Qui prodest to brick by distance?

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® during COVID-19 crisis

© Luigi Rosati

In these incredible days We’re facing several questions and problems. A lot of these critical issues regarding how our work changes by new paradigms and models the virus is developing. We’re hoping this is just a temporary question but the emergency days (phase 1) will be followed by a new scenarios’ time (phase 2).

Day by day, We’re trying to look at this future, to guess the new balance of opportunities and threats. And in this situation, We have to choose the right way to save our business.

As LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® certified facilitators, we’re thinking if and how belong to propose and manage LSP workshops.

In Italy, on Linkedin, I’ve noticed proposals of workshops managed by distance, using video conferencing tools. I talked about it with Giorgio Beltrami who has wrote a post in Linkedin’s LSP group, expressing his negative opinion on this type of transaction. I agree with Giorgio — and the colleagues who commented his post — particularly I notice these questions:

• LSP is a methodology dedicated to groups. The group experience is part of the workshop; the specific way the people build up and manage relations between them, is fruit of physical elements as proxemics, perception, non-verbal communication, et cetera. Generally we should to think about future of our interpersonal relations in a digital way but still we could design and manage group’s activity by new theories and methods, we have to think at phisical dimension of group’s experience. LSP workshop is a group’s experience; the story and the climate, phenomenas and dynamics are important elements of the experience and influence the pursuit of the aim of the workshops (even in case of short workshops).
• LSP is a group activity (individual applications are not LSP). We know that several professionals every day use LEGO® bricks in individual consultancy (mentoring/coaching, guidance, therapy and so on); these are serious and accurate experiences and technics but are not LSP. To use these praxis to support a so-called “LSP workshop by distance” is an error. It’s like to compare a tennis match to a private lesson of tennis… The missing of sharing buildings and other tasks is an irreplaceable deficiency.
• Building in group is not like to build alone. Who’s got experience of LSP workshops knows that people don’t build models actually and completely alone. Participants play, and through a game pattern could exploit their resources to pursuit the aims of the workshops. This kind of behaviour is tipically a group’s pattern and the lack of group play undermines the essence of the method.
• Engagement and envolvement of participants is not secondary. The phisical (traditional) setting guarantees the necessary envolvement of participants in a deep and immersive experience, as one of main feature for a succesful workshop. An individual and private setting couldn’t be comparable to this kind of situation because the feeling of control who somone could exercise to other people and environment is dramaticaly different in a workshop (real) room or in our private workstation.
• LSP answers to an organisational question, deeply linked to organisation’s dimension. If smart working is living a succesful time, it’s also true that we use still link work and organisational life to our company’s contest and location. Tipically, a LSP workshop is fruit of a question by an organisation; the issue is the base of design and mananagement of the workshop. The LSP experience is into the organisational dimension that participants, commitment and facilitator live and feel. To manage a separated commitment and setting (as in training too) could create a threat to the efficacy of the workshop.

As Giorgio Beltrami and me discussed in an informal conversation, why facilitators could insist to promote LSP method instead to find another tools and techniques, more efficacy in this moment? As professional, we have to looking for the best solution for our clients, using available resources and facing current conditions.

To force the adptation of LSP could be harmful for the method and the facilitators’ community. Answering to the question in title: LSP workshop by distance is useful to who couldn’t find better answers to the questions of our Client, in this moment.