Lúcás Ó Ceallacháin of the Australian Institute of Sport delves into his work with teams across the Australian system.
Main image: courtesy of the Australian Institute of Sport
“If I were to describe it in a nutshell,” he says, “It’s a facilitation method. A novel way of having great conversations.”
During his sessions, attendees will be encouraged, using un-themed Lego (“no Star Wars”), to build a model based on a thought, question or intention.
Lego Serious Play’s reputation as a tool for solving complex problems stems from a project in 1996 when Lego Group owner Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen worked with two professors from the IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, to explore ways to stimulate imagination and creativity within his organisation.
It has proven popular as a strategic planning tool, with Lego bricks physically standing in for issues and challenges faced by companies across the corporate world. The method is also making inroads in the world of sport thanks to the work of individuals, such as Ó Ceallacháin, who has observed high levels of engagement with athletes and coaches.
“The amount of cortex devoted to any given body region is not proportional to that body region’s surface area or volume, but rather to how richly innervated that region is,” he continues. “Your hands have a disproportionate representation in your brain. Sports people use their hands and body more than the average person so these senses are trained to a higher level.”
Some of sport’s challenges are ideal for exploration through Lego Serious Play. “Where it works really well is with things like high-ceiling, low-threshold questions where everybody’s got an answer, everybody wants to contribute. If you’re talking about strategy, culture, values or vision, it’s a good tool.” Lego Serious Play also encourages people to be curious rather than judgemental, and is designed to give everyone a voice, from the head coach to the kit person.
It is not, Ó Ceallacháin stresses, a mere team-building exercise. “There’s definitely a team-building element because you build connection, but if someone says ‘we’ve done paintball and we’ve done go-karting – let’s do Lego next’ then I know they’re just trying to fill a couple of hours with a fun activity. I’ll quickly say no to those kinds of things, but if someone says ‘we’re struggling to understand why this is a problem in our organisation’ that’s where I get curious.”
Here, Ó Ceallacháin explains how he uses Lego Serious Play with teams across Australia.
How does a typical session pan out?
LÓC: A typical session lasts for two hours – this is to ensure we have time to build the skills they need to use the method. The first 30 minutes are dedicated to introducing the method, the background and how to communicate through metaphor and storytelling. Then we get cracking! The method follows four steps – Question, Build, Share and Capture. We use the Padlet App to capture our work as we go.
Is there an optimal group size?
LÓC: I like to work with smaller groups but it can be done on a large scale. The challenge with large groups is you won’t have enough time for everyone to hear what is being shared – so you need extra help on tables or in the room.
How do you use Lego Serious Play in your sessions?
LÓC: I’ll take a group through the skills first; ‘what do you need to be able to do?’ and the skills are not about ‘how do you connect these pieces or how do you do that?’ The skills are about ‘how do you tell stories, how do you use metaphors?’ So something as simple as an orange brick might hold a lot of meaning for somebody because they’ve put meaning into it. We ask questions, we build the answer, we reflect and share the answer together – that’s how we generate insights – then we capture, we’ll take pictures and keep a record of it and break it all down and build something else. Typically they’re building for five minutes. It’s not hours of building. The bulk of the session is always about the discussion that they have about whatever they’ve built.
Image: Australian Institute of Sport
With what issues does Lego Serious Play work best?
LÓC: Questions that need creative answers. These are typically around vision, strategy, culture, values, UX design, innovation, team development. What’s exciting now is how people are taking this to their own environments and applying their owns skills to enhance it. It unlocks the creative thinking of the wisdom in the room.
What is a good type of question to ask?
LÓC: High-ceiling, low-threshold questions – future-focused questions where everyone has an answer and can contribute. I use an assets-based approach so I will often frame the question in a positive way. My approach is to understand what their challenge is currently and also what they may have tried previously. The flow of a session builds to a bigger question but all the steps on the way contribute to the momentum of a session.
How does that look in practice?
LÓC: For example, one technical director asked: ‘how do we get the best out of each other?’. Their team was new and had few opportunities to be in the room together. So there was a bit of ‘who am I and what am I about? What do I care about and what are my values? What makes me tick?’ All of that came out in a three-minute build that we did and they started talking about that. Then we said ‘think of a time when you’ve been part of a really successful team – what did it look like? What did it feel like? What helped you to be your best in that team and what are some of the things that you bring to that team that no one else can bring?’ Lots of stuff came out and then they were then able to talk about ‘what are the things that are common? What are the things that are different? How do we get to those next steps for what we want to build?’ And they’ll continue that conversation long after I’m gone. But it just kind of gave them a primer rather than just coming in and asking ‘what are your values?’ and they look at their logo or their crest and start talking about whatever had been written down by corporate leadership a couple of years ago. They asked of themselves: ‘what are our behaviours? What does that look like? How do we want the players to experience us as a coaching team as well?’
