136 - Facilitating with and without Lego Serious Play with Sean Blair

LEGO Serious Play is an increasingly popular method of facilitation and one that we’ve explored previously on the podcast, but I wanted to dive into a little deeper and with a slightly more critical lens.

I found the perfect person for the job - Sean Blair, a LEGO Serious Play trainer and facilitator and soon-to-be quadruple-published author on the topic. You could call him experienced in the subject…

And, to my non-surprise, we had the most brilliant conversation. So brilliant, in fact, that I had to split the episode into two parts to keep it at a reasonable length!

We challenge each other, we bring new ideas and possibilities to each other, and we definitely don’t always agree. All of which made for one of the most stimulating and exciting conversations I’ve ever had on the podcast.

Enjoy this episode - there is so much to take away from it.

Find out about:

• How LEGO Serious Play helps us shift our focus from individuals to behaviours
• Why ‘objectifying’ an issue is so effective at helping us communicate difficult things
• Why LEGO Serious Play is effective for any topic, but not all objectives
• Why we must always try to guard against ‘content ownership’ as facilitators
• How to adjust to visually representing our thoughts using a ‘Tap and Tell’ exercise
• What metaphors do to advance conversations and understanding

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Questions and Answers

[Part one]

[01:02] When did you first start calling yourself a facilitator?

[02:11] How have you changed from being a “bossy” facilitator and what have you become instead?

[05:05] How do you train other facilitators – especially in the art of dialling up and down their presence in the room?

[09:50] What does it take to create a learning space that encourages and values mistakes?

[13:54] How does speaking with your own voice play out in facilitation?

[18:28] What makes a workshop fail?

[20:55] How would you start a workshop for a group in which you know there is conflict and politics?

[25:13] What is the power in using LEGO to help us talk about difficult topics?

[28:11] Do you use ‘minifigures’ (avatars or representations of people) in your LEGO Serious Play workshops?

[32:01] How do you negotiate the risks of a representation being misinterpreted between participants and creating misalignment?

Connect to Sean:

On LinkedIn

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👉 What happens when being “professional” gets in the way of being human? My new podcast Unprofessionalism explores the rules we’re taught to follow at work, and what happens when we break them. Listen here: https://unprofessionalism.buzzsprout.com/  👈