing. Some facilitators also test a tower’s stability. People are often sorry to see theirs break, which shows how quickly we attach to what we build.

Some facilitators also use the tower to look at assumptions. There is no instruction to make the tallest one. There is no instruction to use every brick. There is no instruction to finish first.

Yet some people build as though those requirements were part of the task.

Some work quickly. Others take their time. When the towers are shared, the differences create an opening to examine what people thought they were supposed to do.

Separate the instruction from the assumption

A person may explain that they were trying to win on height or speed. The facilitator can ask: what was the instruction, and what did you add to it?

The gap is useful. Something that felt like a requirement was an assumption.

These self-added expectations can be seen as limiting beliefs. The exercise makes them visible without beginning with an abstract conversation about mindset.

A practical reflection follows:

What was the instruction?
What did I add to it?
How did that addition shape what I built?
Where might I be doing something similar at work?

The point is not that speed, ambition, or precision are wrong. It is that a person may be organising their effort around a rule nobody gave them.

That is worth noticing before carrying the same rule into another task.

Different does not automatically mean incorrect

The towers also make another distinction visible. People can respond differently to the same prompt without one response being a failure.

Within this open-ended exercise, a small tower is still a valid response. So is an unusual one.

This does not mean every workplace decision is equally sound. It means this particular task has no single correct design, and treating it as though it does can hide what others bring.

Building time is set clearly, and participants are not interrupted while they build.

There is time to make something before having to explain or defend it. That pause is a meaningful part of the process.

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5. How LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Differs From Typical Team Building

A social outing and a facilitated workshop offer different experiences. Neither has to be dismissed to understand the distinction.

Bringing a shared activity into the workplace offers another option. A workshop held during working hours also does not ask people to give up their evenings.

The purpose is more than shared enjoyment

Playfulness is part of the appeal. People’s energy changes when they arrive expecting another meeting and find LEGO bricks at their seats.

But enjoyment alone does not explain the method. It is not an icebreaker. It is a structured process with a purpose.

The facilitator works with the organisers beforehand to understand the purpose of the workshop. Questions then connect the activity to that purpose.

A team might explore individual contributions. It might bring models together to consider its shared direction. It might build perceived obstacles to a planned launch and discuss how to respond.

The bricks support a conversation about the work, rather than simply providing a break from it.

From individual models to shared principles

Participants can combine their models while keeping the essential meaning of each contribution.

Later, the group develops a few simple guiding principles from what it has explored. These are intended to carry something useful beyond the workshop.

The thinking can continue to change.

Repeat sessions are an opportunity to revisit progress or bring new team members into the process. That is a possibility for continued work, not evidence that a particular schedule guarantees results.

The useful distinction is between completing an activity and continuing a conversation. A workshop can provide a beginning without resolving everything.

6. Why Courageous Leadership Matters

Leaders need to be willing to hear what the team brings forward.

That may sound simple until an unexpected idea appears.

A leader can welcome participation in principle and still close it down in practice. Dismissing an idea outright can undo the momentum a group has developed.

The difficult part is not placing bricks on the table. It is remaining curious when the conversation moves somewhere the leader did not expect.

Openness does not require immediate agreement

There is a difference between accepting every suggestion and taking a suggestion seriously enough to understand it.

Leaders need to ask questions. What does the model represent? What obstacle does the person see? What matters most in their contribution?

Those questions keep the conversation open before a judgment closes it.

Participation matters here as well. A leader who builds alongside the team is doing more than authorising an exercise. They are entering it.

Still, an equal turn at the table does not settle every difference in the room. A shared model does not make every tension disappear. Some ideas will remain difficult, and some conversations will remain unfinished.

The value is not in pretending otherwise. It is in making space to notice what has been difficult to express and choosing not to dismiss it too quickly.

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® offers a structure for that work. The leader’s response helps determine whether the conversation can continue.

What might your team be able to express if you made room to understand it before deciding what to do with it?

About the author: Anıl Erkan is an executive coach and leadership development professional. ICF PCC coach and Hogan certified assessor. Certified facilitator in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method, trained by Robert Rasmussen (The Association of Master Trainers in the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method https://seriousplay.training/).

LEGO, the LEGO logo, SERIOUS PLAY, the Minifigure, the Brick and the Knob configuration are trademarks of the LEGO Group. This article is independent and is not sponsored by the LEGO Group.