Image: Australian Institute of Sport
Can you outline the science behind Lego Serious Play?
LÓC: I learned from [Lego Serious Play expert] Michael Fearne – who trained me – there are sound scientific principles underpinning the use of Lego in engaging people, changing the conversation and solving complex problems. The way building something with your hands unlocks knowledge you didn’t know you had. There is also the joy and productivity of getting into a flow experience. There is safety in talking about issues through a model rather than the usual business/power dynamic. For example, we might have an idea and we try to make sense of it, but when you put something physical out into the world and you and I can look at it together and say ‘well, what do you see? What do I see? Let’s turn it around and look at it from another side’. We see very different things. And then the flow piece is fascinating with sportspeople because of the connection between the hand and the brain. When you’ve got a big pile of Lego in front of you and your hands are like another search engine for your brain. So you start pulling out stuff that you didn’t even know was there. With my HP hat on – in simple terms, it works!
How might that emerge during a session?
LÓC: So I go back to our orange brick. One coach used an odd orange brick in a model and I asked them about it. They said: ‘Oh… that’s the fire in my belly and that’s why it’s in the middle. My grandad was the first person who brought me to a game. That’s where I got the fire and I take that wherever I go and I think about how important it is to pass that on to the next generation of kids’. That was just a little brick, just the colour, that didn’t look like anything but the fact that we had a quick conversation about it; and the meaning that somebody had put into that brick was really powerful. These stories come up and the power of storytelling resonates here in Australia, where that storytelling tradition is really strong. And I feel like sportspeople just love a good yarn.
How does a second or third session differ from a first?
LÓC: We can get to more complex questions more quickly using different skills, such as rapid builds or you can build with no question or instructions. Then I hand them a Post-It with a theme to explain using the model they built. With the skills warmed up we can tackle system issues or stakeholder maps – the truly complex environment that HP Sport operates in.
How do you encourage introverts or those less likely to talk to actually speak up?
LÓC: I make sure that we let people know that they only have to share what they want to and I also put caps on time. With curious questioning lots of people start to share more. Best of all is that others in the room model the sharing and it gets the rest of the group going. The design of the first hour is all about warming up to get to better sharing – we don’t jump in at the deep end. In my research as part of my Professional Doctorate in Elite Performance at Dublin City University I am also looking more closely at how Lego Serious Play builds the behaviours that contribute to psychological safety.
How do you know when to stop digging with a person? What are the signs to move on to the next person?
LÓC: We put time limits to ensure that we don’t get one person dominating the conversation but I also invite the group to question the model and be curious about it. Often I do very little talking. At the top of the session I make sure that people know that they only have to share what they are comfortable with. The time limit helps with those who are more sceptical too – they get time to warm up to the method and once others share their stories you find the sceptics start to join in. This is also part of the power of Lego Serious Play – it flattens the hierarchy – no one is more expert in your own story and model than you, but you invite others in to see and share your inner world. That demonstrates courage and vulnerability.
Image: Australian Institute of Sport
You said you take pictures. What are you trying to capture?
LÓC: I’m documenting the experience, summarising insights and generating artefacts that can continue to be used long after the session ends. We are also encouraging people to reflect on and retrieve what they have learned. Also, each model is broken down after it is built – so you are constantly breaking down the models to build something new. It also allows me to be fully present in the room and the conversation.
Do you take notes along the way?
LÓC: Honestly, very few. My job is to continue to facilitate the flow of the conversation so that the participants are producing the questions. This is another reason why the live feed on Padlet is important. By the end of the session the group will produce some simple guiding principles to apply going forward.
Do you prefer to be well-versed in the sport or team?
LÓC: I like to have some background and context of the room I am walking into – where does the session fit in for them, what kind of headspace are they in? I don’t want to have preconceived notions about the group or the outcome. As a former athlete, coach and High Performance Director myself, I’m cautious about what I introduce to an environment.
How do you work with leaders to give them the skills to host sessions of their own?
LÓC: I’m doing a large amount of Lego Serious Play facilitator training now. It can be nerve-racking to lead a session with your own team so I’m currently building a community of practitioners who I train. They are very supportive of each other and help to design sessions for each other. I am excited to see how others apply LSP, especially in situations like 1-to-1 wellbeing or coaching sessions. Everyone will come up with their own way of applying this to solve their challenges.
