The Power of LEGO Bricks

In today’s Learning Pod session, a small group of playmeo members turned up to connect, share and lean into a bunch of exciting programming questions. One of these involved the use of LEGO bricks.

In the space of about 30 minutes, not only did we develop a large number of really powerful metaphors involving the bricks, but we left the meeting with goosebumps because it was such an inspiring conversation.

I was struck at the simplicity of what transpired and promised to share some of this magic with you, dear reader 🙂

LEGO Serious Play

First, I presume you know what LEGO bricks are, right? If not, where have you been living?

But even if you know of and love playing with LEGO bricks, you may not be aware that there is such a thing as Certified LEGO Serious Play trainers who use these versatile toys for the purposes of training and development. How cool is that?

Now, I could get all excited about this amazing program, but I want to focus on the more readily accessible option of simply integrating LEGO bricks (that we all have just kicking around in our cupboards) into your experiential learning programs.

This was the focus of today’s Learning Pod and, as I said, it inspired us all to pull out the LEGO from our cupboards (although in my case, living with a 9-year old boy, I trip over it every day in my house.)

I think the thing that got us most excited was the dazzling array of metaphors that we quickly developed, that absolutely elevated the forthcoming program of one of our members.

Experiential Metaphors

Here’s a quick snapshot of some of the ideas we generated – feel free to share your own in the Comments section at the base of this page:

Full Value

The stock-standard LEGO brick features 8 studs. We took this basic design and connected it to the core components of powerful and positive relationships insofar as each stud represented one component such as respect or honesty. At the end of one’s program, you can afford to give each participant one of these basic bricks as a permanent reminder of the commitments they made to achieving full value in their class, workplace or wherever.

Strength & Connection

The unique design of every LEGO brick is their interconnectivity as much as their ability to build solid structures. As a team, there is strength in connections. The more bricks that are connected, the stronger the structure (or team) can be.

Diversity

There are just so many different types and shapes of LEGO bricks, I doubt anyone knows how many there may exist. To this end, the diversity of choice and the potential for creativity and inclusion and equity are enormous. No matter their size, shape, colour, etc, every brick is important, just like a group of humans who make up a team. The trick is, how you put them all together to make something beautiful.

Ideal Props

We smashed out tons of existing activity ideas to integrate LEGO bricks into what was possibly the most exciting part of our session such as Blind Portrait, ID Numbers and Bridge It and many more.

Accountability

As mentioned above, the idea to give every person one or more LEGO bricks to keep as place in a prominent place as a constant reminder of their learning was a powerful turning point in our discussion. The kernel of this idea then burst into many more ideas, but using the bricks to leverage accountability was really useful.

Unofficial Starts

Who can sit or stand idly by when there’s a bunch of LEGO bricks sitting on the floor or table. This is an ideal prop to use for unofficial starts because the bricks are infinitely creative, engaging and evoke lots of good feelings for most of us.

Yeah, you probably had to be there, so I get that this post may not convey as much of the inspiration that was felt in today’s session. But, if you happen to be a playmeo member, you can join us next time to get a dose for yourself.

Click the link below to login to your playmeo account and navigate to My Account > Webinars > Learning Pods to register for our next monthly get-together.

Contributor Mark