Improving Facilitation Skills with LEGO

Luke Battye from http://seriousplayworkshops.co.uk has written the following blog post.

So you want to run a workshop. You want to know what the best possible way to engage the participants is. You want to know how to make sure you create the best possible experience for them to benefit from. You want to make sure that you create the best workshop ever given on your chosen subject.

So you take to the Internet and to books called things like 101 Ways To Improve Your Facilitation Skills only to come across the same ideas over and over again. You find nothing different, nothing interesting, and then you read this blog.

Using LEGO to Improve Your Facilitation Skills

This is where LEGO shines through as a means of facilitation for creating unique workshops that no-one will forget in a long while.

Back in the late 90s LEGO were facing problems. They were losing out to video games, with more and more children having games consoles in the home. This lead to them having an internal revolution. They needed to change and change fast. So, what did they do? They encouraged their staff to play with LEGO. They used it as a tool for innovation.

This proved successful, unlocking wider opportunities they had not even considered before. Through what they later coined as Serious Play, LEGO innovated their staff and improved their market share.

Today this methodology has been recognised as fantastic facilitation skills to be passed on between workshop facilitators worldwide. They open up all kinds of doorways, ensuring that there is room for the workshop attendants to grow whilst they learn. You can read all about the science and theory behind LEGO Serious Play here.

Growing Facilitation Skills

When it comes down to holding a LEGO Serious Play workshop a few things need to be considered. The first is that the facilitator is an abstract entity within the workshop. This means they cannot participate in or manipulate the workshop. Their job is purely to act as a facilitator to the session. They must spur on the session but not tell people what to build.

Instead the role of the facilitator is to act as a professional hand to keep the session on track. They need to keep everyone involved, ensure everyone builds, and ultimately make sure everyone makes the most out of their day.

It is for these reasons that LEGO Serious Play facilitation skills are so hard to come by and why they are facilitated by highly trained professionals. For more information please feel free to click here and find out more.