Michel Cloosterman

It is REALLY EASY to engage people if you are doing things WITH THEM rather than TO them. And general metaphors work great if you allow the participants to reframe them into something personal to the individual or tabletop.

Show someone a Rorschach (inkblot) image and they will see things. Show them a construct from something like a Thematic…[Read more]

Eli had a very good explanation of how humans (kids and adults) process metaphors. Incidentally I also do workshops with children from ages 4 (speaking age) to early teens and I have found that their grasp of understanding, modelling and explaining metaphors through LEGO (or any other physical object) is generally the same as adults. It is just a…[Read more]

Please don’t think I was suggesting that I doubted adults could learn this way. I am trying to wrap my head around how to walk through some of these steps and looking for tips that you have found helpful in moving first time users from physical concepts to more abstract. It is easier to show for examples a theme of generosity than to show a theme…[Read more]

I won’t bother to repeat what Sebastian has already said, but will be a bit more rhetorical. How did we learn that the shapes (that we call letters) “d” “o” “g” represent a four legged mammal with a tail that it wags when it’s happy and that those same shapes/letters in a different sequence represent the supreme element of our belief system? As…[Read more]

fully agree. the idea of make a physical metaphor is the easy part. everyone i’ve worked with has been fully on board with putting abstract concepts onto bricks after about 45mins, 3/4 of the way through the standard skills building. if you don’t do the skills building, you can’t expect the method to work.

Hi Joy,

In answer to you questions “..how do you in corporate settings get adults who haven’t played with LEGO before or not in 30 years to figure out how to convey ideas into bricks?”;

I have been doing LEGO SP in corporate settings for several years now with thousands of participants.. staff level, middle managers, Board of Directors, M…[Read more]

Koen,

Thank you for the link. I have downloaded it and have begun to look through it for ideas. I have to admit that looking at the challenges I wasn’t sure I knew how I would respond or what I would build. The questions were good, but how do you in corporate settings get adults who haven’t played with LEGO before or not in 30 years to figure…[Read more]

Hi Joy,
The classroom version of LSP was: buildtoexpress (indeed discontinued also)

But the material / guides is still available :
https://education.lego.com/en-us/support/buildtoexpress/curriculum-download-support

This could be a good starting point.
Good luck.

Koen

Thanks everyone, and Alan especially for raising the question. I agree with Eli that it’s all about the objective and purpose of LSP. For me this topic relates to the concrete/abstract trajectory of LSP: as discussed Duplo pieces (including animals and human figures) can be really helpful if they are taken metaphorically and enrich the…[Read more]

Sounds great, please may I join?
lee@leebutton.co.uk

I also use the Blue transparent DUPLO brick at the start of every session to explain the concept of metaphors. I always state “This brick represents my Mother in Law…. Why?” They then have a good time guessing size, transparency, wisdom, eight kids, calm, peacemaker, loves jewelry, etc. Its amusing and they get the point very quickly that youre…[Read more]

the single brick that i see most used that brings meaning without any other bricks is the transparent blue duplo 2×4 brick. i don’t know why you wouldn’t want that piece. you know – the one that says: trust, ice, transparency, fear, lightness, cold, hope, openness, regulation, clarity, imagination, far future — and so on ;)

The only time I drop the duplo out of the set is entirely to do with the space and baseplates I’ll be using – if I’m dropping people down to a smaller baseplate, or we’re likely to have less elbow room, I’ll pull out the bigger pieces. Otherwise it’s all in, and everything counts – I’ve added the Duplo Numbers Train to my kit for the…[Read more]

Absolutely include the Duplo elements! You will notice that they are included in the LSP kits. People like variety. Also, I have never had a participant actually use a cow, let’s say, to represent a cow. The use of these elements does not, in my experience, take away from the metaphorical representations in the models.

I got StopMotion for my iPhone and there are others in the App store.

In a conversation Thursday with a high-tech colleague in Mumbai, he popped me two other alternatives (one not apparently available in the US). So there ARE a variety of apps out there that require no additional hardware. And my son-in-law has one on his Android and it was said…[Read more]

Marko has made outstanding contributions to the organizational and personal development of tens of thousands of people, many directly but also many who have benefited from his “transfer of training” and his expertise and teachings. And his views on this question are most certainly appreciated.

Over the past 30 years, that concept of…[Read more]

Hi Rick, what a great way of remembering who Onno was and what he loved to do!
He will be greatly missed in the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY community in the Netherlands.

Thanks for sharing this (intimate) story!

Hi All,
This is a subject that I take dearly to heart. Some of us in the LSP community were practising years before we finally got certified and I am sure that there will always be a percentage of professionals who discover the methodology and start using it successfully long before they decide to attend a formal training session.

I remember a…[Read more]